The new speaker of the House, Rep. John A. Boehner of Ohio, isn’t the most brilliant statesman ever to hold the job (Newt Gingrich beats him on that count), the most groundbreaking (that was Nancy Pelosi) or the most charismatic (speakers rarely score high on that scale).But he is among the most modest, an attribute rare among politicians ― and one that should come in handy in the rough-and-tumble

Michael Sandel’s book, “Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?” has been on the nation’s bestseller list ever since it was translated and introduced to Korean readers in May 2010. According to a newspaper report, 650,000 copies of “Justice” have sold in Korea within six months, with a record-breaking 72 prints by Nov. 8. What, then, is the reason for the extraordinary popularity of a Harvard Law p

The current controversy over the nomination of Chung Dong-kee as the next head of the Board of Audit and Inspection raised two serious questions. One concerns the still prevalent practice of senior judges and prosecutors joining law firms upon retirement and getting huge rewards. The other is about the appropriateness of appointing a former presidential secretary to the job of top government watch

North Korea is desperate in its call for dialogue with South Korea. But Seoul is hesitant on deciding what to do about Pyongyang’s sudden peace offensive that comes after one of the worst years of military provocations since the Korean War.Pyongyang has heated up its language in the overtures since the three major official newspapers first proposed inter-Korean dialogue in their New Year joint edi

PARIS ― Is it a case of murder, or has the Western economy deliberately, if unwittingly, attempted suicide and nearly succeeded?John Maynard Keynes was not just talking about defunct economists when he wrote that the world is commonly ruled by dead ideas, its leaders the slaves of the past. He said, “Indeed the world is ruled by little else.” If he were alive today, he could name management consul

At any given moment a whole lot of people are accusing a whole lot of other people of being narcissists. In recent years, the term for a self-destructive “personality disorder” has become the insult of choice for almost anyone doing almost anything.The concept of narcissism as a broad cultural condition, and the word’s use as an everyday term, goes back several decades. Christopher Lasch published

This is a column about a word no newspaper will print.You see the quandary. If I can’t write the word and expect it to be published, how can you, the reader, understand my points, and agree or disagree?Nonetheless, such a stripping of vocabulary will occur in a new edition of Mark Twain’s classic “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” This revised version, to be released in February, will delete the ra