Opinion Columns
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Education replaces housing as the bubble machineApr 27, 2012 1:00 am - A modern knowledge economy thrives on highly trained workers. The way to get them, obviously, is through education — from basic reading skills for some, to mastery of al...
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How dumb can you be?Apr 26, 2012 5:00 am - I went to a strip club once. OK, maybe it was twice. The guys were going; I was curious. It reminded me of the first time I walked into a casino, in a hotel in Reno whe...
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Requiem for one of life’s true storytellersApr 26, 2012 5:00 am - We talk often these days in almost mystical tones of “storytellers” and “storytelling.” I don’t like the term. It is a glaze that calls attention to itself more than the...
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Pardon my zeitgeistApr 25, 2012 5:00 am - I think it is fair to say that the shark has been permanently displaced by the dog. When scriptwriters have run out of mustard, the show hasn’t “jumped the shark,” as w...
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The luxury we don’t have in SyriaApr 25, 2012 5:00 am - About a month ago the European Union, showing it will not be trifled with, barred Bashar al-Assad’s wife, Asma, and other women in his immediate family from shopping for...
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Cruel and unusual: a test caseApr 24, 2012 5:00 am - In the summer of 1787, just 94 years after the Salem witch trials, as paragons of the Enlightenment such as James Madison, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin delibe...
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Stop your panderingApr 24, 2012 5:00 am - Little else brings me as much joy as learning a new word — especially if it perfectly captures the spirit of the moment. “Hispandering” — isn’t that great? I can’t bel...
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Finding freedom in prisonApr 23, 2012 11:38 am - Charles W. Colson — who spent seven months in prison for Watergate-era offenses and became one of the most influential social reformers of the 20th century — was the mos...
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Dreaming of a new ‘norm’ for executive payApr 23, 2012 5:00 am - Lavishly paid executives have a new 1 percent number to ponder. It’s not about their perch on the top branch of U.S. incomes. It’s the lousy 1 percent rise in Citibank’s...
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Not so Secret ServiceApr 23, 2012 5:00 am - In the 1962 Howard Lindsay-Russel Crouse-Irving Berlin Broadway musical “Mr. President,” one of the songs in the production is titled “The Secret Service,” which begins,...