The issue: Home ownership will give Cubans something they haven’t had for more than 50 years — a real stake in their island The right to own a house and other real estate was taken for granted for millennia, so much so that the Sumerian king Urukagina mentioned it only indirectly in 2,500 B.C. when […]

The issue: Our factory workers are ready for jobs creating something newer and better Manufacturing is not, as the conventional wisdom would have it, dead. The United States produces more goods than any other country in the world. No. 2, with many more people, is China. IF MANUFACTURING is not actually dying, what has been […]

The issue: If only they could move so quickly on cleaning up the foreclosure mess Bank of America became the last big bank to rescind the short-lived plan to impose a monthly $5 debit card fee because, as a senior bank official explained, “We have listened very closely to our customers over the last few […]

The issue: Let’s start by implementing the recommendations of a scathing 2008 audit by Social Security’s inspector general In a ghoulish new identity theft scam, thieves are cashing in on dead children by stealing their Social Security numbers to fraudulently collect federal tax refunds. And, the heartless crooks are getting help from an unexpected source, […]

The issue: Our ability to influence either the Palestinians or Israel now seems weaker than it’s ever been Something as intricate and ever-changing as foreign policy should not be put on automatic pilot, which is the gravest defect in the law that requires the United States to cut off funding to any U.N. agency that […]

The issue: Libya proved that the alliance must be ready in a hurry to be effective The NATO-led coalition began its mission in Libya on March 19 with the limited objective of providing air cover to the rebel held areas of the country, notably Benghazi, where Moammar Gadhafi, the nation’s dictator of 42 years, was […]

The issue: Maintaining a substantial presence in the region seems to be a reasonable insurance policy We may be leaving Iraq as planned at the end of the year, but apparently we’re not going very far. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States would have “a continuing robust presence in the region.” Defense […]

The issue: ‘Stable, secure and self-reliant’ are our goals for embattled Mideast nation The effective end of the Iraq war, coming up on its ninth year, was defined over this past weekend. “U.S. troops will be home for the holidays,” promised President Barack Obama. And as a practical matter, the U.S. war machine is already […]

The issue: Cain’s proposal would cause pain for 
everyone, but hits the 
poor hardest. Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has gone a long way with a winning smile, affable manner, a single issue with a catchy title, “9-9-9,” and by turning away critics with a soft answer, given without elaboration: What they say isn’t true. […]

The issue: Now the hard work begins, creating a government that is democratic and strong The policy, indeed, the hopes, of the coalition of Libyan rebels and the Western and Arab nations that overthrew Moammar Gadhafi, the mercurial and merciless dictator of 42 years standing, were neatly summed up by 37-year-old Amani Deghayes, who took […]

The issue: Two senators 
propose fast-tracking visas for immigrants willing to buy a home in the U.S. to help buoy housing market. Longtime observers of the American political scene knew that the immigration problem would begin to be solved when enough people found a way to benefit and even profit from the problem. New York […]

The issue: This measure being pitched to Congress is simply a tax break for multinational corporations The idea of a tax holiday to allow giant multinational firms to repatriate their overseas profits to the United States at substantially reduced tax rates — 5.25 percent to 8.75 percent compared to the standard 35 percent — is […]

The issue: Taking wild animals out of their natural habitat and corraling them with loose standards is a recipe for disaster There’s nothing that makes the case for government regulation like having wild carnivores — lions, tigers, grizzly bears — turn up in your yard. Or have your local schools closed because free-running wolves and […]

The issue: There’s only one successful outcome — the death or capture of Joseph Kony and the death or dispersal of his followers Let us first posit that the Lord’s Resistance Army, which is neither an army nor the Lord’s, is overdue for elimination, long overdue. It was founded in Uganda in 1987 and unlike […]