Your one stop pundit shop.
Eugene Robinson:
History's demands can seem inconvenient, unfair or unreasonable. But they can't be ignored. The Obama administration has a legal and moral duty to determine whether crimes were committed in the Bush-era detention and interrogation of "war on terror" prisoners -- and, if so, to prosecute those responsible. [...]
I'm under no illusion that George W. Bush or Dick Cheney is actually going to be prosecuted by the Justice Department. But I want to know -- and I believe the nation needs to know -- the full, unvarnished truth of what they and others did in our name. It's probable that painful scrutiny and lasting disgrace will be the only sanctions that Bush and Cheney ever face. But history demands at least that much.
Richard Cohen:
Unlike Carter, Obama brims with energy and charm. His brilliance is not brittle but supple. Yet, another teachable moment is upon him and he seems lost. The country needs health-care reform and success in Afghanistan, and both efforts are going in the wrong direction. The message needs to be fixed, and so, with some tough introspection, does the man.
Chuck Blahous:
"Millions of people face shrinking Social Security checks next year," The Post reported Monday, "as officials project that benefits will stay flat for the first time in a generation." The New York Times reported earlier this year that the lack of a Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) in 2010 "will be a shock to older Americans" and quoted an AARP official lamenting that "Most seniors have never been through a year in which there was no Social Security COLA."
But this controversy is more smoke than fire.
Bob Herbert:
If you want to get a little bit of a sense of what the wars are like in Afghanistan and Iraq — a small, distant sense of the on-the-ground horror — pick up a book of color photos called, “2nd Tour, Hope I Don’t Die.” It’s chilling.
Most Americans have conveniently put these two absurd, obscene conflicts out of their minds. There’s an economy to worry about and snappy little messages to tweet. Nobody wants to think about young people getting their faces or their limbs blown off. Or the parents, loaded with antidepressants, giving their children and spouses a final hug before heading off in a haze of anxiety to their third or fourth tour in the war zones. [...]
Instead of winding down our involvement in Afghanistan, we’re ratcheting it up. President Obama told the V.F.W. that fighting the war there is absolutely essential. “This is fundamental to the defense of our people,” he said.
Well, if this war, now approaching its ninth year, is so fundamental, we should all be pitching in. We shouldn’t be leaving the entire monumental burden to a tiny portion of the population, sending them into combat again, and again, and again, and again ...
Bret Stephens:
Liberals have never liked the CIA, except when it suited their partisan purposes. That's fine: There's much not to like about the agency, and the U.S. might well be better off without its bungled operations and laughable intelligence estimates. But having shouted themselves hoarse over Mrs. Wilson, their enthusiasm for this new round of outing is a bit unseemly. Especially when lives are actually at stake. Especially when a liberal president has pledged to protect those lives.
Joan Wickersham:
The kind of place she needed - a smart nursing home designed for smart people whose bodies had given out in catastrophic ways - wasn’t something I could find for my mother, who lived in the nursing home for two years before her death.
But it’s something we’re going to need more and more of in the next few decades. The demographic handwriting is on the wall. The baby boomers are aging. Sixty may be the new 40, and 80 may be the new 60 - but there are only so many of these bright pithy sayings we can invent before we hit an age at which we are really, undeniably, old. Big things will go wrong with our bodies. We’ll need places to live. We’ll need more assistance than assisted living places can provide. We’ll need handsome nursing homes built to encourage the greatest possible mobility and independence, and run with imagination and sensitivity.
Joe Queenan:
It is always fun to go back in time and speculate on what might have happened had Anne Boleyn been on Facebook, or had Pharaoh's army included amphibious equipment. This is why I cannot help wondering what a typical Amazon.com review might have looked like had the Internet existed centuries ago