Mexican food and beer. That’s what retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor suggests might pull this fractured nation back together again. Those were the tools she used to reach consensus in the 1970s when she was a leader in the Arizona legislature.“I’ll tell you what I did,” she said last week at a conference in Washington, sponsored by Arizona State University’s Center for Social Cohes

Several weeks into December last year, my parents suggested I might like a Kindle for Christmas.I was sitting in my room at school, and my eyes darted to the bookshelf on my left. From the silence on the line they could tell I wasn’t enthusiastic; I muttered something about not needing another gadget, mostly because I couldn’t find a way to shape my reluctance into words. The conversation was tact

In the waning minutes of last week’s Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney was opining about Afghanistan when he uttered something that, in past years, would have been condemned by virtually all Republicans as dovish blasphemy.He said: “I also think we’ve learned that our troops shouldn’t go off and try and fight a war of independence for another nation.”It’s rare to hear a Republican front-

NEW YORK ― Despite the series of low-probability, high-impact events that have hit the global economy in 2011, financial markets continued to rise happily until a month or so ago. The year began with rising food, oil, and commodity prices, giving rise to the specter of high inflation. Then massive turmoil erupted in the Middle East, further ratcheting up oil prices. Then came Japan’s terrible eart

A random glance at newspaper front pages shows that few encouraging stories are making the headlines these days. Instead, they are filled with corruption scandals involving public officeholders, never-ending animosity among ostensibly irreconcilable political adversaries, looming economic disasters ― you name it, it’s there.Few bright spots are in sight at a time of political transition. Instead,

The legislation process is under way to cut university tuition fees. Similar efforts are being made by the administration. But it will be no less important for the administration to close private universities and colleges whose lifeline is nothing but government subsidies.On Wednesday, the parliamentary committee on education approved a bill banning the transfer of collected tuition fees to reserv

It was the kind of insular, issue-driven, black-on-black debate that ordinarily doesn’t attract the media spotlight, even on the slowest news day. But thanks to the unprecedented profile of Barack Obama, the most famous black person in modern history, this one got hot.Last month, in an interview with Chris Hedges on Truthdig.com, Princeton professor Cornel West gave a scathing assessment of Obama’

WASHINGTON ― “Peace is at hand,” Henry Kissinger famously announced in October 1972 after a seeming breakthrough in Vietnam negotiations. But it wasn’t at hand. It took three more months to complete the Paris Peace Accords, which collapsed in 1975 when North Vietnam overran Saigon. This Vietnam history is a caution against premature optimism about diplomatic solutions to deeply embedded conflicts,

“Roaring into space on two mighty blowtorches and a magnificent column of steam, the space shuttle Columbia was given a go-ahead Sunday to complete the 54-hour mission that is expected to open a new space frontier. The liftoff ― the world’s most spectacular space launch ― awed veteran space watchers at the Kennedy Space Center here.” ― Chicago Tribune, April 13, 1981.Thirty years ago, space shuttl

TOKYO ― July will mark two milestones in America’s sometimes-tortured relations with Asia. One is the beginning of the end of the nearly decade-long struggle in Afghanistan ― the longest war in United States history ― as President Barack Obama announces the first troop withdrawals. The other is the 40th anniversary of Henry Kissinger’s secret mission to Beijing, a turning point in the Cold War and

Anthony Weiner, the disgraced New York congressman whose sins certainly don’t need to be spelled out again, has, we are told, checked himself into rehab. We can’t be sure exactly what kind, since his spokeswoman said only that he was seeking “professional treatment to focus on being a better husband and a healthier person.” That’s code, in a lot of people’s minds, for a sex-addiction program, like

Thanks to modern technology, peering into private lives all around the world has never been easier.When Su Lin, the San Diego-born daughter of Chinese parents Bai Yun and Gao Gao, had her first medical exam, eager viewers proclaimed that she was the cutest baby ever. When a mother of three died in an airplane accident, leaving the father to care for the family alone, thousands of people across the

As social and political debates on cutting university tuition fees rages on, the restructuring of higher education has emerged as an urgent issue. There is a need to strengthen university finances in general and concentrate state support on more viable institutions. While the Board of Audit and Inspection is checking the financial, personnel and academic affairs of all 200 four-year universities,

North Korea again blared out warnings of “merciless retaliation,” this time against the move here to pass the North Korean human rights bill at the National Assembly. Their language grew harsher as with a change in activities in the South that they consider to threaten the stability of their system.Jopyeongtong, Pyongyang’s mouthpiece on South Korean affairs, said the bill represented Seoul’s atte

Recently, in the United States, there has been a campaign to return to the innocence and purity of our adolescence in order to solve social problems such as racial prejudice and ideological antagonism. During childhood, indeed, we are so pure-hearted that we hardly have prejudices against others. As we walk into adulthood, however, we gradually become racially biased and ideologically prejudiced. 

“I am concerned about the fact that the recovery that we’re on is not producing jobs as fast as I want it to happen,” President Obama said last week.Does this mean we’re about to see a package of bold ideas from the White House for spurring growth of jobs and wages? Sadly, it doesn’t seem so.The president says he’s interested in working with Republicans to extend some of the measures that were par

The number of high school graduates dropped 15 percent from 2000 to 2005, making it impossible for some universities and junior colleges to fill their freshman quotas. A fall in admissions meant a drop in tuition fees ― the main source of revenues for the ill-fated ones.The situation will worsen if no action is taken because the number is projected to fall 40 percent from 670,000 to 410,000 in a d

A borrower is up to no good if he is much indebted. This has been proven to be true in all ages and countries, no matter which the borrower may be ― a corporation, a state or an individual.Kim Choong-soo, governor of the Bank of Korea, made remarks to that effect when he was commenting on Tuesday’s news report that Greece took a super-low rating from the Standard & Poor’s. If so, why is he accused

In meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates in Singapore on June 3, Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa told him that Japan would allow the United States to export to other countries an anti-missile missile being jointly developed by Japan and the U.S. if certain conditions are met.Japan is expected to confirm this position in a meeting of Japanese and U.S. foreign and defense ministers to b

Was this the best the Democratic Party of Japan could do to put its foot down?The ruling party on Monday decided on punishments for 15 of its House of Representatives lawmakers who did not attend or abstained from voting on a recent no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Naoto Kan.Former DPJ President Ichiro Ozawa and seven other lawmakers had their party membership suspended for three months