It is 41 years since the Supreme Court handed down the Roe v. Wade decision, effectively legalizing abortion everywhere in the United States. Ever since, it has been a source of controversy -- and confusion.
There is a difference between being married and not being married. That difference has come into sharp focus in the romantic life of French President Francois Hollande, a sort of Socialist Sun King around whom women revolve. All of his female companions are reputedly strong, but none seems strong enough to tell him to scram.
The Hill, the newspaper that covers Congress, says this year, there will be a major policy battle over "climate change." Why?
What do young Americans want? Something different from what they've been getting from the president they voted for by such large margins.
Evidence comes in from various polls. Voters under 30, the millennial generation, produced numbers for Barack Obama 13 percentage points above the national average in 2008 and 9 points above in 2012.
But in recent polls, Obama approval among those under 30 has been higher than the national average by only 1 percentage point (Quinnipiac), 2 points (ABC/Washington Post) and 3 points (YouGov/Economist).
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After decades of suffering environmental torture at the hands of polluting industries, West Virginians might regard a chemical spill that poisoned the drinking water of 300,000 residents -- and is still scaring folks after the dangers have presumably passed -- as a last straw. But there never seems to be a last straw for them.
The Census Bureau's holiday treat is its release of annual state population estimates, to be digested slowly in the new year.
The headline from this year's release is that population growth from July 2012 to July 2013 was 0.72 percent, lower than in the two preceding years and the lowest since the Great Depression 1930s.
This reflects continuing low, below-replacement-rate birth rates and lower immigration than in 1982-2007. Net immigration from Mexico evidently continues to be zero.
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When Karl Rove praises a politician's "straightforward" approach to an erupting scandal, it seems wise to expect that something very twisted will instead emerge in due course -- and to consider his real objectives.
In the beginning, Massachusetts opened the gates to same-sex marriage and universal health coverage. California started to liberalize drug laws by legalizing medical marijuana. The sky didn't fall on any of these efforts, initially regarded as dangerous social experiments by many conservatives.
Now red states such as Kentucky are launching state-run health insurance exchanges. Federal judges in conservative Utah and Oklahoma are calling bans on gay marriage unconstitutional. And purple Colorado has legalized recreational marijuana use.
The big online retailer Overstock.com now accepts payment in Bitcoin. That's good news for lovers of liberty because Bitcoins give us an alternative to government-controlled money. Bitcoins are a currency created by anonymous, private tech nerds, not by government.
Like just about everybody else in Washington and many across the country, I've been reading the excerpts from former Defense Secretary Robert Gates' book Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of War.
It presents a significantly more negative picture of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton than Gates' statements in office led anyone to expect.
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The prospects for single-payer health care -- adored by many liberals, despised by private health insurers and looking better all the time to others -- did not die in the Affordable Care Act. It was thrown a lifeline through a little-known provision tucked in the famously long legislation. Single-payer groups in several states are now lining up to make use of Section 1332.
Vermont is way ahead of the pack, but Hawaii, Oregon, New York, Washington, California, Colorado and Maryland have strong single-payer movements.
Listening to Republican politicians these days as they talk (and talk and talk) about poverty and inequality can be a poignant experience. They want us to know they're worried about the diminishing economic prospects confronted by so many Americans. They hope we will admire their shiny new solutions. And they are so eager for us to believe they care.
But however concerned these Republican worthies may be, they still insist on promoting the same exhausted and useless ideas favored by their party for decades. The sad result is that almost nobody believes that they care at all -- and their "anti-poverty initiatives" tend to be dismissed, with a snicker, as public relations rather than public policy.
To find out more about Joe Conason, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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As Barack Obama scrambles to eviscerate key sections of his own signature health care law, he and other Democrats are trying to shift voters' focus to another issue -- income inequality.
Unfortunately, the solutions they advocate are pitifully inadequate or painfully perverse.
Some enterprising writer must do a book titled "The Downton Diet." It would explain how to get and stay slim without moving a muscle, as the aristocratic women in the wildly popular British drama series demonstrate.
Furthermore, they appear to eat three squares a day, plus tea with nibbles. Judging from the bowls of eggs and cream Mrs. Patmore is perpetually beating in the kitchen, the gentry at Downton are not exactly being served Lean Cuisines.
President Barack Obama says income inequality is "dangerous ... the defining challenge of our time." The pope is upset that capitalism causes inequality. Progressives, facing the failures of Obamacare, are eager to change the subject to America's "wealth gap."
It's true that today, the richest 1 percent of Americans own a third of America's wealth. One percent owns 35 percent!
But I say, so what? Progressives in the media claim that the rich get richer at the expense of the poor.
But that's a lie.
John Stossel is host of "Stossel" on the Fox Business Network. He's the author of "No They Can't: Why Government Fails, but Individuals Succeed." To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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It is widely accepted that Hispanics will become a larger share of the American electorate in the years to come.
A New York voice boomed from the back of the long car rental line: "Wha'd they do, lay off half the people?"
One of my thoughts no doubt shared by fellow detainees waiting, waiting at the big-name car rental office at a Florida airport. Behind the desk flashed a screen informing us of the company's very high ratings for customer service. I was not the only one smirking.
If anyone wonders whether Pope Francis has irritated wealthy conservatives with his courage and idealism, the latest outburst from Kenneth Langone left little doubt. Sounding both aggressive and whiny, the billionaire investor warned that he and his overprivileged friends might withhold their millions from church and charity unless the pontiff stops preaching against the excesses and cruelty of unleashed capitalism.
In 1793, the envoy Lord Macartney appeared before the Qianlong emperor in Beijing and asked for British trading rights in China. "Our ways have no resemblance to yours, and even were your envoy competent to acquire some rudiments of them, he could not transport them to your barbarous land," the long-reigning (1736-96) emperor replied in a letter to King George III.
"We possess all things," he went on. "I set no value on strange objects and have no use for your country's manufactures."
The emperor had a point. China at that time, according to economic historian Angus Maddison, had about one-third of world population and accounted for about one-third of world economic production.
Today's China, of course, has a different attitude toward trade. Since Deng Xiaoping's market reforms started in 1978, it has had enormous growth based on manufacturing exports.
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Could an aging population be good for economic growth? I mean, isn't it an accepted fact that our economy will suffer as more Americans pass age 65 and start sitting around all day, soaking up government benefits?
