What We Know And Don’t Know About Obamacare

The White House spent billions last year on efforts like this to promote Obamacare enrollment. How will they do this year? [Credit: Washington Post]

The White House spent bil­lions last year on efforts like this to pro­mote Oba­macare enroll­ment. How will they do this year? [Cred­it: Wash­ing­ton Post]

If you are a law­ful res­i­dent of the Unit­ed States and you lack health insur­ance today, it’s almost cer­tain­ly your fault.  You can’t blame your employ­er, the gov­ern­ment or the insur­ance com­pa­nies.  It’s on you.

That is the last­ing achieve­ment of Oba­macare, whose sec­ond open enroll­ment peri­od began yes­ter­day. Gone are the days when peo­ple with pre-exist­ing med­ical con­di­tions could not find afford­able cov­er­age.   Whether the ends of this achieve­ment, which are unde­ni­ably good, jus­ti­fy the means its sup­port­ers employed to win its enact­ment remains a mat­ter of con­tro­ver­sy. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Struggling to Make Sense of Syria and Egypt

A man prepares the bodies of those killed in last Wednesday's attack east of Damascus, Syria. [Credit: NY Daily News]

A man pre­pares the bod­ies of those killed in last Wednes­day’s attack east of Dam­as­cus, Syr­ia. [Cred­it: NY Dai­ly News]

Sarin vic­tims often first feel its tox­ic effects in their eyes.  They water and ache. Vision is blurred. Pupils con­tract to a pin­point. The nox­ious gas also affects the lungs, with chest tight­ness, cough and rapid breath­ing among the com­mon symp­toms. Then there are the car­dio­vas­cu­lar effects. The heart may race or sud­den­ly slow down. Blood pres­sure can spike or pre­cip­i­tous­ly drop. Nau­sea, vom­it­ing and abdom­i­nal pain are among its gas­troin­testi­nal con­se­quences. Its effects on the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem include con­fu­sion, drowsi­ness and headache. Con­tin­ue read­ing →