By MARTIN SCHRAM, Scripps Howard News Service
Curing VA starts with overhaul of system
PATIENT (waving his right arm in a big circle): Doctor, it hurts when I do this. So what do you recommend?DOCTOR: Don't do that.-- Old vaudeville joke.
The Mystery Caller and the VA help line
The Mystery Caller dialed the Department of Veterans Affairs help line 1,089 times in 2002. And it created quite a problem.
VA or Veteran's advocacy?
When it comes to war and peace, we indeed are two Americas. One fights our nation's wars. The other pays those who go to war so the rest of us, our children and our grandchildren, won't have to.
Live from Washington, it's the Bush White House
Satire, at its best, is an artful blend of subtlety and wit. But often it plunges into heavy-handed ways. Then it becomes insufferably witless.Live from New York, we've seen satire suffer under the "Saturday Night Live Syndrome" of ham-fisted un-funniness. Now this: Live From Washington -- it's the Bush White House.
Cell-phone popcorn a hoax; radiation changes aren't
It was the pop heard 'round the world.Four pops, actually. Faster than a speeding kernel -- YouTube viewers around the planet became eyewitnesses to something that looked like fun-time science.
It will take governmental guts to cure America's gas pains
When Washington is in crisis mode, its officials move into high-speed action mode. Which is to say, they start talking faster.And America's gas pains -- economic and political -- are a major crisis that is hurting worst those who can afford it least. So Washington officials are a blur of action, racing in front of the cameras to promote their pet solutions.
Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney: Two of a kind
Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney. Politically polar opposites. So different in so many ways.Yet today they are also two of a kind.
Hillary sees tunnel at the end of the light
When Hillary Clinton peers ahead on the campaign trail these days, she cannot help but see the tunnel at the end of the light.
Obama, Hitler appeasement and a docile press corps
When presidents begin their lame-duck lap, top advisers are often the first to flee. And lo, it came to pass last week that President Bush found himself in the Holy Land without his Karl Rove.Which may be why the president wound up doing his own political dirty work.
Debating debates
Being a gritty wartime pilot, the senator from Arizona, a strong-willed Republican with snow-white hair, relished his upcoming presidential battle against the handsome, young Democratic senator with the matinee idol good looks.
