THERE HAS been no discussion of single payer. The public option has been ditched. President Obama received no Republican support at his nationally-televised health care forum last week. In response, the Democrats must not concede any more in the final lurch toward health reform. Even then, reform is already so watered down that it is

Unlike in the early 1990's, top military commanders are far more willing to accept the open service of gay men and women

AS INSPIRING as the Winter Olympics are for athletes who sizzle down slopes and pirouette around rinks, the moments that most move me are the ones where frosty rivals break the ice and millisecond finishes do not set off an avalanche of bitterness. My gold medal for good sports in Vancouver, one barely covered in the

THE 20TH anniversary this week of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison gives sufficient reason to ask if we will ever learn from his example. This is not the easy story line about the man who was imprisoned under apartheid for 27 years, yet became president of South Africa without an embittered heart. Nor is it the story

WHEN SODA companies applaud the latest campaign to fight obesity, you know there is much more to the story. In launching a new White House initiative against obesity called “Let’s Move,’’ First Lady Michelle Obama this week said, “Our kids didn’t do this to themselves. Our kids don’t decide what’s served to them at school or

SUPERINTENDENT CAROL Johnson of the Boston Public Schools last week officially lined up at the soup kitchen of American education by announcing nearly $60 million in budget cuts. Her pared-down $810 million budget comes after she announced in November new initiatives intended to help Boston “serve as a model for every urban school district in

THERE ARE already at least two Christian broadcasting channels, so there is no need for CBS to be a right-wing revival tent for the Super Bowl. Now, before all the knees start jerking, I want to be clear that this pro-choicer has no problem in the abstract with CBS’s decision to air an ad featuring Florida

THE RECENT suicide of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince, after a taunting barrage at South Hadley High School, has set off a classic round of revelation that we do not do enough in schools or in lawmaking to stop bullying. Referring to about a dozen bills being debated in the Legislature, Governor Deval Patrick has said, “We

AS HAITI faces the task of rebuilding almost from scratch, the United States has a chance to start all over again with this devastated nation. For most of two centuries, the United States mishandled and manhandled Haiti and winked as dictators ran amok. Yet now, after the earthquake, we throw up our hands as if