Latest General Editorials
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Editorial Mandel a hard act to follow
Just days after voters go to the municipal polls Oct. 21, Stephen Mandel will step down as mayor of Edmonton. And nearly everyone in this city will wish him well.Edmonton has enjoyed quite a ride with Mandel, and as the mayor prepares to leave public office, those who will soon jockey to succeed him must know they have a tough act to follow.The capital is a better, bolder and more sophisticated ...
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My Secret to Boost Student Performance
Konstantin Sonin Judging by the current debate on education in Russia's schools and universities, it might seem that the most pressing problems are the need for a mandatory reading list and a uniform history textbook for schools, along with the personality traits of the education minister. I admit that these questions are interesting to discuss, but as a university professor who also ...
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Russia Declares New Cold War in Its Far North
Whenever talk turns to the Cold War, it calls up memories of the superpower standoff, the arms race, regional conflicts, the constant threat of enemy missile launches and, of course, the way the Soviet Union lost the Cold War when its economy and technological prowess collapsed in 1991. But at the same time that the Soviet Union was engaged in a Cold War with the West, it was fighting an even ...
More General Editorials
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Book Review E.b. White On Dogs
Martha White Tilbury House, $22.95, 178 pages, illustratedSince the first dog warily entered the first cave, the relationship between man and beast has been intriguing to man, and perhaps to beast as well. A key to the relationship has been a dog’s dependence on its master for food and board, in return for which it is expected to provide companionship, admiration and occasionally other ...
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The future of wiretapping
In the not-too-distant future, video calling is likely to be a standard feature in Web browsers, potentially turning every website into a virtual phone booth or party ...
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Sexual assault in jails
A new government report singles out Los Angeles County's Twin Towers as having one of the worst rates of inmate-on-inmate sexual assault of any men's jail in the nation. One in 20 inmates held there reported that he had been victimized by another inmate while in custody, far higher than the national average of 1 in 60, according to the Department of ...
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McManus Obamas IRS choice
Treasury Department 's inspector general asked that latter question of the IRS brass, and they said no - but he didn't demand their emails and phone ...
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Spain’s Attacks on Fighting Back
At a demonstration near the Spanish parliament on April 18, a housing rights activist joked that the crowd should divide up with terrorists on one side and Nazis on the other. Everyone laughed, but there is a dark side to his sarcasm. Since March, local and national politicians have used every name in the book to delegitimize the Platform for Mortgage Victims, a grass-roots movement that has ...
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AU has neglected human rights
The 50th-anniversary celebration of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and its successor, the African Union (AU), at the biannual heads-of-state summit next week is an important milestone. But, while they are celebrating, Africa's leaders should also do some serious reflection on why they haven't made sufficient progress on human rights. The AU should use this gathering to call ...
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MARCUS Still Hating Breitbart
Breitbart ,'; which was released digitally and in theaters last week across the United States, I had the distinct and unique privilege of ...
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LAMBRO From bureaucratic snafu to explosive cover-up
View results ';Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.';This ancient admonition, commonly attributed to William Shakespeare but actually the work of Sir Walter Scott, now applies to how Barack Obama’s White House has been in a full cover-up mode over the widening Internal Revenue Service scandal.One week after the bombshell story broke that the tax ...
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FONTOVA Protecting sponsor of terrorism
View results Protecting U.S. diplomats from terrorists on foreign soil is one thing. Protecting terrorism-sponsoring diplomats on U.S. soil quite another. The U.S. State Department is under heavy fire for failing at the job abroad.A diplomat from a nation that the United States officially classifies as a state sponsor of terrorism, however, has no complaints against the State Department’s ...
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TIMMERMAN Irans free-election farce
View results Every four years, the Islamic Republic of Iran engages in a closely choreographed farce of elections, aimed at maintaining the illusion that the Iranian people have a say in how their country is governed.By all accounts, the farce has been successful - with Americans, if not with Iranians themselves. On June 14, the election show is set for another replay.In February 2003, Deputy ...
