Doing a dance: Obama continues flops toward the center

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER | 7/4

Barack Obama’s seasonally adjusted principles are beginning to pile up: NAFTA, campaign finance reform, warrantless wiretaps, flag pins, gun control. What’s left? Iraq. The reversal is coming, and soon.

An American question on the 4th of July

CHARLES C. HAYNES | 7/4

How wide is the gap between what we say we believe and what we actually practice—and who falls through the cracks? In this era of flag-pin patriotism, it might strike some as “un-American” to raise this painful question on the most American of holidays. But seen through the lens of our history, nothing could be more American—or more patriotic—than calling on the nation to live up to its ideals.

Bush soldiers on in his dreamscape

KATHLEEN PARKER | 7/4

In non-news from the White House: Bush hasn’t changed his mind about anything. And he still doesn’t care whether anyone likes it. Popularity has never been his muse.

Criticize. Ignore. Repeat as necessary

RICK HOROWITZ | 7/3

I’m free to criticize the people in charge, and they’re free to ignore me. Which is still a better deal than I’d find in plenty of other countries I could name. I understand that. I’m grateful for it. Still…

Who showed courage under fire?

KATHLEEN PARKER | 7/3

Let’s concede that surviving torture doesn’t necessarily endow one with presidential mettle. And, fine, being shot down doesn’t qualify one to direct the executive branch. But Wesley Clark misses the point of John McCain’s story.

Do Americans understand our principles?

DAVID BRODER | 7/3

The ideas that define this country are found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, as amplified by Supreme Court decisions and statutes in subsequent years. Those ideas have been tested in crisis and in war. What disturbs scholars in a new report is the evidence that our generation is failing to educate the next one on the essentials of the American experiment.

Movement seeks independence, one garden at a time

ELLEN GOODMAN | 7/3

Kitchen Gardeners International is one link in a loose chain of partisans who are neither conservatives nor liberals but locavores. They want to think global, eat local. Very local. As in their front and back yard.

We must accept responsibility for damage caused by flooding

LARRY LARSON | 7/2

There is flood risk beyond that relatively common, small 100-year floodplain shown on a map. Those who lost their homes in Lake Delton might have been above the 100-year flood level, but they were not safe from a larger storm. Every property is subject to a variable risk of flooding; it just depends on how high the flood must be to affect them.

Don’t pin your hopes on them

All the polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans feel we’re off on the wrong track. So let me turn to the question that’s uppermost in your minds this July 4th weekend: “Do you have a flag pin?”

It’s delusional to believe McGee is Milwaukee's biggest problem

JOEL MCNALLY | 6/30

those people who are celebrating the downfall of former Milwaukee Alderman Michael McGee Jr. have delusions of their own. They don’t recognize that McGee was needed not only as a voice for the powerless but as a prod to the powerful in a community that is creakingly slow to try to solve any problem before it becomes a full-blown crisis.