AnnotatedOpinions.com

Illegal, and Pointless: A full investigation of the many laws that were evaded in the name of national security during the Bush administration is the only way to ensure these abuses don’t happen again. [New York Times]

Confirmation curveballs: I have long been a collector of sports metaphors, but I never expected such a treasure of memorabilia to come out of a Senate hearing room. [Boston Globe]

A vote for Sotomayor: After four days of hearings, Judge Sonia Sotomayor has shown she is qualified for a seat on the Supreme Court. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

A charade in Chechnya: Natalia Estemirova’s execution is another example of hit men killing government critics with impunity. President Ramzan Kadyrov’s vow to oversee the investigation is a cynical joke. [LA Times]

Slain for Daring to Report: President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia should remove Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen president, after another murder of a tireless muckracker. [New York Times]

The Dogs Are Barking: Another friend becomes a victim of the human rights atrocities in Chechnya. [Washington Post]

To Go Boldly, Again: Forty years ago, Neil Armstrong and I walked on the moon. Now it’s time to aim for Mars. [Washington Post]

The CIA’s assassination plan: New CIA chief Leon Panetta was right to pull the plug on a plan for Al Qaeda assassination teams and to notify Congress about the proposal. [Boston Globe]

History awaits the full truth: The legacy of Bush-era antiterror policies just won’t fade away. If anything, many troubling questions remain unanswered and new ones continue to crop up. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

A Strong Health Reform Bill: Republicans may balk, but a bill proposed by the Democrats could solve the nation’s health care problems without driving up the deficit. [New York Times]  

Spread the pain of paying for healthcare reform: Higher taxes on the wealthy and businesses send the wrong message to America’s middle class. [LA Times]

Retire the ‘Ginsburg rule’: Supreme Court nominee hearings are most noteworthy for what they don’t reveal [USA Today]

Beyond Sotomayor: The hearings offer no drama — only a warning about the bitterness of nomination battles. [Washington Post]

Energy bridge: Natural gas, nuclear power needed Natural gas and nuclear power are needed to lead us into our alternative fuels future.
[Houston Chronicle]

The Right to Arm Public Housing: Congress should remove a gun amendment that was perversely attached to a much-needed measure widening access to Section 8 subsidized housing. [New York Times]

Millions more going to college? This week, President Obama unveiled a multibillion-dollar proposal to boost enrollment in the nation’s community colleges. [Boston Globe]

Education’s Quiet Crisis: College has never been more essential. So why is it increasingly out of reach? [Washington Post]

Energy: the next frontier: Like the race to the moon, the challenge to replace fossil fuels is not simply a pie-in-the-sky idea. [LA Times]

$1.75 Billion Boondoggle: Providing for America’s real defense needs is  expensive enough without doubling the military budget to make seven additional and unnecessary F-22 fighter jets. [New York Times]

Entrepreneurial nation: Our enduring prosperity depends on innovation, which is truly American [USA Today]

Barack Obama: Rebuilding for the nation’s future demands we take bold steps now [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

Checking Cheney’s story: A prudent, sensible inquiry into possible Bush-era wrongdoings is preferable to politicized hearings. [LA Times]

Wall St. Whiz Kids: The real latter-day McNamara may not be Donald Rumsfeld but Robert Rubin. [Washington Post]

Waiting Game: President Obama may not want to focus on rising unemployment and foreclosures until health reform passes, but he
should still lay the groundwork. [New York Times]

The bill for health reform: Back from his trips to Europe and Africa, Obama rightly calls on Congress to cut to the chase on health reform. [Boston Globe]

The Supreme Nancy Drew: What a girl detective helped to teach Sonia Sotomayor — and me. [Washington Post]

Beyond Sotomayor’s ‘Latina’ gaffe, consider her record [USA Today]

The Nation’s ‘Top Doctor’: President Obama’s nominee for surgeon general, Dr. Regina M. Benjamin, is a solid choice and should be
confirmed by the Senate. [New York Times]

Court sense: Analyzing justices on ideological grounds is far too simplistic. [LA Times]

Moonstruck [Chicago Tribune]

Let’s once again dare to dream: 40 years ago, the Apollo program changed America — and human history. So what’s holding us back now? [USA Today]

American aid to Africa: Those who expect Obama to shower the continent with gifts will be disappointed, but the president is building
on a solid foundation of increased assistance overseas. [LA Times]

Got a comment? Keep it to yourself [Boston Globe]

Obama in Africa: President did some truth telling The president did some truth telling that he was uniquely qualified to do. [Houston  Chronicle]

Questioning Judge Sotomayor: Questioning during the confirmation hearings should not be routine or easy. The senators should bore in on Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s legal views, and she should answer substantively. [New York Times]

Targeting Sotomayor: Republicans won’t hurt Sonia Sotomayor, but they may damage their own prospects. [Washington Post]

Kept in the dark [Chicago Tribune]

Healthy choice for surgeon general: Regina Benjamin has an impressive background as a brilliant, committed family doctor who at times sacrificed her own financial well-being to care for some of the poorest working Americans. [LA Times]

