Column: I’ll Take Civilization Over Nature Any Day

Unless they’re asking for spare change, people are willing to engage in conversations with folks they haven’t met before for one reason: Perfect strangers are far more likely to be charmed by our adorable eccentricities than are our loved ones. Their willingness to listen without sighing or twitching …

Column: Lower Your Expectations About What Obamacare Will Achieve

New York In 2008, the state of Oregon initiated an ambitious health care policy that allowed researchers to shed light on the effects of guaranteeing Medicaid coverage for low-income adults. The results have been closely followed in large part because insurance for the poor is a major component …

Column: Moving Beyond Economic Anxiety to Action

The American public knows it’s downwardly mobile. What it doesn’t know is what it can do to arrest, much less reverse, that trend. The public’s awareness of its plight was evident in the Allstate/National Journal poll released the week before last. Half of the respondents — 49 percent …

Column: A Distinction in N.H. That Could Prove Vital

Plainfield Both my parents were stricken with polio years before I was born. My father spent some time during the course of the disease in an iron lung to help him breathe. My mother, terrified that if she entered an iron lung she might never come out, refused …

Column: Obama Could Begin Closing the Guantanamo Prison Today

President Barack Obama finally broke his long silence on Tuesday on the need to close Guantanamo. Echoing comments he made four years ago — when, on his second day in office he promised to close the facility within a year — he said, “Guantanamo is not necessary to …

Column: U.S. Policy Limited Its Ability to Promote Mideast Democracy

Williston, Vt. More than two years have passed since a Tunisian man immolated himself and launched what became known as the Arab Spring. While the changes set in motion by the various uprisings in the Arab world remain works in progress, it might still be revealing to examine …

Column: Abortion Industry’s Act of Self-Delusion

In The Emperor’s New Clothes, a preening monarch is hoodwinked into believing that he’s just bought a magnificent outfit when all he’s been sold is a bill of (dry) goods. Prancing around in what he thinks is cloth of gold, the emperor is complimented by his obsequious subjects. …

• Letter: Before Abortions Were Legal