harrop

A plague of heroin addiction is upon us. Another plague. Heroin was the crisis that prompted Richard Nixon to launch the war on drugs in 1971. Time marched on. Cocaine and then crack cocaine and then methamphetamine overtook heroin as the drugs of the moment. Now heroin is back —...

Foes of Obamacare often frame such health reforms as “redistribution” schemes. They take money from hardworking Americans and give it to the presumably undeserving. My conservative friends are right that a lot of health reform is about redistribution. What they get wrong are...

By Froma Harrop MEDFORD, Ore. — “Obama says he’s going to make middle-class jobs,” the breakfast room troubadour bellowed at the Holiday Inn Express to those who wanted to listen — and to those who didn’t. “Did he make your job?” he went on, cornering a female employee....

Mitt Romney has three houses. The former Massachusetts governor would like to do a $12 million "fix-up" on one of them, a beachfront property in La Jolla, Calif. The plan is to tear down the existing 3,000-square-foot structure and build an 8,100-square-foot replacement, plus a car...

To many New Englanders, Olympia Snowe had come to resemble Marilyn of "The Munsters" TV family. The senator from Maine seemed a normal Northeast Republican surrounded by party leaders sprouting fangs and cooing at bats -- but who regarded her as the odd one. "You can't be too careful...

One item in the annals of American exceptionalism is how exceptionally badly behaved American children are. We who hang around international airports often marvel at how European toddlers wait calmly while their American cohorts run down the halls or lie sprawled on the floor in a...

Every Sunday night, the mega-carriages drop millions of us off at "Downton Abbey," the hit PBS series about an aristocratic family, its English country estate and the complexities of being Them at the dawn of the 20th century. We revel in the patricians' finery, their posture, their...

Liberals and conservatives both seem obsessed with the behavior of "the 1 percent," but there the similarity ends. Liberals seek to change the ways of the richest 1 percent, while many conservatives focus on the bottom 1 percent. The latter was on display as Republican Newt Gingrich...

Americans typically eat over 1,000 meals a year. But for many, Thanksgiving dinner seems to be the one that, like a magnet, gathers the iron shavings of every food anxiety. Why should that be? You'd think that this feast with family and friends would be accepted for what it is --...

When Scott Brown was elected U.S. senator from Massachusetts in a special election last year, Republicans rejoiced. They had wrested the Senate seat held by the late liberal icon Edward Kennedy in a Democratic stronghold. Brown remains quite popular at home. But as he faces the voters...

Have you noticed that our immigration laws are finally being enforced? That illegal immigration is way down? That employers hiring undocumented workers are finally being punished? And that this is being done in the Democratic administration of President Barack Obama?

"Can we afford the military budget?'' Not quite the right question, but one being asked these days even in hawkish circles. It reflects a break in the Republicans' traditional reluctance to cut defense spending and a declining enthusiasm for changing other societies through force....

As a rationale for invading Iraq, then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said: "The people of the Middle East share the desire for freedom. We have an opportunity -- and an obligation -- to help them turn this desire into reality." Yes they did, but no we didn't. The desire...