Charles Peters

Proposals for health reform now being considered by Congress include a “public” option that would give consumers a choice between private health insurance and insurance provided by government. The usual argument against the public plan is that the governments ability to control costsI am now quoting the Wall Street Journals Gerald Seib”doubtless would make its […]

Obamas stimulus promises to create or save three to four million jobs in the next two years. In the fall of 1933, a New Deal program created four million jobs in two months. Timothy Noah and I described the miracle of the Civil Works Administration in a recent article in Slate (“Wrong Harry,” January 26). […]

In our last issue, as a part of the effort to educate the new president on the culture of the executive branch of government, I emphasized the need for a president to reach down the chain of command and outside it to learn what is really going on beneath him. Toward that end, I have […]

I worry about our strategy in Afghanistan, with its reliance on air strikes and increased conventional ground forces, as distinguished from the kind of small-unit Special Forces we need to fight against guerillas. The air strikes have hit far too many of the wrong targets, killing innocent people and inflaming Afghan opinion against us. Some […]

Why didnt Barack Obama mention the military option in his otherwise eloquent call to service at Wesleyan? Why didnt he show respect for the people of West Virginia and Kentucky by doing more than token campaigning there? These are troubling questions for an Obama supporter like me. I hate to contemplate the reaction of those […]

When I last attended church regularly, my pastor, like Reverend Jeremiah Wright, was a good man in many ways but had a few truly bizarre ideas. For one thing, he was obsessed with the cause of the Chinese Nationalists who had retreated to Taiwan after being defeated by the Communists. He even seemed willing to […]

It is a sad fact of Washington life that members of Congress, however ungifted they may seem in other respects, are geniuses in finding ways to evade ethics rules. Consider the new ethics law passed this year. It provides that lobbyists cannot pay for parties for a member of Congress during a national convention. These […]

irst graf of the article. SELECT EVERYTHING IN THE PARAGRAPH EXCEPT THE DROP CAP, AND PASTE IN THE FIRST GRAF. HIGHLIGHT THE DROP CAP AND, IN THE “PROPERTIES” PANEL, CHANGE BOTH THE REFERENCE (http://washingtonmonthly.com/images/drop-F.gif) AND THE “ALT” TO THE PROPER LETTER, SUBSTITUTING IT FOR “F” IN THIS CASE. First graf of the article. First graf […]

I know you won’t believe it, but this is true: Major General George Weightman, who was in command of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center at the time the Washington Post uncovered the scandalous treatment of some of its wounded, has been assigned to command Fort Detrick, Maryland, where the Army does biological weapons research. […]