Boston Globe

Tomorrow, President Bush is set to sign Medicare's biggest overhaul in 38 years into law. But after watching the shrill yet perfunctory debate that culminated last week in the passage of the bill, even close observers of Washington politics can be forgiven for wondering just what exactly it was all about.

On one side, congressional Republicans and President Bush described the $400-billion legislation as a moderate, sensible means of providing long-overdue drug coverage to seniors. On the other, Democratic opponents… more

Patriensa, Ghana -- Down a steep hill, on the edge of the deep green forest that encircles this village in Central Ghana, a man with a strange growth on his upper arm lies on a wooden bench in great pain. Mary Agykpomaa, a local healer, has just cut a hole in his shoulder and another one in his chest. Now she's squirting a strange potion into one hole and watching it ooze out of the other. She boils leaves, burns… more

The Red Sox have not won a World Series championship since 1918, the last year of World War I. Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein said "there's no real reason" for this hapless record, and many fans simply attribute it to bad luck or persistently poor management. Others believe Babe Ruth cursed the team when the Red Sox sold him to the Yankees in 1919, causing a consistently talented team to frequently fall just short.

But sports psychologists believe that… more

One spring afternoon, shortly after the fall of Baghdad, Abu al-Ela Mady was plotting Egypt's future from his modest political science institute on Qasr al-Aini, one of Cairo's dustiest and busiest streets. Before I entered his dimly-lit office, as I had done so many times when I lived in Egypt during the 1990s, I was imagining him as he was in those days: his big smile rising above the pile of papers perched a foot high on his oak desk;… more

While Democrats and Republicans continue to bicker about tax cuts, they are ignoring the debate we should be having. That is, how can this nation fundamentally reform the tax code to achieve three critical goals: simplification, economic growth, and equitable tax burdens? What we need is a complete overhaul of our tax system -- from one that encourages a debt-consumption economy to one focused on saving and investment. This can best be done by instituting a "progressive consumption tax."

The… more

Aside from the mayoral races in New York and Los Angeles, the gubernatorial contests in Virginia and New Jersey, and a scattered few special congressional elections, not much is going on politically … more