The 700-mile fence rising between the United States and Mexico stands as a dramatic symbol of the separation between a rich nation and a poor one. But it also serves as a symbol of our failed immigration policies. The wall and other restrictionist efforts are painful reminders of the misguided direc

The most obvious lesson of the 2006 elections, in which the Democratic Party became the majority party in both houses of Congress, is that the election was a referendum on the leadership of President George W. Bush. The president was quick to accept the verdict of the voters, announcing the followin

A Guest Comes, Christ ComesStealing a truck to go on a drunken bender in town is not a common occurrence in the Monastery of Christ in the Desert, a Benedictine community in Abiquiu, N.M. Yet the after-hours misdemeanor was perpetrated not by one of the monks, but by a twentysomething participant in

With the exception of his appearance before his old faculty at the University of Regensburg, Pope Benedict XVI’s travels have been quiet affairs. Even a trip to Spain last July, which threatened to erupt into controversy over policy differences with that country’s Socialist government, t

Abu Ghraib at HomeThe now infamous photo of an Abu Ghraib detainee crouching in terror before a snarling dog appalled people around the world. But the same thing is happening in prisons in five U.S. states. Jamie Fellner, director of the Human Rights Watch prison program, points out in an October re

Going Down to the SeaSaving deep-sea ecosystems from destructive bottom trawling is among the issues to be considered in November by the United Nations General Assembly. The marine biologist Sylvia Earle, executive director of Conservation International’s global marine division, has said that

Antipersonnel landmines that tear bodies apart are a problem now resolved, right? Wrong. Although much progress has been made over the past decades in slowing their production and use, as well as in demining areas where they still represent a threat to farmers, children, refugees and civilians in ge

Checks and BalancesTypically, Americans think of governmental checks and balances as the interplay among the executive, legislative and judicial branches. But when all three branches lean toward the same political party and have the ideological cohesion to override minority views (as has been the ca

Since Americans pay more for health insurance and health care than do people in most other highly developed countries, it is reasonable to ask: Are we getting our money’s worth, if value is measured by a long and presumably healthy life? Are our national health expenditures a good investment,

Among the great spirituals created by the African-American churches in the South is one that compares death to a train. The same train, it says, that called for my father and my mother and my brother is whistling at the station for me. This train makes only one-way trips, for it is traveling to the