Washington at its best I For those of us who came to Washington with John Kennedy, January was a time for both mourning and celebration. On the 20th, a ceremony commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of his inaugural speech was held in the Capitol rotunda. Congressional leaders spoke about how the challenge of “ask not” had […]
Tilting
Posted inMagazine
Cool Hand Barack … Don’t let sleeping lies dog … Capitalism could break your heart …
Finally, an audience! The members of the Foreign Service owe a great debt to Julian Assange. He got their cables read. One of the major frustrations of Foreign Service officers has been getting their voices heard amid the vast clutter of information arriving in Washington every day. Stanley Meisler, the veteran foreign affairs correspondent of […]
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Tilting at Windmills
Jobs versus schools: It’s complicated In January of 1979, Marion Berry was about to take office for his first term as mayor of Washington. A mutual friend mistakenly thought we might hit it off and brought us together for lunch. He asked me what I thought was Washington’s number one problem. I said, “The public […]
Posted inMagazine
Tilting at Windmills
The more the merrier 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 […]
