The Human Factor
Eastwood does Mandela
Post Tagged with: "Reconciliation"
Reconciliation Is Not An “Abuse of Power”
I hope everyone understands that when the Wall Street Journal calls Obama’s “up or down” vote on health care reform an “abuse of power,” they’re lying through their teeth. To be clear: the bill on the floor has already passed a supermajority in the senate and a majority in the house and more — it’s gone through Max Baucus’ bipartisan “Gang [...]
The Bipartisan Health Care Summit
Today President Obama announced “that he would convene a half-day bipartisan health care session at the White House to be televised live this month, a high-profile gambit that will allow Americans to watch as Democrats and Republicans try to break their political impasse.” The announcement, which came during a Super Bowl pre-game show, is noteworthy for a number of reasons. [...]
Revisiting Francis Collins
Last summer, Sam Harris, one of the Four Horsemen of New Atheism, released a broadside in the New York Times against Obama’s appointee to head the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins. Collins, in addition to heading the Human Genome Project, has been a vocal advocate for the reconciliation of science and faith — indeed, for the view that scientific [...]
Has Health Reform Failed?
The question is not intended substantively. The bill that is being debated by the Senate is an ugly mess from the perspective of any reasonable observer, left, right, or center. However, as inefficient and messy as it is, it will still do a much better job than the status quo of providing healthcare to the people in the country who [...]
Closer, but No Cigar
Anticipating a new era of engagement with Cuba When President Obama signed the 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Bill into law on March 11, he took a small step towards what many hope will be a new era in U.S.-Cuban relations. Embedded in the bill were three clauses that loosened sanctions on family travel and remittances, a largely humanitarian adjustment that nonetheless [...]
Showdown in Sri Lanka
The Sri Lankan government is about to liquidate the last remaining holdout of the Tamil Tigers. Their stalemate of a year ago has been broken, and the Tigers are down to apparently a mere four square miles on the coast of Sri Lanka. With fifty thousand civilian hostages being used as human shields, it’s hardly surprising that the Sri Lankan [...]
The Kurds: Nation Without a State
When identity binds and borders divide Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the relative peace of Iraqi Kurdistan has been a notable, if often overlooked, exception to the violent insurgency, sectarian feuding, and pervasive lawlessness that has racked Iraq. Yet this achievement has also made the area of one of America’s most significant long-term security concerns in the [...]
