Last week, JPMorgan agreed to a $722 million settlement with the SEC stemming from a risky derivatives deal that drove Alabama's most populous county to the brink of bankruptcy. As part of the settlement, JPMorgan neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing -- despite ample evidence that it had engaged in plenty of wrongdoing. This is what passes for justice on Wall Street: regulators give a company a ding to its bottom line, and are ready to quickly forget the whole thing and allow the company to move on to the next lucrative money-printing scheme. When corporate perpetrators don't have to admit they did anything wrong, it's as if the crime never happened. Which, of course, makes it much more likely that it will happen again.
Obama, like Kennedy, needs to overcome the dubious counsel of his own advisers, this time both economic and military. The president needs to listen to other voices, including his own.
The House Health bill just throws good money after the bad. And because costs will keep rising, there is now a danger that people will conclude reform is impossible, when in reality, we still haven't really tried.
The lessons for today are clear. While military power remains important, it is a mistake for any country -- especially the United States -- to discount the role of economic power and soft power abroad.
For me, and for so many other people around the world, the anniversary is bittersweet. As the people of Germany celebrate a wall coming down, the people of Palestine are overwrought by a wall going up.
As Congress struggled to pass health care reform to improve the lives of America's families, anti-choice forces took advantage of the situation to mount yet another assault on abortion.
Later this month, Norway's second largest university will consider a proposed boycott of Israel for developing "Zionist ideology and renouncing Palestinian history and identity."
Democrats in Congress have just proudly signed a deal that allows a bunch of old men who have spent the better part of the last century avoiding their own sexual issues to dictate access to abortion services.
The House passed health care reform on Saturday night. I can't believe it's been this hard. How far has the Right (and the Left) moved to the right? Bear with me as I take you into the past.
The horrific shooting at Fort Hood, allegedly by Nidal Malik Hasan, a disgruntled yet devout Army psychiatrist, puts the spotlight back on the lone-wolf offender who sits at the crossroads of crime, terrorism and mental distress.
I was in Berlin 20 years ago this week. I saw the impossible first-hand: the people of Germany taking down the Wall. Twenty years after, we are at another historic point. Domestically, we see it in issues like health care.
Headlines recently declared "Sarah Palin's Speeches Were Ready but Never Seen -- Until Now." While Palin did not deliver her concession speech on election night, she did deliver most of it eight days later.
Whether it's lack of forethought amid the euphoria of a baby's birth or blunders by parents who simply hadn't thought it through a lot of children acquire names that you or I might wish to change.
While the Berlin Wall may have been torn down, there remain many walls that are defiantly standing and indeed new ones that have been erected.
Joe Biden is turning out to be a very useful problem-solving tool for the president on the international stage.
Sure, you can blame the advertisements, the TV shows and the greedy bankers if you want, but it still comes down to who drank the Kool-Aid, not who made the Kool-Aid.
In 1974, when I was a graduate student in anthropology at Columbia University, I wanted to organize a discussion of universals. At the time, I was working for Margaret Mead as one of her assistants.
We have millions of sick Americans who need health insurance. But there are even more of us who live in danger of being shot by an easy-to-obtain weapon.
Across the country, slow-moving caravans of 1980s-era Cadillacs with turn signals blinking were making the torturous journey to the Canadian border.
For liberals, Election Day '08 was the marriage of hope and opportunity. Election Day '09: not so much. More like a summons from a partner's divorce lawyer to give a deposition.
As a member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dogs, I believe this health care reform legislation is an opportunity our nation cannot afford to miss.
Saturday in the WSJ, Betsy McCaughey made the following points about the health reform bill. I am analyzing her points, one by one, so that you can better understand some of what is really in this bill.
Last night, my phone rings. "Are you available to talk to the Speaker?" I feel like I'm being called on in law school to explain a case on one of those rare occasions where I had actually briefed it the day before.
