The Questioning Librarian

A pair of Republican would-be presidential candidates outdid themselves this week, trying to explain how freedom was best served by allowing parents to skip out on vaccines for their children. For Rand Paul, the legitimate health concerns of many parents were far outweighed by the need for irrational, wooly-headed parents to be able to exercise their anti-science thinking. "It is an issue of freedom," he declared . Paul, under serious fire for his comments, attempted to backtrack later on, and in fairness other Republican leaders condemned him for his statements. Yet the stance of Chris Christie and the younger Paul on vaccines are a reminder that many on the Right have very strange ideas about what constitutes "freedom." The idea that parents should be free to allow their children to become carriers of preventable diseases like measles is hardly the oddest notion coming from the self-proclaimed standard-bearers of liberty. The Affordable Care Act was governm...

In the past two days, I have been stunned and awed by the news coming out of Egypt. It was so inspiring to watch the Egyptian people defying their tyrannical government this morning, defying the curfew and bravely attacking the Interior Ministry (home of the hated police forces) in spite of armed policemen guarding it. What wasn't inspiring was the diplomatic response to Egypt's moment. This morning on CNN one of the anchors was interviewing a former U.S. Ambassador to Israel. She posed the question to him, "How do we stop this?" and that surely he agreed that it had to be stopped. He nodded, adding that the U.S. is walking a fine line right now, not wanting to throw such a good ally as Hosni Mubarak under the bus but aware that he must change. The Ambassador informed the viewing public that the U.S. has supported Mubarak while urging reform since 1992. Hardly the inspirational moment that I had hoped to get from the diplomatic corps. This is the wrong angle to ...