Tipping Point in Iran: A weakened regime leaves an opening for the opposition. Is it ready to exploit it? [Washington Post]

Chutzpah on Steroids: We’re reaching a new level of chutzpah. The financial industry is fighting against an agency that would protect consumers, while scrambling to raise fees on the taxpayers who came
to their rescue. [New York Times]

Truth about unsavory allies: New information about a gruesome war crime in Afghanistan raises an ethical question: What to do about misdeeds by American allies? [Boston Globe]

Bring on the Bureaucracy: My time in emergency rooms lately is making ’socialized medicine’ look good. [Washington Post]

NSA’s cyber overkill: A project to safeguard governmental computers, run by the NSA, is too big a threat to Americans’ privacy. [LA Times]

Common sense on needle exchange: It is time, with the House having taken the lead, for President Obama to get out front on the issue of needle exchange and say once and for all that science takes the front seat to ideology. [Boston Globe]

‘Stand with democracy’ [Chicago Tribune]

The Real Radicals: The judicial activists are those who now hold a majority on the Supreme Court. [Washington Post]

Obama’s next stop: Main St. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

Boiling the Frog: It’s difficult to get people to do what it takes to head off a catastrophe foretold. And now, both the economic and the environmental frogs are sitting still while the water gets hotter. [New York Times]

It’s a global thing: We’re all in it together when solving world crises The United States has a duty to assume the lead role in returning the global economy to health and dealing with issues such as global warming and poverty. [Houston Chronicle]

Walking point for an open military: Repealing the ban on gays openly serving in the military is long overdue. The cause has a new point man in the House who says he is ready to complete the mission. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Improve care, lower costs: More primary-care physicians, treatment standards and electronic medical records would help. [LA Times]

The Education of Sonia Sotomayor [Washington Post]

More Immigration Non-Solutions: Homeland Security should be deep-sixing its 287(g) program, which enlists local law-enforcement agencies to hunt illegal immigrants, not tweaking or widening it.  [New York Times]

The battle on your desktop: Google wants to chip away at Microsoft’s formidable lead in the operating system market. The likely winner? Consumers. [Boston Globe]

For Gitmo detainees held for years, ‘no justice today’ [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

Wind power stalls: A number of factors have combined to make wind farms less attractive. [LA Times]

McNamara and our nuclear madness: In the middle of the 20th century, America blindly lashed our economy, academy, and culture to a nuclear engine that defeats the moral agency of our greatest leaders. [Boston Globe]

Injustice in the Name of Security: Congress needs to speed up the approval process for port workers and require the F.B.I. to verify the accuracy of criminal records before issuing background reports. [New York Times]

Cameras in the Supreme Court [USA Today]

Rebranding Africa: On his visit to Ghana, President Obama has the chance to lead nations in building on the successes of recent efforts within Africa and to learn from the failures. [New York Times]

Global warming: The heat is on the U.S.: A climate-change bill in the Senate is a test of this country’s commitment to deal with the problem. [LA Times]

A Lesson on Warming: At the Group of 8 summit, President Obama learned how divided the world remains on global warming and how hard he will have to work to pull off an agreement. [New York Times]

An end to racial profiling: Federal officials are ready to end their monitoring of New Jersey state troopers, who years ago gained a
deserved reputation for stopping motorists based on their race. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Feminism in Afghanistan: Courageous women are working to change the country’s traditions from within. [Washington Post]

Disillusioned in Burma: The military junta brushes off UN secretary-general’s attempt to help. There’s a lesson in this for the UN. [Boston Globe]

Questions for the Treasury Secretary: Congress must examine whether the Obama administration’s plan to regulate derivatives does
enough to enhance transparency and curb speculation. [New York Times]

How to Help in Xinjiang: We support Tibetans and Taiwanese in their struggle for freedom. Why not the Uighurs? [Washington Post]

No mother should die giving birth [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

Bullied to death? [Chicago Tribune]

In the struggle against racism, we haven’t overcome yet: Some conservatives say the U.S. has won the fight against racism, but the  battle still has many fronts. [LA Times]

When to Fold ‘Em: Both Robert McNamara (too late) and Sarah Palin (too soon) got it wrong. [Washington Post]

Supreme Court ducked the issue [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

Successful summitry: Incremental success in Russia With expectations tamped down, the U.S.-Russia meeting was an  incremental success. [Houston Chronicle]  

Obama’s Russian Snub: Why the president spent most of his time with Medvedev and not Putin. [Washington Post]

Fair Pay for Caregivers: Further delay in rescinding a measure that denies caregivers fair pay raises the danger that their plight will get mired in the broader debate over health care costs. [New York Times]

Mountaintop coal mining is looting W.Va. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

What makes the arts ‘essential’? Let me draw you a picture Experiencing art is a crucial to producing young people who can understand the world’s complexity. That’s something philanthropic leaders should remember. [LA Times]

Battle of the Behemoths: Google’s new operating system will finally pose real competition to Microsoft’s Windows, which has dominated the market since the dawn of the PC. [New York Times]

