By STAR PARKER, Scripps Howard News Service

At a time when our country is sick, it shouldn't surprise that one our sickest places is our nation's capital.

The poverty rate of Washington, DC, almost 20 percent, is one of the highest in the nation. Its child poverty rate is the nation's highest..

DC's public school system, with a graduation rate of less than 50 percent, is one of the worst in the country.

Contrary to a popular fallacy that science and religion are at odds with each other, it's quite the opposite.

Science and religion are the best of friends. And like good friends, they complement each other and produce beautiful music together.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and the New York Yankees can look back on a good week. Maybe Steele deserves extra credit.

No one was writing obituaries a year ago for the Yankees as was the case for the Republican Party.

President Barack Obama has signed into law the Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Actually, he signed into law the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act tacked onto which was the hate crimes legislation.

Nobel prize winning economist F.A.Hayek called socialism "the fatal conceit."

Why conceit? Because socialism's basic premise, according to Hayek, is that "man is able to shape the world around him according to his wishes."

Why fatal? Because, like all falsehoods and misconceptions, it leads to failure, and sometimes disaster.

DeMaurice Smith, NFL Players Association chief, urged the league to nix Rush Limbaugh's participation in a consortium to buy the St Louis Rams.

Buying Al Sharpton's hype that Limbaugh is a racist, Smith whined that football is at its best "when it overcomes division and rejects discrimination and hatred."

But who are the discriminators and haters here?

The Democrats have lost the health care debate.

For months now, polls have been showing that Americans don't want the massive new government controls, regulations, taxes, and spending that Democrats are pushing.

Americans of all political persuasions agree that the nation has problems. Big problems.

And here's where we all part company. The political left, who now control our government, thinks we need more government -- a lot more. Those on the right see our problems as the result of excess government and want to move things in the opposite direction.

An essay that appeared in Science magazine back in the 1960's explains clearly and concisely the self-destructive path we're on in our country today.

The essay, "The Tragedy of the Commons", showed how individuals, rationally pursuing their self-interest, could unintentionally destroy their own common existence.

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin missed a great opportunity to personally kick off an issue of enormous importance to her state and to the nation.