BY SUSAN ESTRICH Conservative loudmouths are crowing that they are driving Barack Obama’s popularity ratings below 50%. They are very proud of themselves. They shouldn’t be. Destroying what is best about our country is not something to brag to your children about. And the other shoe is dropping. “I’ve stopped using Claritin,” one of my […]

BY FROMA HARROP President Obama was on Wall Street, calling for a new regulatory regime to prevent a financial panic like the one set off a year ago. “We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess that was at the heart of this crisis,” he said. But there are […]

BY JOE CONASON The wild furor over President Obama’s speech to the nation’s schoolchildren raises many questions, but there is only one that really matters. How did America surrender its political discourse – not to mention the news cycle – to the most unreasonable and unstable elements of the far right? Not so many years […]

BY FROMA HARROP In their tireless efforts to kill health care reform, right-wingers have fanned fears that it would attract illegal aliens. This sideshow is rather twisted because, actually, the reforms would do the opposite. They would help curb illegal immigration. Start with Canada to see how this works. Canadians have universal coverage, a big […]

BY SUSAN ESTRICH The gifted woman who headed my children’s elementary school, Reveta Bowers, always said that teaching kids values was as important as teaching them skills. Maybe more, I have come to believe, as my children got older. Facts are easily forgotten; what isn’t is the determination you show in learning them, the responsibility […]