Editorials

As we approach the November midterm Congressional elections, most of official Washington has gone into recess. In the final weeks of campaigning, both the White House and the Congress have turned their attention from policy to politics. Those who take an idealistic view of the democratic process mig

November’s midterm elections are approaching, but over five million Americans, in nearly all 50 states, will be denied the right to cast ballots. Why? Because they are current or prior felony offenders who cannot exercise a right guaranteed them in the Constitution. Two million of them have co

Those who take an apocalyptic view of the campaign against international terrorism like to cite the historian Samuel Huntington’s prediction of a "clash of civilizations." Commentators sympathetic to this view applauded Pope Benedict XVI’s address at the University of Regensbur

Armies inevitably refight the last war, and generals are often unprepared for the new war their enemy brings them. The law and ethics of war follow the same pattern. Years go by before lawmakers and ethicists recognize the worrisome changes that have overtaken warfare. It took decades for the human

In the minds of many Muslims, because the Catholic Church is the oldest and was for centuries the leading institution in the West, the church and the pope as its head are identified as representatives of the West. Though Pope Benedict XVI’s address in Regensburg, Germany, on Sept. 12 was devot

Welfare rolls have dropped more than 50 percent over the past decade. Former President Bill Clinton, who spearheaded welfare reform through the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, promised to end welfare as we know it. Now he, along with Secretary of Health, Educati

Alma E. Miller was 102 years old when she died in 1994. For 78 of those years she had been a member of the religious congregation called the Society of the Sacred Heart. During much of that time, she was the mistress of studies, that is to say, the academic dean, in one or other of the schools for g

As the nation prepares to observe the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, national security is poised to become once again the central issue in the electoral season. The question is hardly academic, given the revelation in August of a foiled terrorist plot to blow up Americ

Nowhere in the United States is it possible for a full-time worker earning the minimum wage to rent a one-bedroom apartment at market rates. Despite this shameful reality, Congress has again balked at increasing the minimum wage from its present $5.15 an hourunchanged since 1997. According to a repo

In its short modern history, Lebanon has been brutalized by both its neighbors and its own internal divisions. Syria, the Palestinians, Hezbollah, Israel and the country’s own religious militias all have inflicted blows on the small Mediterranean state. Besides its 1982 invasion to dislodge th