President George W. Bush came to office promising to keep his distance from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which his predecessor, Bill Clinton, was so visibly engaged. So far, the administration has kept this promise and focused on the region as a whole. Its main concern has been securing Middl

‘From the beginning,” said Pope John Paul II at his weekly general audience on Jan. 17, “God intended man to be the steward of creation and to live in harmony with his Creator, his fellow human beings and the created world.... There is an urgent need for ‘ecological conversio

George Bush and Bill Clinton both wanted to be an education president and both wanted to make U.S. public schools the best in the world. Neither succeeded, although in his various farewells Mr. Clinton talked as though he thought he had. Two immovable obstacles blocked their way.In the first place,

One might hope that 10 years after the end of the cold war, a policy of mutual assured destruction would have been relegated to the dustbin of history. But cold war mental habits die hard. The United States and Russia still square off against each other with tons of chemical weapons and thousands of

One might think that last year’s particularly strong economy would have led to a reduction in the number of requests for emergency food and shelter. In fact, however, the year 2000 actually saw a rise in both areas. This was among the sad findings of the United States Conference of Mayors&rsqu

On election night last November, PBS-TV’s NewsHour With Jim Lehrer asked three veteran journalists to size up the media’s coverage of the presidential race. Marvin Kalb, who directs a center at Harvard University for the study of the press and politics, complained that foreign policy had