Augusta Chronicle, The

Your Guide to the Oscars

This is my first Oscar predictions column, for which I am uniquely qualified by not having seen a single one of the movies nominated in any category. I've never even watched an Oscar ceremony, except once when a friend called me 35 minutes into Halle Berry's acceptance speech and I managed to catch only the last 20 minutes of it. I shall grant my awards based on the same criteria Hollywood studio executives now use to green-light movies: political correctness. Also, judging by most of the nom...

Fix Education by Fixing No Child Left Behind

The education president's education project is failing. President Bush's No Child Left Behind law has generated increasing bipartisan resistance among legislators and at the grass- roots levels.

Governors Vs. Immigration ; It's Time for the Federal Government to Act, Not Just Talk

The nation's governors meeting in Washington this week has brought its usual laundry list of domestic concerns to the federal government, but one of the biggest items on the governors' plate is the demand for Uncle Sam to do more to stem the rising tide of illegal immigration. Complaints aren't just coming from border states, but from almost every state in the union - and from Democrats and Republicans alike. "This is a national issue," says Democrat Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona, notin...

Now Dems Are Concerned About Ports

I know it's an election year, and everything's fair game. But Democrats suddenly claiming to be concerned for the security of our nation's ports is almost too much to bear. Are these the same Democrats that blamed America for 9-11, and have condemned every measure taken in the war on terror? Are these the same Democrats that lauded President Clinton's eight years of inaction after each terrorist attack throughout the 1990s, while al- Qaida developed a worldwide war footing?

It's Clinton V. Clinton in Dubai Ports Deal

While Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was ripping President Bush's handling of American ports management, Bill Clinton was pushing for one of his favorite White House aides to be hired to defend the deal. The former president proposed to the United Arab Emirates his onetime press secretary, Joe Lockhart, as Washington spokesman for the UAE-owned company, Dubai Ports World. The Lockhart deal was never consummated. But the spectacle of the two Clintons going in opposite directions on the UAE po...

Fixing Those Broken Windows ; There's Nothing Theoretical About the Litter That's Choking Augusta

"Consider a sidewalk. Some litter acumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars." - The Broken Windows Theory