NATIONAL COLUMNS
Susan Estrich: So much for the new Russia
It didn't take very long for the smiling sports fan cheering in the Olympic stands to revert to his true nature. I'm referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the former KGB leader whose idea of diplomacy is sending in the troops.
Froma Harrop: Who belongs downtown?
Many American cities now enjoy an amazing reversal of fortune. Once hollowed-out shells mainly for those too poor to move -- or those so rich they didn't have to deal with the poor -- cities are again filling up with educated and aspiring young people.
Thomas Sowell: Freedom is not free
There may be something to the claim that all people want to be free. But it is a demonstrable fact that freedom has been under attack, usually successfully, for thousands of years.
Froma Harrop: Take me to the Mardi Gras
This year, two big dress-up events fall in the same week. But the Academy Awards and Mardi Gras couldn't be more different. At the Hollywood party, the common people are supposed to venerate the stars. In Mardi Gras, the commoners are the stars.
Leonard Pitts: Welcome to the new normal
President Clinton? Maybe, if Democratic voters have their way. While the Republican faithful are split between a number of contenders and not particularly enthusiastic about any of them, a new poll finds Democrats overwhelmingly united behind a Hillary Clinton candidacy for 2016. A commanding 82 percent of the party, according to the CBS News/New York Times poll, wants to see her run.
Kathleen Parker: Obama's best hope for change
President Obama's new outreach initiative to help at-risk boys of color -- "My Brother's Keeper" -- is cause for cheer. It isn't that we haven't known for some time that minority boys are in trouble. Poor school performance, truancy, delinquency and, ultimately, high incarceration rates cannot be separated from the absence of fathers in many homes. Out-of-wedlock births are at 72 percent in the African American community and 53 percent among Latinos, compared with 29 percent among non-Hispanic whites.
Charles Krauthammer: Putin's Ukraine gambit
Henry Kissinger once pointed out that since Peter the Great, Russia had been expanding at the rate of one Belgium per year. All undone, of course, by the collapse of the Soviet Union, which Russian President Vladimir Putin called "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century."
Kathleen Parker: Bobby Jindal comes out swinging
This town can get pretty wound up when a politician misbehaves. Given some of the reactions to Bobby Jindal's off-script remarks Monday, you'd think he'd been caught with a mirror on his shoe in the ladies' restroom.
Thomas Sowell: The 'fairness' fraud
It seems as if, everywhere you turn these days, there are studies claiming to show that America has lost its upward mobility for people born in the lower socioeconomic levels. But there is a sharp difference between upward "mobility," defined as an opportunity to rise, and mobility defined as actually having risen.
Rheta Johnson: Electile dysfunction in the Big Easy
NEW ORLEANS -- A security guard and a lawyer walked into a bar. Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. It's bad, all right, but no joke. Everyone in this town, including two drinking buddies, was talking about the federal public corruption trial of former mayor Ray Nagin.
Kathleen Parker: Sex after drinking and the war on men
We've heard much about the Republican war on women. Exhaustingly. Lately, we've also heard about the war on men. The war on men-on-women-on-men . . . or something, as MSNBC's Alex Wagner described it recently, gained fresh traction with a controversial column by the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto about campus rape.
Susan Estrich: The home country
Kiev did not seem familiar when I visited a few years ago for the first and only time. Old and a little tired, but friendly. Reasonable. It wasn't scary and off-putting; it was bright and shiny. Red Square meets Beverly Hills, more mirrors than Las Vegas -- like the little bright pocket I found myself in when I visited Moscow a few days later.
Susan Estrich: I'm not watching the Olympics
This is not exactly a newsflash in my house, where, before he left for college, my son had to teach me how to turn on the TV. The thing is, I really don't want to watch the Olympics, even though I spent many of my happier childhood hours watching figure skating on the black-and-white.
Leonard Pitts: White fear trumps black life
Froma Harrop: Hillary Clinton is too old for what?
The esteemed political writer Charlie Cook recently produced a column titled "Is Hillary Clinton Too Old to Run?" Despite couching his thoughts with a mention that if Clinton were to run, she would be the same age as Ronald Reagan when he was first elected president, 69, he did venture over the sexism line.
Kathleen Parker: The GOP's flash of brilliance
Republicans have excelled at concealing their brilliance in recent years, and Democrats have exulted in their good fortune.
Thomas Sowell: Cruz control?
Freshman Senator Ted Cruz says many things that need to be said and says them well. Moreover, some of these things are what many, if not most, Americans believe wholeheartedly.
Froma Harrop: Losing our third places
A story that captivated New York City: A group of elderly Korean-Americans had been gathering at a McDonald's in Queens for conversation and fellowship. They'd sit there all day long, sometimes sharing a $1.39 package of fries. The hangout was so popular that friends from other neighborhoods would travel to join them.
Rheta Johnson: Gestalt gardener with guts
WAVELAND -- I got to walk right past the shiny, new, Christmas-ornament-red hook and ladder truck at the fire department here to see one of my heroes, radio personality Felder Rushing. One recent Saturday morning he was speaking upstairs at the firehouse. I couldn't help but think about how many of the boys of my generation wanted to be firemen when they grew up. Never knew a single one who wanted to become "a gestalt gardener," which is how Felder describes himself.
Leonard Pitts: A few more thoughts on 'thug'
"I hate that thug music." This, according to Rhonda Rouer's testimony last week, is what her fiancee, Michael Dunn, said when they pulled into a Jacksonville, Fla., gas station next to an SUV full of black kids who had the stereo up high, pumping some obnoxious, bass-heavy rap.
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