Al Gore:
'We the People' Must Save Our Constitution
Juan Cole:
10 Things Martin Luther King Would have Done about Iraq
Ira Chernus:
MLK's Message to a Dead Soldier's Friend
Ariel Dorfman:
Homeland Security Ate My Speech
Boston Globe:
King and Hoover, Encore
James Carroll:
The Dream and its Enemies
John Nichols:
Rev. King's Message to the Faithful
Norman Solomon:
Ted Koppel: "Natural Fit" at NPR News and Longtime Booster of Henry Kissinger
Madeleine Bunting:
The Boiling Point is Coming for the Fight Against Climate Change
Tariq Ali:
Iraq's Destiny Still Rests Between God, Blood and Oil
Joan Wile:
Why Grandma Went to Jail
Andrew Fiala:
King Preached Nonviolence, Too
Hendrik Hertzberg:
Abramoffed
John Buell:
Civil Liberties and the "War on Terror"
Benjamin Peters:
What King Might Say Today
James Lovelock:
The Earth is About to Catch a Morbid Fever That May Last as Long as 100,000 Years

Un-Edited Eds and Op-Eds

NYT > Opinion

[TS] Op-Ed Columnist: Not in the Kennedys' Backyard
by JOHN TIERNEY
16 Jan 2006 at 11:00pm
If the Kennedys had their way there would be thousands of wind turbines across America. Just not in Nantucket Sound, where they go sailing.
[TS] Op-Ed Columnist: They're Rounding the First Turn! And the Favorite Is . . .
by NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
16 Jan 2006 at 11:00pm
The great race of the 21st century is under way between China and India to see which will be the leading power in the world in the year 2100.
Op-Ed Contributor: Poor Richard's Redemption
by STACY SCHIFF
16 Jan 2006 at 11:00pm
Ben Franklin, who had the foresight to have been born three centuries ago today, makes us feel we have a history.
Editorial: Disarray Among the Palestinians
16 Jan 2006 at 11:00pm
One question lost in the hubbub over who will succeed Ariel Sharon is whether there will be any valid authority left among the Palestinians when the Israelis sort out their politics.
Editorial: Beijing's New Enforcer: Microsoft
16 Jan 2006 at 11:00pm
Disregard for users' privacy and ethical standards may make it easier for Western technology firms to do business in China, but it also aids a repressive regime.
Editorial: Ignoring Science on Clean Air
16 Jan 2006 at 11:00pm
Science marches on, and there is no excuse for an agency charged with protecting public health to be bringing up the rear of the parade.
Editorial: What Is the I.R.S. Trying to Hide?
16 Jan 2006 at 11:00pm
To prevent abuse, the public must have a steady stream of facts and figures on how the Internal Revenue Service collects taxes.

washingtonpost.com - Editorials and Opinions

A First Answer to Egypt
by Post
17 Jan 2006 at 12:00am
THE BUSH administration has taken a first step toward adjusting its relationship with Egypt following President Hosni Mubarak's flagrant violation of his promises to lead a transition to democracy. An Egyptian delegation that was to visit Washington this month to discuss a free-trade agreement has been disinvited, and the agreement itself was put on hold. Thanks to Mr. Mubarak's autocratic backsliding -- including his crude persecution and imprisonment of his leading liberal opponent, Ayman Nour -- Egypt will continue to lag behind Jordan, Morocco and other modernizing Arab states that enjoy tariff-free access to U.S. markets. For Egypt's business community and the reformist technocrats in its cabinet, the message should be clear: Egypt won't join the global economic mainstream unless it abandons its corrupt dictatorship.
The SEC's Test
by Post
17 Jan 2006 at 12:00am
JOHN PIERPONT Morgan, who dominated Wall Street a hundred years ago, famously doubted the stability of companies that paid their top executive more than 20 times what the lowliest employee got. Business norms have since undergone a revolution, with the median chief executive in a survey of 2,000 large companies pocketing $2.5 million in 2004, up from $1 million five years earlier. Some of these packages may be justified as rewards for strong performance. But others amount to a cash-grab at the expense of shareholders, many of them unsuspecting owners of mutual fund shares and 401(k) retirement plans. One recent study identified 60 underwhelming companies that lost $769 billion in market value in the five years ending in 2004. Their top five executives pocketed more than $12 billion over this period, meaning that they averaged more than $8 million each per year.
Closure on Mr. Coleman
by Post
17 Jan 2006 at 12:00am
MARK R. WARNER's decision in his final days as Virginia's governor to order the retesting of evidence in the case of Roger Keith Coleman has put an important controversy to rest. Mr. Coleman, executed in 1992 for a rape and murder more than a decade earlier, was shown to be guilty as charged. Mr. Coleman persuaded a great many people of his innocence. Even for those, like us, who were not convinced by his claims, his case was among the more disturbing capital cases to go to execution in the modern era of the death penalty. Thanks to Mr. Warner, those concerned that Virginia might have executed an innocent man now know that the commonwealth carried out the death sentence of a murderer -- and a very clever liar.
Ground the D.C. Jet Set
by Post
16 Jan 2006 at 12:00am
WHEN REP. TOM DeLay (R-Tex.) had to attend his arraignment on money-laundering charges in Texas last year, he got there in the style to which he had become accustomed as House majority leader: on a corporate jet, in this case one owned by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.

