RAND Corporation
The classic western High Noon culminates with a scene in which the hero, a retired sheriff played by Gary Cooper, finally confronts the dangerous gang that’s descended upon the unsuspecting town of Hadleyville. The townspeople remain in the background throughout the climactic fight, passive and frightened. Whether Hadleyville will be saved is solely in the hands of the outsider: his wisdom, his courage, his determination. READ MORE >>
More Questions About that McKinsey Study
More Skin in the Game--for Seniors?
Paul Ryan's budget proposal would, among other things, push many seniors out of traditional Medicare and into high-deductible private insurance plans. But what do high-deductible policies mean for beneficiaries? My latest Kaiser Health News column addresses that question: READ MORE >>
Hey, Small Business: You Need Better Lobbyists
More news about that horrible, no-good health care reform plan, via the Los Angeles Times: READ MORE >>
Pencils Down
The American Awakening
In The Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan By Seth G. Jones (W.W. Norton, 414 pp., $27.95) I. READ MORE >>
Suicide Watch
As the Iraq war grinds into its sixth year, policy-makers in the U.S. would do well to remember the story of Phineas Gage. For those in need of a refresher, the 25-year-old construction foreman lost a hunk of his frontal lobe back in 1848 when a three-foot iron rod shot through his left cheekbone and out the top of his head. READ MORE >>
Low Clearance
In January 2006, a court in Northern Virginia will hear a case in which, for the first time, the federal government has charged two private citizens with leaking state secrets. CBS News first reported the highly classified investigation that led to this prosecution on the eve of the Republican National Convention. On August 27, 2004, Lesley Stahl told her viewers that, in a "full-fledged espionage investigation," the FBI would soon "roll up" a "suspected mole" who had funneled Pentagon policy deliberations concerning Iran to Israel. READ MORE >>
