Columns

Pope Benedict XVIs trip to Cuba later this month had the potential to greatly advance the cause of human freedom --which is, after all, the continuation of Jesus Christs work on this earth.

Pope Benedict XVI is visiting Cuba this weekend, the first papal visit since Pope John Paul II visited in 1998. Many fear that while the popes visit will generate fervor among the Catholic faithful, it may actually be harmful to the prospects for greater freedom on the island.

WASHINGTON -- What's in a name? Most of us, perhaps regrettably, do not get to select our own names and are saddled with our parents' projections of what we might be. It is entertaining to consider what name we might select for ourselves and what that name might suggest about us. Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum recently got this chance when they selected their Secret Service code names.

Rising inequality "is the defining issue of our time," said President Obama in his Osawatomie speech that echoed the "New Nationalism" address Theodore Roosevelt delivered in that same Kansas town a century ago.

With much ado over intemperate and ill-thought remarks by a prominent radio personality recently, it is even more critical than ever to raise a loud call for increased civility in public discourse.

The 2012 congressional redistricting cycle following the 2010 Census is just about over and done with. And it seems likely to make much less difference than many of us expected.

WASHINGTON -- Sallie James was born in Australia on July 4, 1976, which suggests that Providence planned what happened 30 years later: She moved to Washington.

Since 2007, Florida's 67 counties have trimmed more than $3 billion from local budgets. Like state government, Florida's local communities have been committed to keeping taxes low and doing more with less.

The original "Hollywood blacklist" dates back to 1947, when 10 members of the Communist Party, present or former, invoked the Fifth Amendment before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

It was unbelievable: As soon as Newt Gingrich failed to win both Alabama and Mississippi in the GOP race for president, most members of the mainstream media and political strategists with whom I talked readily admitted, off the record, that he was the most qualified among the Republican candidates to serve as president.

As gasoline prices soar, Barack Obama is running on empty.

PHOENIX -- Sal DiCiccio says hes sorry. It is, he says, no excuse that the complex labor contracts that he, as a member of the city council, voted to ratify for city employees were presented to the council less than a week before the vote.

If you fly across the country, its easy to see signs of Americas ingenuity and productivity skyscrapers in New York City, steel mills in Pennsylvania, factories in Chicago, farmland in the Great Plains, and the glittering technology of Silicon Valley.

There have been many frauds of historic proportions -- for example, the financial pyramid scheme for which Charles Ponzi was sent to prison in the 1920s, and for which Franklin D. Roosevelt was praised in the 1930s, when he called it Social Security. In our own times, Bernie Madoff's hoax has made headlines.

In the cold, gray numbers of election returns and exit poll percentages, a reader with some imagination can find clues to people's deep feelings, their hopes and fears, their self-images and moral values.