Killing Made Easy
by Post
16 Jan 2006 at 12:00am
WITH PITIFULLY little notice paid, another rash of year-end homicide statistics points up the madness of this country's fascination with handguns. The domestic arms race continues full tilt. More kids are taking handguns to school in Maryland and Virginia, according to a report by The Post's Daniel de Vise, and one big, sorry reason is that more than a few of them are responding to a perceived threat of violence in their midst. Murders by handguns continue to rock Prince George's County and the District with a vengeance.
D.C. and David Rosenbaum
by Post
16 Jan 2006 at 12:00am
GOOD WORK BY D.C. police has resulted in the arrest of two suspects in the Jan. 6 robbery and slaying of retired New York Times journalist David E. Rosenbaum. The rest of the news is not at all gratifying.
Confirm Samuel Alito
by Post
15 Jan 2006 at 12:00am
THE SENATE'S decision concerning the confirmation of Samuel A. Alito Jr. is harder than the case last year of now-Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Judge Alito's record raises concerns across a range of areas. His replacement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor could alter -- for the worse, from our point of view -- the Supreme Court's delicate balance in important areas of constitutional law. He would not have been our pick for the high court. Yet Judge Alito should be confirmed, both because of his positive qualities as an appellate judge and because of the dangerous precedent his rejection would set.
A General's Dishonor
by Post
15 Jan 2006 at 12:00am
BY INVOKING his right to avoid self-incrimination, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller has avoided a much-needed cross-examination of his role in the abuse of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He has also added to his dishonor as a commander who oversaw improper interrogations at Guantanamo Bay, then introduced some of the same practices in Iraq in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Gen. Miller's subsequent account of his actions, in sworn testimony to Congress and Army investigators, has been contradicted by at least four other witnesses, so it's not surprising that he has sought shelter in the military's equivalent of the Fifth Amendment. He has yet to be the subject of any charge. But anyone who still accepts the Abu Ghraib cover story peddled by the White House and the Pentagon -- that the abuses portrayed in now-infamous photographs were invented by rogue guards on the night shift -- ought to be asking what this two-star general is afraid of.

washingtonpost.com - Op-Ed Columns

Good Bet on Biloxi
by Eugene Robinson
17 Jan 2006 at 12:00am
BILOXI, Miss. -- An hour's drive west of here, the City Formerly Known as New Orleans wasn't destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans was on the storm's weak side, relatively speaking, where the force of wind and water was terrible but not apocalyptic. The city would have had only moderate flooding if the levees had held, and those faulty levees were designed -- poorly designed, it turned out -- by people, not nature.
Underneath Their Robes
by Ruth Marcus
17 Jan 2006 at 12:00am
Winnie the Pooh, or so he tells us, is a Bear of Very Little Brain. As he struggles to think his way out of a predicament, you can see him trying to knock the solution out of his fluff-filled head. By contrast, Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justice-in-Waiting Samuel Alito are, as Pooh might say, Very Clever Brains indeed. But, listening to their confirmation hearings, they seem to have a Winnie the Pooh theory of judging: a conviction that if they just think, think, think, they will come up with the correct result.
Oprah's Grand Delusion
by Richard Cohen
17 Jan 2006 at 12:00am
Because she has led countless billions and billions of people to the promised land of books, because she preaches self-help and self-sufficiency and not least because she has shown that even a middle-aged person can keep weight off, I must tiptoe up to the amazing Oprah and merely whisper to her that in the case of James Frey, the liar whose memoir turns out to have a good deal of fiction alongside fact, she is not only wrong but deluded. What she needs is a session with Dr. Phil.
A Favor From a Fabricator
by Martha Sherrill
17 Jan 2006 at 12:00am
I have some sympathy for James Frey, the author accused of fabricating parts of his bestselling memoir, "A Million Little Pieces." I planned to write a memoir once, too. Six years ago I sold a book proposal for one to a major publishing house. It was going to be about my father, a flamboyant California bachelor with an endless string of girlfriends, and what it was like to be a girl growing up in his unconventional world.

Murtha and the Mudslingers
by E. J. Dionne Jr.
17 Jan 2006 at 12:00am
I underestimated the viciousness of the right wing.
Bush's Turn to Health Care
by Sebastian Mallaby
16 Jan 2006 at 12:00am
This time last year, President Bush was preaching Social Security reform; that got nowhere. This time six months ago, his team was thinking tax reform; it soon got cold feet. Now the new theme is health reform. "This is a big priority for the president," Al Hubbard, the White House national economic adviser, told me Friday. "The system has got to be reformed."
Focusing on 'Success' In Iraq
by Brent Scowcroft
16 Jan 2006 at 12:00am
The December election in Iraq could prove to be a seminal event. The parliament elected last month will choose a president and prime minister, providing Iraq its first elected government under a constitution approved by referendum. This government may well seek, or at least welcome, changes in the foreign military presence. In addition, President Bush has made clear that it will need to take increasing responsibility for rebuilding the country politically and economically, while Iraqi armed forces take increasing responsibility for defeating the insurgency.
Still Seeking a Fair Vote
by Nick Kotz
16 Jan 2006 at 12:00am
Forty-one years ago, on Jan. 15, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson placed a phone call to congratulate the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on his 36th birthday -- but mainly to strategize about how they could win a monumental victory for equal rights. King was in Selma, Ala., where he had just launched a dramatic campaign to show how African Americans in the Deep South were being denied the right to vote. He had chosen Selma because of that city's notorious success in blocking its black residents from the polls. Those who dared to attempt to register risked their lives. They endured bloody beatings, lost their jobs, saw their homes and churches bombed. Some were brutally murdered.

