Forbes.com

Last week, the debate over the Democratic health reform effort took a brief and unexpected philosophical turn. Bart Stupak, a pro-labor Catholic Democrat representing Michigan's 1st congressional district, managed to pass the Stupak amendment as part of the House health bill. Sensing that an insurrection among anti-abortion Democrats threatened to derail the legislation, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who ardently opposes restrictions on abortion, allowed Stupak to offer the amendment, and it passed by a wide margin thanks to Republican votes.

Is racism universal? Since the end of the colonial era, the rising powers of the developing world have been quick to condemn Western racism. Ethnocentrism and color prejudice can be found in virtually all human societies, going back centuries if not thousands of years.

Charlie Crist is an extraordinarily gifted politician, known for his unpretentious and warm demeanor. He might also be America's worst governor. Given that there is a great deal of competition for this dubious honor, that's saying rather a lot.

While environmentalists are keen to fight climate change by reducing carbon emissions, rank-and-file voters seem more taken by the promise of energy independence. Last year, Republicans energized the conservative base by promising to "drill here, drill now," a rallying cry that promised to exploit domestic energy reserves to reduce America's reliance on foreign oil. Energy experts insisted, however, that because oil is a global commodity, exploiting offshore oil would have a trivial impact on our exposure to geopolitical instability in

If you believe the nightmarish forecasts, the American labor market will take a decade to return to full employment. That means that kids in high school and middle school are going to walk directly into an economic buzz-saw by the time they graduate, and that's assuming, rather wishfully, that all of them will indeed graduate. Roughly half of these children are college-bound, which means that they will have the time and resources to gain some valuable and not-so-valuable skills.

Support for this view came from CNN's Peter Bergen, who reported on Thursday that there has been a fundamental shift in popular opinion in the country. ...

During a wide-ranging interview with John King of CNN, President Barack Obama distanced himself from former President Jimmy Carter's contention that the recent surge of opposition to big government is motivated by racism. Rather, the president observed that the debate over the size and scope of the federal government has been ferocious since the days of Andrew Jackson. And to his credit, he noted that harsh language has been used not just to condemn the partisans of government expansion, like FDR, who was also derided as a… more

After defeating President Clinton's health reform effort in 1993, Republicans achieved a stunning victory that ended 40 years of Democratic control of Congress. And so it's easy to see why most congressional Republicans are convinced that there is no advantage in working constructively with President Obama now.

Huntington's disease is unusually cruel. Symptoms tend to emerge in early middle age. One's cognitive functions waste away until dementia sets in, and victims are extremely vulnerable to heart disease, physical injury and suicidal depression. Indeed, according to one study, as many as 27% of sufferers attempt suicide. The condition is also highly predictable. If you have one parent with Huntington's disease, you have a 50% chance of inheriting it.