Consider this immigration case from Canada: Three years ago, a Mexican sister and brother moved illegally to Toronto. Brenda Garcia, 30, filed for refugee status, claiming fear of persecution back home for being lesbian. Her brother, 18-year-old Daniel Garcia, enrolled in a Toronto high school. Both said they might be killed upon returning to Mexico City.
A daffy Wall Street Journal editorial about the "vanishing millionaires" of Oregon lit a spark in a fairly humorless week. It offers the usual boilerplate about the rich fleeing to tax-friendlier provinces because their state raised taxes, but this time with a great visual: "One-quarter of the rich tax filers seem to have gone missing."
Profound thanks are due televangelist Pat Robertson for stating so clearly what many of us have been screaming in the wilderness for years -- that the criminalization of marijuana is a plague on young people. May he lend courage to politicians who know better but won't do the right thing for fear of seeming "soft" on drugs.
If you don't already know about the Kardashian sisters, you probably don't want to know. Kourtney, Kim and Khloe have grown very rich dressing like tramps and otherwise exhibiting themselves, including sessions on the toilet (viewable on their E! channel program, "Keeping up With the Kardashians").
The analysis of the new census numbers were predictable, and I take issue with nearly every one. Let's start with the suggestion that population rising at the lowest rate since the Great Depression is to be lamented. Anything likened to the Great Depression can't be a positive development, right? Wrong.
It's been tough watching fellow shoppers fill their carts with Chinese imports as the People's Republic stomps on American interests and values. At WalMart, Bed Bath & Beyond and other big chains, it's hard to find goods NOT-made-in-China. Lamps, popcorn makers, kitty scratch boards. Cuisinart toasters and Emeril cookware. Made in China.
So you thought health care was fixed. Well, maybe not "fixed," but you assumed that the new law had put us on the path to solving one of America's most pressing problems -- spiraling health care costs amid surging numbers of uninsured citizens.
Bernard Madoff went to jail for his stupendous financial con. His eldest son, Mark, has gone to oblivion, having hung himself from a dog leash on the second anniversary of his father's outing as perpetrator of a $20 billion con.
The political lineup for and against the controversial tax deal evokes great bemusement. Once again, Republicans representing the poorer conservative states are pounding the table for the lower taxes that benefit the richer, liberal ones.
Don't ask, don't tell -- don't know why we're still talking about this. "Don't ask, don't tell" is the rule barring openly gay soldiers from serving in the U.S. military. This relic of the culture wars is so past its prime that even Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh don't spend much time whipping it up.
We always talk about "The American Dream" -- about living it, saving it, wondering what happened to it. Few bother to define it.
The recently leaked diplomatic cables reveal both Arab and Israeli horror at a nuclear Iran. Last year, Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, evidently told the American ambassador that the world had 18 months or less to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, warning "any military solution would result in unacceptable collateral damage." Bahrain's King Hamad sent a cable saying, "That program must be stopped," and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed said, "Ahmadinejad is Hitler."
Most Americans dislike class-warfare talk aimed at rich people. It does not follow that they don't want the wealthiest among us to pay more taxes. Polls show they do. That puts Democrats in the mainstream on such matters. But Democrats still need a sophisticated way to discuss this, one that does not rely on simple-minded formulations pitting a "greedy rich" against an "oppressed poor."
NEW YORK CITY -- Friday night in the big city, I'm bopping along Fifth Avenue with my brother, and the place is one huge construction site. But this evening's industriousness differs from the usual after-hours midtown work. Guys aren't pouring new cement, climbing out of sewer manholes or replacing air-conditioning systems. They're not unloading truckloads of girders or elevator parts.
Has the recent Republican sweep of the House doomed President Obama's clean-energy agenda? Possibly. Has it doomed America's? Hardly.
Many liberals went bananas over the new plan to reduce deficits. The ideas put forth by the chairmen of President Obama's bipartisan deficit commission ignore their priorities, they lament.
How interesting that one arm of the Agriculture Department is promoting sales of cheese as another urges the public to eat less of it for health reasons. Your tax dollars at work fighting other tax dollars.
Barack Hussein Obama, the mixed-race president born in Hawaii, partly educated in Indonesia -- defender of a controversial Islamic center near ground zero in Manhattan -- is tentatively scheduled to visit Jakarta's Masjid Istiqlal, the largest mosque in Southeast Asia. Mercifully, the American elections are over.
The Democrats did good. Not in the election -- they did pretty miserably there. But they did good for the country. They led America back from the brink of economic disaster.
It's a fair generality that the young are more technologically up-to-date than the old.
