Today's Opinions

By LEE HAMILTON
Center on Congress
With the formal release of President Obama’s budget, the pieces are finally in place for a reprise of the Washington drama we’ve all come to know.

There will be high-stakes negotiations, lines in the sand, and enough intrigue to keep Beltway insiders riveted by every piece of breaking news.

The rest of us, though, are already worn out. In repeated conversations with ordinary people, I’ve been struck by the immense frustration I’ve encountered.

By KEN PAULSON
President, First Amendment Center

Imagine Upton Sinclair with an iPhone.

Sinclair went undercover in 1904 to document squalid conditions in Chicago’s meatpacking plants, leading to his muckraking novel The Jungle.

His reporting led to new public health laws two years later.

In today’s social media world, Upton’s expose would have gone viral.

Sure, we would have lost a classic book, but just consider the retweets.
That possibility unsettles some in the agriculture industry.

It’s spring, and the buzz around my neighborhood right now involves carpenter bees and what to do about them.

For years, I’d adopted a live-and-let-live attitude, leaving the bee battling to my fierce red heeler, Merlin. In his younger days, he used to put on quite the air show, leaping, twisting, snapping and snarling at the bees, who you could almost hear snicker as they gyrated in the air just out of reach.

In recent years, I’ve noticed the carpenter bee holes in the framework of my big shed beginning to expand.