 American high school students trail teenagers from 14 European and Asian countries in reading, math and science. We're even trailing France. |
| That's what Major League Baseball's steroid scandal was all about, the hidden harm in competitive sports that sends the wrong message to the young. |
| There is a bright spot or two for the Spaniards. French toast has become freedom toast on the Air Force One breakfast menu, but the Spanish omelet is still a Spanish omelet. |
| The death of Pope John Paul II led many of different faiths and of no faith to acknowledge their debt to the Roman Catholic Church for holding on to absolutes that the rest of us can measure ourselves against. |
| Fast sex, like fast food, is cheap, but it doesn't nourish the body - or the soul. |
| The Academy Awards ceremony is designed to be without irony, but Chris Rock supplied it anyway with filmed movie-theater interviews with black men and women who had never heard of the movies nominated for Best Picture. |
| Women can break down barriers to opportunity, and men, many of them reluctantly, have learned to relate to women as their equals in thought and action. But except for an eccentric few, women do not want to become warriors. |
| Lebanon is restless, Syria got its walking papers, Egypt is scheduling elections with more than one candidate, and even Saudi Arabia, whose rulers are perhaps more terrified of women than rulers anywhere else in the world, allowed limited municipal elections. |
| Sometimes the ignorant are among the most educated. |
| There are enough Poles in Chicago to make up one of the largest cities in Poland. |
| If any of the beautiful people plan to vote for the president, they usually keep their secret to themselves. |
| It's long been a cliche in Washington that if you hang a lamb chop in your window, guests will come. |
| German businessmen are overwhelmed by the high cost of doing business. Inflexible rules, enforced by a burgeoning bureaucracy, discourage entrepreneurship. |
| HBO has 28 million subscribers, small stuff compared to TBS, which can be seen in 88 million homes. |
| Everybody's looking for the niche to make the difference. Some people think they see the mother lode in the beautiful people, especially the vote of the beautiful women. |