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TAUBE The growing irrelevance of polls
View results Anyone who reads a daily newspaper such as The Washington Times will regularly see references to public opinion polls. The polling data gathered from trends and insights has historically provided helpful guidance for consumers, academics and businesses.Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case quite as much with politics. Today’s polls are becoming increasingly ...
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EDITORIAL The Obama enemies list
View results The Obama administration has an enemies list, and John Dodson was on it. The special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) infuriated his superiors by alerting Congress and everyone else about the government’s gunrunning scheme called Fast and Furious. He had to pay for his act of good citizenship.The Justice Department’s inspector ...
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Will London Respond to Somalias Needs
I met Fatuma in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, late last year. A few days before we met, she had been raped by an armed militia man while she slept in one of the city’s camps for displaced people. She told me that she had nowhere to turn for redress. Months earlier, 13-year old Abdi told me how he had been kidnapped from school by armed Islamists from al-Shabaab and forced to serve in ...
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Miles to go for Thein Sein
By Aung Tun Myanmar president Thein Sein was received at the White House this week, marking the first time in 47 years a leader of the Southeast Asian country has made an official visit to the United States. US-based observers are understandably confused about Myanmar's military-guided path towards democratization, particularly after the recent eruption of communal violence between ...
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And the winner is - Khamenei
By Pepe Escobar Nothing will be left to chance - even the hint of a green protest wave. In 2009, 475 candidates registered to run for Iran's presidency. Only four were approved by the Guardian Council - the all-powerful, vetting clerical committee. This year, no fewer than 686 registered for the upcoming June 14 elections. Eight were approved. Among them, one won't find the ...
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China nears pointof no return with Kim
By Francesco Sisci BEIJING - Does young North Korean leader Kim Jong-eun want a different future for himself and his country, or does he think he can spend the next half a century (his probable lifespan) imitating the threats, blackmail, and moves of his father, while physically resembling his grandfather? Nobody is sure about the future, especially so far ahead. One can say, as the song ...
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New spark in the South China Sea
if you are interested in contributing. In the latest complication of territorial disputes in the South China Sea, Taiwan has imposed diplomatic and economic sanctions on the Philippines. Taipei has rejected Philippine President Benigno Aquino's informal apology after the crew of a Philippine Coast Guard vessel shot dead a Taiwanese fisherman on May 9 in the Bashi Channel where the two ...
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Time Taiwan joined global air-safety body
By David Brown It's time for Taiwan's exclusion from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to end. ICAO's mission is to promote the safe and orderly development of civil aviation by setting the standards and regulations necessary for aviation safety and security. Finding a way for Taiwan to participate is essential to achieving these objectives. Taiwan is the ...
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The sea rises in age of drone terror
if you are interested in contributing. "If the mainspring of popular government in peacetime is virtue, in revolution it is both virtue and terror: virtue without terror is fatal; terror without virtue is powerless." - Maximilien Robespierre speaking to France's National Convention, 1794 If the French Revolution gave the world a new and enlightened but terrorist means of ...
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Richard Davis Abortion laws should keep up with advances
The illegal abortion trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell horrified the nation. Gosnell was found guilty of delivering late-term live babies in abortion attempts and then killing them by snipping their spines. A co-worker said that, after aborting a 30 week fetus, Gosnell joked that the child was so big it could "walk to the ...
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Letters Consumers last word
In the war of businessmen against the people, the businessmen seem to have won the battle for collecting sales tax on products purchased from out-of-state sellers. A federal law sponsored by state business interests will require the appropriate state sales tax to be collected on Internet purchases. The state governments see this as a windfall because the voluntary sales tax doesn't seem to ...
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Letters Move to the center
Dan Liljenquist's gleeful recounting of adversity in the Obama presidency is unfortunate ("Chaffetz's search for truth in Benghazi paid off," May 16). Extremism on the left and on the right is much the same. Salient in both are fear and hate of an "other" and detachment of reality. Where extremism errs is in its rigid dichotomy of paired opposites, like friend and ...
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