Confession can be good not only for the soul but also for the bottom line. The New York Times reported recently that physicians and hospitals increasingly admit to patients when they make mistakes and are being rewarded with fewer malpractice suits and less costly settlements. The Times cited the recent two-year experience at the University [...]

Something’s been bothering me this presidential primary season, and I know just what it is. “Soccer moms” and “football dads.” Not them, really, but the fact that they get to have colorful and descriptive nicknames. And I don’t. I’ve been waiting for something intriguing and multi-syllabic. Maybe a phrase that rhymes. If you look at [...]

Of course Hillary Clinton won big in West Virginia. She was the only one who campaigned there. I waited and waited for somebody in television-land to take note of that fact, to put it in context, but waited in vain. The victory was reported as a triumph, although it was also indicated that according to [...]

Finally, a mainstream columnist has hit hard at the heart of the smarmiest aspect of the Clinton campaign. On Saturday, Bob Herbert quoted Hillary in the New York Times:”There’s a pattern emerging here,” said Mrs. Clinton. Herbert remarked: “There is, indeed. There was a name for it when the Republicans were using that kind of [...]

In the hours before Indiana went slightly for Hillary Clinton and North Carolina went big for Barack Obama, John Harwood of the New York Times was also on MSNBC interviewing — guess who — another reporter for the New York Times, John Broder, who’s been traveling with the Clinton campaign. And if you missed them [...]

“In American politics today, there is almost no serious discussion of how to reconcile the goals of expanded cross-border commerce and Third World development with that of maintaining high and egalitarian living standards in the United States and the other countries with decent social compacts,” Robert Kuttner wrote in The Squandering of America. “The official [...]

“Don’t be fooled by the numbers” e-mailed a lawyer friend who practices in a hamlet in the mountains of North Carolina. He was talking about Obama’s then-13-point edge in some polls. “Of course folks are going to tell an outsider that race is not a problem but it’s different when they actually vote.” This pre-Rev. [...]