Daily Debate

Like the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in America, the Mumbai terrorist assault last week began with a hijacking. Islamic militants seized a private fishing boat at sea rather than commercial jetliners, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials. But the attackers displayed the same deadly ability to coordinate a complex operation against multiple targets as did their predecessors on 9/11.

During the Great Depression and World War II, truly challenging times, there were songs that boosted the spirits of our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.

If Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano wins confirmation as secretary of homeland security, she will be responsible for enforcing the nation's immigration laws. This is a chilling thought for those of us who have witnessed up close how Napolitano can be vexed to the point of paralysis by that highly charged issue.

This is not easy to write, because I consider the election of Barack Obama to be one of the most inspiring political and social developments of my lifetime. I truly mean no disrespect when I say: Stop asking for money.

As he prepares to move back to Texas, our 43rd president is the beneficiary of Bush fatigue. The nation has long since repudiated him.

One can feel sympathy for Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari's plight. He and his new civilian government did not train or assist the Pakistani terrorist organizations that probably carried out last week's attacks in Mumbai.

Political leaders in the United States and Europe are careening down a path that could make faraway Ushguli the eastern border of NATO. Foreign ministers from the transatlantic alliance's 26 member states will meet this week in Brussels to decide whether Georgia and Ukraine should take an important step toward membership.

Among Barack Obama's many campaign promises, the one whose fulfillment is anticipated most around the world is the closing of the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

If you want to know how President-elect Barack Obama's transition team views the world, here's a highly unscientific but very interesting way to figure it out — looking at the order in which Obama called foreign leaders after the Nov. 4 elections.

In the midst of a global financial crisis, the world has come to China's doorstep seeking leadership. Yet China's leaders have largely kept the door shut, arguing that Beijing can do the most good for the world by putting its own house in order. China wants to be a responsible partner, not a global leader.

AIDS remains the world's No. 1 health threat and in the United States is a grave risk to black people in particular.

Both narcissist-Leninist President Hugo Chavez and the opposition claimed victory in Venezuela's key state and municipal elections last week, but a dispassionate look at the voting trends shows that Chavez is gradually losing public support — and faces even harder times ahead.

I know how desperately a parent will cast about for ways to "fix" an unruly child, how you pray for her, seek therapy for her, use tough love on her, try reasoning with her. I know how helpless a parent feels when none of it works, when a child absolutely refuses to be fixed and you come to realize you have to make a choice between saving her and saving yourself and everyone else in the house, because she is a disruption, a source of stress, a wrecker of peace.

Early in what became the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes was asked if anything similar had ever happened. "Yes," he replied, "it was called the Dark Ages and it lasted 400 years." It did take 25 years, until November 1954, for the Dow to return to the peak it reached in September 1929. So caution is sensible concerning calls for a new New Deal.

This month, the stock market dropped precipitously after the announcement that the emphasis of the Troubled Assets Relief Program would be shifted to direct equity infusions into banks and away from buying their "toxic" mortgages.

Sound the alarms, man the barracks, alert the producers! Barack Obama, agent of change, isn't a-changin'.

With all eyes focused on the global financial crisis, it's not surprising that many of us have forgotten all about another calamity that preoccupied world capitals just a few months ago.

President-elect Barack Obama will be bombarded with recommendations about how to approach Arab-Israeli peacemaking. One piece of advice he should not take is to make Israeli-Palestinian peace his top priority.

In 1892, a Massachusetts court ruled that a policeman's speech rights had not been violated by a law forbidding certain political activities by officers. State Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: "The petitioner may have a constitutional right to talk politics, but he has no constitutional right to be a policeman."