Facing Stiffened Opposition, Obama Goes It Alone

President Obama, faced with what he described as an “increasingly dysfunctional” Congress, has turned repeatedly in recent weeks to the time-honored, but often controversial executive order to unilaterally make policy. On Monday, Obama signed an executive order designed to require drug companies to report anticipated manufacturing shortages in advance. Last week, he said he would [...]

Should Congress Pass Obama’s Jobs Bill In Pieces?

President Obama has traveled around the country in recent weeks, promoting a jobs package that would cut payroll taxes, spend billions on infrastructure and help local governments avoid layoffs of teachers and first responders. While the president’s plan as a whole failed in the Senate in October, he has urged lawmakers to pass the bill’s [...]

John Hodgman And Robert Siegel Consider ‘All’ Things, Some Of Them Rather Dubious

If there’s anything guaranteed to lift the heart of an NPR nerd, it’s the sound of All Things Considered’s Robert Siegel losing his composure. This is a news anchor, after all, who can deliver the song title “Party ‘Til You Puke” with all the gravity of a president announcing the death of a hero. (No, [...]

Who Left A Tree, Then A Coffin In The Library?

It started suddenly. Without warning. Last spring, Julie Johnstone, a librarian at the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh, was wandering through a reading room when she saw, sitting alone on a random table, a little tree. It was made of twisted paper and was mounted on a book. Gorgeously crafted, it came with a gold-leafed [...]

Dream Sparks Events That Reunite Cambodian Family

On a recent day, Peou Phyrun steers his motorcycle down the rutted dirt road to his father’s home in southern Cambodia’s Kampot province. His father, 85-year-old Peou Nam, lives in a traditional Khmer farmhouse on stilts, where sugar palms tower over verdant rice paddies like giant dandelions on a lawn. Like so many other families [...]

Obama Tackles Rx Drug Shortages

President Obama is wielding a unilateral prerogative of his office – the executive order – to get something done about a worsening shortage of essential drugs. It’s a problem that earlier this month one administration official called “a dire public health situation.” Many thousands of patients with cancer, life-threatening infections, cardiac disease, severe gastrointestinal disorders [...]

Stomach Bug Has A Field Day At NBA

It’s the season for stomach bugs again. And if you want to know just how contagious those bugs can be, just ask the National Basketball Association. A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gives the play-by-play on an outbreak of gastrointestinal misery that afflicted as many as 13 NBA teams a [...]

Herman Cain’s Long Odds Get Lengthier After Sex Harassment Report

It should have been another good weekend for Herman Cain. It wasn’t. The heretofore surging Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain was lifted by news Saturday that he was tied with Mitt Romney at the top of the Des Moines Register’s poll of likely Iowa caucus attendees. Then he was hit by heavy turbulence when Politico [...]

Report: Cain Campaign May Have Gotten Illegal Boost From Aides’ Firm

This is shaping up to be a really blue Monday for Herman Cain and a very busy Halloween for political reporters. Not only is there the report of alleged sexual harassment during his time at the National Restaurant Association. Now there’s a report that his campaign may have received early help from a company run [...]

Let’s Rush To Judgment: ‘Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close’

I have so many reasons to be skeptical about Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, but when I saw the trailer on a giant movie screen, I burst into tears. Bless my divided heart! My biggest worry is that the movie will tell me how I’m supposed to feel. After all, if any picture has the [...]