Laurence Leamer

Two weeks ago I stood in a long line waiting to get into a hearing in Charleston, West Virginia contesting a $35 million settlement in a case in which Rawl Sales, a Massey subsidiary, allegedly poisoned the water of 700 residents for scores of years. I've been down there talking...

In August 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his run for governor of California from that high altar of American politics, The Tonight Show. Shortly beforehand, the former number one star in the world met with David Pecker, the CEO of American Media, whose company owned the National Enquirer and Star, the...

I am married to a Serbian-American woman, and I had little choice but to wake up at 3:30 A.M. Sunday morning to watch Novak Djokovic take on his longtime friend Andy Murray in the finals of the Australian Open. It was a very one-sided match with the number three player...

Yesterday the West Virginia House of Delegates plugged what Associated Press news editor Brian Farkas called a "weasel hole." In doing so the elected officials by a unanimous vote asserted their rights as the people's representatives over a West Virginia Supreme Court corrupted by money and power. They...

When I joined the Peace Corps in 1964, Sargent Shriver was my hero. I was stationed two days from a road in the mountains of the Himalayan kingdom and I never met the director of the Peace Corps. But he inspired me. He was "Sarge" to all of us, and...

Cathleen McFarlane Ross liked to read the papers in bed. When she woke up Monday, she opened the pages of the Palm Beach Post to find that she was featured in the paper along with her picture looking regal and formidable. Cathleen did not so much lie about her age...

This summer I am traveling around Nepal with a group of eight leaders from a village named Namje in eastern Nepal who are exploring what has happened to their country in the name of development. They are being led by Rajeev Goyal, an Indian-American who was a Peace Corps volunteer...

When I flew into Kathmandu in a Royal Airlines DC-3 in September of 1964, the old plane wheezed its way across the mountains and into the verdant high valley. I was a member of the fourth group of Peace Corps Volunteers to the mystical mountain kingdom. Nepal had been kept...

Often debates in the House of Representatives are little more than ideological diatribes before a largely empty assembly. Thursday, the House was galvanized by a powerful debate set up when Rep. Cliff Stearns of northern Florida put forth an amendment to strip the Peace Corps of the $450 million in...

Senator Patrick Leahy has done much to advance American democracy. When it comes to issues of civil liberties or governmental abuse, he has been there standing stalwart and often alone. That is something that all 195,000 returned Peace Corps volunteers and all Americans concerned with their country's role in the...

Early this evening Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut gave what will probably prove the most important speech in the history of the Peace Corps since that late October night in 1960 when Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy introduced the idea of a volunteers serving in the developing world. Dodd's Senate...

At its highest level, politics is not the art of the possible. It is the alchemy that turns the impossible into the possible. If you've ever seen or experienced that transcendent level of politics, it changes you forever.

I saw and felt that late yesterday sitting in my living room...

I was the next-to-the-last speaker Saturday at a rally in Washington to build a bold new Peace Corps. Rajeev Goyal, the Morepeacecorps.org national organizer, and I had decided to do this rally only nine days before. It would have been a formidable new task even if we have done nothing...

Your moment has come. On Saturday afternoon June 13th at 2 PM, you will be standing with the crowd at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. You will be there at 14th St and Pennsylvania Avenue, NW because you believe in an America that reaches out to the rest of the...

Dear Congresswoman Lowey:

On June 18th you will have an opportunity to change the course of history.

You are an astute, principled politician who for years has voted for what is right and true, not what is always popular. Time and again you have seen your judgment vindicated by...

The bold new Peace Corps was born today in room 2172 in the Rayburn House Office Building. It took place as members of the House of Representatives were marking up the Foreign Affairs Authorization Bill authored by Committee Chairman Rep. Howard Berman. For almost every item, the California Democrat kept...

On a cold inauguration afternoon, hundreds of former volunteers marched down Pennsylvania Avenue carrying flags from the 139 countries in which the Peace Corps has served. It was a powerful moment as they saw confirmed that they were part of a 195,000 strong army of former volunteers who embodied President...

Last weekend I attended a fundraiser at New York University Law School raising money for Krisiko Asha (Hope for Agriculture). In terms of the philanthropic world, the evening was microscopic in purpose, serving to advance sixteen tiny villages in the remote hills of Nepal, a small, poor Asian country. The...

For close to half a century the Peace Corps has suffered from a surfeit of easy admiration. President after president has praised the agency, vowed to expand its size or influence, and then left it largely alone, moving on to what were considered more crucial matters. Barack Obama is just...

In some of the great houses in Palm Beach and the penthouses of Manhattan's East Side, wealthy Americans are sleeping fitfully, their nights haunted by fear of exposure. In the Bush years, the IRS became so lax in its enforcement that cheating became routine and hidden Swiss bank accounts almost...