Benedict and Barack: When they meet, expect the pope to press Obama — but from the left. [Washington Post]

Imperialism loses its marbles: Why pirated statuary should go back to its rightful owners. [Boston Globe]

The black funeral of Michael Jackson [Chicago Tribune]

What is it about Sarah Palin? The departing Alaska governor doesn’t  just line people up on different sides of an issue; she turns them against each other. [LA Times]

Cellphone straitjackets: When consumers walk into a store to buy a flat-screen television, they aren’t locked into a particular cable or satellite provider. So why, when they get an Apple iPhone or a  BlackBerry Storm, are they signed up with a particular carrier? [USA Today]

Lessons from Wasilla: Republican operatives are taking swipes at the soon-to-be-ex-governor of Alaska, but the party’s problem — last fall and now — is the veto power it has given to religious conservatives. [Boston Globe]

Gov. Palin, welcome to the club [Atlanta Journal Constitution]

Palin’s performance: Rambling speech did her no favors [Houston Chronicle]

Sarah’s Secret Diary: The governor of Alaska has resigned, and how sad it is that the unpatriotic, godless media that is picking away at her will never understand it’s about country. [New York Times]

Palin’s Golden-Brick Road: Her job now is to collect all the money sure to come her way. [Washington Post]

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King of Pop in repose [Chicago Tribune]

Oh, That G-8: If this gathering of the Group of 8 in Italy is going to justify the time and effort, President Obama will have to lead the way. [LA Times]

Resetting Russian relations: The new presidents in Russia and the US seem eager to improve relations. [Boston Globe]

Measuring Obamacare: If universal coverage is to succeed, Obama’s army of supporters must create a movement. [Washington Post]

Here comes the new GM: The struggling automaker will likely emerge from bankruptcy this week. Can it return to profitability? [LA Times]

Now Xinjiang: Beijing’s rulers will never achieve the stability they covet until they work toward political solutions that give minority groups more autonomy over their lives. [New York Times]

The question is: What will the world do to help Iranians? [Atlanta
Journal-Constitution]

Health-care controversy awaits the sausage mill [Chicago Tribune]

New Stem Cell Rules: Government money may pay for more stem cell research than was previously possible, but some of the most promising research could still be denied public support. [New York Times]

Reflections on McNamara [Chicago Tribune]

McNamara, In Retrospect: What it was like to be one of the ‘whiz kids’ in his Pentagon. [Washington Post]

After the War Was Over: Robert McNamara realized early on that Vietnam was a lost cause, but he kept that crucial information close to his chest. How did he ever look at himself in a mirror? [New York Times]

 McNamara’s war: The former defense secretary’s handling of the Vietnam War should be a cautionary tale for all presidential advisers. [Boston Globe]

Learning from McNamara: The former Defense secretary’s Vietnam War experience should remind today’s leaders of the dangers of accepting only the evidence that fits their preconceptions. [LA Times]

McNamara’s hubris holds lessons for today’s leaders [USA Today]

Flawed Brilliance: How McNamara came to be blinded by intellectual hubris. [Washington Post]

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The pit bull limps away: No doubt more than one governor in this recession has fantasized about walking away from the difficult job. But the resignation of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was a stunning example of poor leadership. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Financing Health Care Reform: Reform should be financed by extracting savings from the bloated health care system, but also by  raising revenues from a wider pool, preferably from well-to-do  Americans. [New York Times]

Public-private institute can lead way to lower health costs [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

Dodging an Alaskan Bullet: Consider how close we all came to the disaster of a Palin presidency. [Washington Post]

A good start on restarting U.S.-Russia engagement: The summit between President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
represents a step back from years of discord. [LA Times]

Obama’s new deal for Russia: As the president meets Medvedev and Putin, the United States has a strong hand to play. [Boston Globe]

Age Discrimination: The Supreme Court rewrote the rules for litigating age-discrimination cases in favor of employers. It falls to Congress to undo the damage. [New York Times]

A quagmire for Obama: Questions are emerging as to whether Obama is slipping slowly but surely into his own quagmire, in another guerrilla war. [Boston Globe]

The Washington Post’s ’salon’ mess may be brazen, but it isn’t shocking: The pitch to lobbyists to hobnob with government officials and reporters was crass, but selling access is a Washington tradition. [LA Times]

No reason to fear detainees [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

Why Palin Persists: There are two reasons she is taken more seriously than she deserves. [Washington Post]

For a Wilder Rockies: The Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act offers a vision of where an enlightened environmental policy could lead, balancing the needs of both nature and local economies. [New  York Times]

A quiet subversive on the mound: Today, on what would have been Satchel Paige’s 103d birthday, is a good time to revisit a less troubled
era in our national pastime and a more troubled one in our race  elations. [Boston Globe]

We’ll never know what Jackson saw in the mirror [USA Today]

Where can the people remember Michael Jackson? Plans for the star’s memorial service bring home the fact that L.A. lacks a public gathering spot. [LA Times]