The provision in President Obama?s health care law requiring Americans to purchase health insurance or face tax penalties was ruled unconstitutional on 12 August 2011 by the US Court of Appeals of the 11th Circuit in Atlanta. For the first time since it was passed, this provision of the health care legislation is in real jeopardy.
The downgrading of the US credit rating from AAA to AA+ is significant, yet troubling. That different political groups within the US are trying to make ?political hay? out of this is obvious. But this nation cannot permit politics to determine our response.
As I am writing this, congressional leaders and the president have presumably reached a last-minute agreement on raising the debt ceiling of the United States in exchange, among other things, for a reduction in future spending of the US. In this Perspective, I hope to provide some important background and analysis to the crisis.
As is so often the case, history gives us increased understanding about events of our day. For that reason, I think it helpful to explore how the generation of Arab dictators came to power into the Middle East. To have that background brings an understanding to the current ?Arab Spring? unfolding before our eyes in 2011.
One of my favorite columnists is Joe Klein of Time magazine. Although decidedly liberal in the political sense, Klein is honest and straightforward. I respect that about him. For that reason, his most recent column on Head Start was intriguing.
America has been experiencing a crisis for some time now in the area of its immigration policies and practices. In this Perspective, I want to add a biblical perspective to the discussion.
On 8 July 2011, the US space shuttle program came to an end. The shuttle Atlantis was the last operational shuttle to be launched into space; its mission was to resupply the International Space Station (ISS). The space shuttle program lasted for 30 years and involved 135 launches and two tragic disasters.
One of America?s premier corporations, Boeing, has built a second production plant in South Carolina (its other one is in Washington State) for its 787 Dreamliner airplane, creating over 1,000 jobs so far. But the National Labor Relations Board, created in 1935 by the Wagner Act, has taken exception to Boeing?s decision.
Dr. Jack Kevorkian died last week at the age of 83. He had assisted in about 130 suicides in the 1990s and thereby symbolized the right-to-die movement that gained strength during that decade. [Doctor-assisted suicide has gained legitimacy in Oregon, Washington and Montana, but in no other states of the union.] He was a Michigan pathologist who would hook up patients to his homemade suicide machine.
In an extraordinary speech last Thursday, President Obama endorsed using the 1967 boundaries as the baseline for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. He is the first American president to do so! [He also prodded Arab governments to carry out the democratic reforms their citizens have demanded in the so-called ?Arab Spring.?] In the 1967 war, Israel?s victory over Egypt and other Arab neighbors expanded its control over territories in the West Bank and Gaza, over the Golan Heights and over East Jerusalem.