Boston Globe -- Op-ed columns

How to reform the Boston Police
by Dianne Wilkerson
17 Jan 2006 at 5:00am
THE BOSTON Police Department is not responsible for the social or familial circumstances that have resulted in the drastic surge in homicides, particularly those by young people. Why young people kill is one issue. When they do kill, however, it is the responsibility of the police to investigate and arrest the perpetrators. The fact is that the Boston Police Department ...
Liberia's break with the past
by Steve Radelet and Jeremy Weinstein
17 Jan 2006 at 5:00am
ELLEN JOHNSON SIRLEAF'S inauguration as the president of Liberia marks a watershed in the country's tumultuous history.
Reining in seat belt enforcement
by Scot Lehigh, Globe Columnist
17 Jan 2006 at 5:00am
THIS WEEK, the Massachusetts House of Representatives will face a telling test: Can it resist a progressive Legislature's ever-present impulse toward pesky paternalism?
The press and classified information
by H.D.S. Greenway
17 Jan 2006 at 5:00am
I MAY BE like a lot of Americans who believe that the kind of computer eavesdropping that the top-secret National Security Agency is involved in is probably a good thing, given the nature of the threat against this country, but would like to see the government stay this side of the Constitution and preserve the rule of law.
Invisible in Hollywood: Jewish women
by Gail Dines
16 Jan 2006 at 5:00am
STEVEN SPIELBERG has done it again. He has managed to make yet another film about Jews that reduces Jewish women to caricatures. Only this time, instead of simpering victims, we are either loyal, hapless wives committed to tortured Jewish men, or kindly grandmothers who run a country but leave the real work to men.
Katrina's racial paranoia
by Cathy Young
16 Jan 2006 at 5:00am
AS THE commission appointed by Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans unveils an ambitious plan to rebuild the ravaged city, this is a good time to revisit some of the myths and assumptions that surround Hurricane Katrina.
Terrorism: Confusing cause, effect
by Alan Dershowitz
16 Jan 2006 at 5:00am
WHATEVER ANYONE might think of the artistic merits of Steven Spielberg's new film ''Munich," no one should expect an accurate portrayal of historical events.
The dream and its enemies
by James Carroll
16 Jan 2006 at 5:00am
AT THE Richmond Theater on King Street in Alexandria, Va., I was cheerfully ushered into American complacency. ''Colored people" could go to the movies there, but they had to sit in the balcony.

Editorials & Commentary - International Herald Tribune

The imperial presidency
16 Jan 2006 at 2:33pm
Nothing in the U.S. national consensus to combat terrorism after 9/11 envisioned the rewriting of more than 200 years of tradition and law by one president.
China's tangled Web
16 Jan 2006 at 2:33pm
U.S. technology companies cannot operate ethically while helping countries like China squelch human rights.
The Abramoff effect
16 Jan 2006 at 2:34pm
Republicans and Democrats should support moves to reform the lobbyist industry.
Other Views: Sydney Morning Herald, Kathimerini, The Independent
16 Jan 2006 at 2:40pm
Opinions from around the world.
Nicholas D. Kristof: In India, one woman's stand says 'enough'
15 Jan 2006 at 1:08pm
Usha Narayane is a reminder of the difference that education makes, and I hope that she is a vision of the new Indian woman.
Frank Rich: Is Abramoff the new Monica?
15 Jan 2006 at 1:03pm
There's nothing this White House loves more than pictures that tell a story - a fictional story. And so another mission was accomplished when President George W.
Globalizing Martin Luther King's legacy
by Taylor Branch
16 Jan 2006 at 2:35pm
Despite Americ's commitment to advance free government around the world, it consistently marginalizes or ignores the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s commitment to the core values of democracy.
Send Habr� to Belgium for trial
by Souleymane Guengueng
16 Jan 2006 at 2:36pm
The African Union must allow the victims of Habr�, Chad's former dictator, to have their day in court in Belgium.

Christian Science Monitor | Commentary

Tipping points for women
The election of women leaders in Liberia and Chile is worth celebrating, but most women still face barriers.
Can Africa's first woman president get Liberia back on track?
Its new president has the experience to ensure that its debts are canceled.
On the way to democracy in the former Soviet Union, two roads diverge
While some nations have moved toward freer societies, others are clamping down.
Letters to the Editor