Shortly after the Supreme Court’s historic health care decision, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney appeared before the cameras to offer their spin. Neither took questions. For weeks, both men methodically calibrated their response to what was the most eagerly anticipated pre-election high court decision ever. The ruling settles the law, not the politics. The outcome poses challenges for both presidential contenders. Obama’s claim that it means the country “can’t refight” the law is a pipedream. Romne

Viewpoints July 4, 2012

Some 1.78 million students in the United States will graduate from colleges this summer and try to squeeze into the weak labor market. Meanwhile, millions of graduates to-be hope to gain some real-work experience to add to their resumes.Jia Fei, a Chinese international student in the U.S., is one of this year’s summer interns. He recorded his road trip on his micro blog. After driving for four days, the communications major at Washington State University arrived in Los Angeles, where he rented a

Viewpoints July 4, 2012

In a world of turmoil and gloom, Aung San Suu Kyi is a beacon of optimism. Lately, though, the Burmese pro-democracy icon is sounding like a killjoy. Suu Kyi cautions markets and executives against “reckless optimism” about Myanmar’s prospects, a position at odds with her impoverished nation’s efforts to court them. Fellow Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz speaks for the economic intelligentsia when he calls her “excessively pessimistic.” Yet there’s an element to her concerns that isn’t getting en

Viewpoints July 3, 2012

Congress rewrote patent law last year to reduce the number of unwarranted patents and curb abusive lawsuits by “patent trolls,” but the federal courts have done significantly more than lawmakers to strike a better balance among innovators, consumers and patent owners. A good example is a ruling issued last week that rejected attempts by Apple and Motorola to stop the sale of each other’s smartphones. It was a welcome rebuke to companies that have been tying up the courts with patent infringement

Viewpoints July 3, 2012

My dad always worked. He worked his day. He worked at his small publishing business when he got home. He worked on weekends and birthdays. He worked through the Lord’s Season, reveling blasphemous through holidays. When I think of him, work is the first image in my mind. I see him unloading boxes of books, mashing saddle-stitched staplers. I see him in the kitchen frying fish for his brood of children, mixing cornbread from scratch. I see him whacking kids, quashing our brief rebellions.We were

Viewpoints July 3, 2012

Lee Sang-deuk, the elder brother of President Lee Myung-bak, is to be summoned by prosecutors today for questioning in connection with the ongoing savings bank scandal.Investigators have reportedly secured evidence suggesting that the former six-term lawmaker of the ruling Saenuri Party took hundreds of millions of won in bribes from Lim Seok, the disgraced chairman of Solomon Savings Bank, between 2008 and 2010. Solomon was suspended from operations in May due to capital shortages. The presiden

Editorial July 2, 2012

As baby boomers have begun to retire en masse, the government is pushing to introduce a new system to help them stay in work longer. Under the proposed scheme, workers aged 50 and older will be given the right to request a shorter workweek, which will involve a corresponding reduction in pay, in order to put off their retirement. Officials of the Ministry of Health and Welfare say the scheme will not only help baby boomers ― people born between 1955 and 1963 ― stay longer at their current jobs b

Editorial July 2, 2012

Now that Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident, is settling into a new life in the United States after decades of persecution by China’s venal, autocratic government, he is receiving a hero’s welcome he never anticipated and now does not appear to appreciate.Chen had dedicated much of his life to campaigning against involuntary abortions, sterilizations, tubal ligations and other means to forcibly prevent women from having a second child.Well, in the U.S., right-to-life advocates in Ameri

Viewpoints July 2, 2012

With a historic and just decision from the U.S. Supreme Court, the nation Thursday moved a giant step closer to a health care system that will work for all Americans.By ruling the individual insurance mandate constitutional under the taxing authority of Congress, the court preserved the delicately balanced structure of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.In order to make medical insurance accessible to the sick, Congress needed to ensure that plenty of healthy people were paying into

Viewpoints July 2, 2012

Russia claims it is willing to link divided Korea with energy pipelines and electricity grids. But its economic relations with North Korea indicate a return to the Cold War politics of the past. In 1948 Stalin sponsored the creation of the DPRK in the northern half of the Korean peninsula. The following year, Prime Minister Kim Il-sung travelled to Moscow to collect a 2 percent interest loan of 212 million Soviet Rubles. Some of this money was allocated to build the centrally-planned economy, bu

Viewpoints July 2, 2012