DECLARE A MOMMY TRUCEKATHLEEN PARKERWASHINGTON POST
No one is more sympathetic to working mothers than I. ...My sympathy stems from having decided long ago to work from home upon realizing that my child needed me more than my employer did. But I am fortunate. Mine is the sort of work that can be accomplished from home — and, most important, I have a husband. ...It is thus understandable why Yahoo workers are dismayed, and why others who hoped for such civilized options for others are disappointed. Adding to the insult is that Mayer has built a nursery for her own child — out of her own pocket — next to her office. Such tidy solutions obviously are available to few, and the fear is that all women now will be held to the impossible standard set by Mayer.
THE BULLYING PULPITBILL KELLERNEW YORK TIMES
Social media rewards partisanship. It is the nature of the medium that like-minded people talk to one another and reinforce one another. It is easy to dismiss any aliens who challenge your prejudices. Unquestioned prejudices shrivel into slogans and labels. Immediacy encourages snap judgments, and once you have voiced your judgment to the wide world it is more difficult to retreat from it. ...In a crowd – and the Internet is the ultimate crowd – there is a temptation to SHOUT to be heard. This is especially true when comments are unfiltered, and the crowd noise consists in large part of nips and jibes and sneers. Anonymity – and much of social media still permits anonymity – is license to be vicious.
A RECORD DOWEDITORIALWALL STREET JOURNAL
One thing for sure, the stock market doesn't mind the federal budget sequester. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed to a new nominal record on Tuesday... finishing for the day above its previous closing high in the faraway land of October 2007. If investors are signaling future economic prospects, then they aren't worried about the $43 billion in spending cuts in a $3.8 trillion fiscal 2013 budget that runs through September 30. President Obama and the Keynesians he relies on for economic guidance have been raising alarms that any decline in federal spending will hurt growth. ...These are the same economists who predicted...that the $830 billion stimulus in 2009 would have cut the jobless rate to 5.5% by now. It's still 7.9%. The miracle is that anyone still listens to this crowd six years after their ideas took charge of U.S. economic policy.
#SEQUESTERTHISEDITORIALWALL STREET JOURNAL
In its bid to make the sequester as painful as possible, the White House announced Tuesday that it is canceling all visitor tours of the White House "during the popular Spring touring season." This fits President Obama's political strategy to punish the eighth graders visiting from Illinois instead of, say, the employees of the Agriculture Department who will attend a California conference sipping "exceptional local wines" and sampling "tasty dishes" prepared by "special guest chefs."...Conference organizers promise the tasting will be a "mouthwatering event" featuring "fine wines and exceptional micro-brews paired with seasonally driven culinary delicacies." How can we sign up?
REPENT, DICK CHENEYMAUREEN DOWDNEW YORK TIMES
The documentary doesn’t get to the dark heart of the matter about the man with the new heart. Did [Dick Cheney] change, after the shock to his body of so many heart procedures and the shock to his mind of 9/11? Or was he the same person, patiently playing the courtier, once code-named “Backseat” by the Secret Service, until he found the perfect oblivious frontman who would allow him to unleash his harebrained, dictatorial impulses? ...He was always goosing up W.’s insecurities so he could take advantage of them. To make his crazy and appallingly costly detour from Osama to Saddam, and cherry-pick his fake case for invading Iraq, he played on W.’s fear of being lampooned as a wimp, as his father had been.