Participants at an otherwise informative discussion on "Iran at a Crossroads" at the Senate on Wednesday seemed at pains to barricade the doors against the proverbial elephant being admitted into the room - in this case, Israel.

This, despite the fact that the agenda virtually dictated that the elephant be allowed in - the cavernous hearing room also could have accommodated it - however awkward and untidy the atmosphere might have become.

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Are we finally in a recovery? Who's "we," kemosabe? Big global companies, Wall Street, and high-income Americans who hold their savings in financial instruments are clearly doing better. As to the rest of us – small businesses along Main Streets, and middle and lower-income Americans – forget it.

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Nearly a year after Democrats introduced legislation to reform the health care industry - first by flirting with the prospect of having a government-run program to compete with private insurers and then floating a proposal to expand Medicare to a younger demographic - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday that Congress is ready to vote on a final bill as early as next week that doesn't include either of those plans.

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Who decides our national and nuclear policy?

(a) REQUIREMENT FOR COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW.

"In order to clarify United States nuclear deterrence policy and strategy for the near term, the Secretary of Defense shall conduct a comprehensive review of the nuclear policy of the United States for the next 5 to 10 years." So says Section 1070 of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2008. This clarification of our policy is to be prepared primarily by the Defense Department, in spite of its vested interest in the outcome.

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One reason people despair so easily these days is that we often have little sense of how change has occurred in times past, and of what it took for ordinary people to persist until they prevailed. The Rosa Parks story offers an example that we all think we know, but where the story as usually told omits the key context and blurs the key lessons.

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 Suicide blasts rocked Pakistan’s cultural capital of Lahore for the second time this week, killing at least 45 people Friday and rebuffing notions that recent arrests and killings of Taliban leaders have weakened the militants' capacity to strike deep inside the country.

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Is the Internet everywhere or is it nowhere?

This question will strike many readers as a navel-gazing exercise in post-modern existential inquiry, prompting reflections on the 21st-century meaning of location (is an IP address really an address?) and space (is cyberspace actually "space"?). But thanks to Amazon.com, it's become a question about more concrete and imminent issues like budget deficits and tax fairness.

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Trying to make a living as a farmer in Gaza these days is taking a toll on the family ties so integral to the Palestinian culture. Traditionally, occupations are passed from father to son for generations, and their tie to the land is particularly strong. Before Israel imposed a suffocating blockade on the 14-kilometer-long Gaza Strip in 2007 (as punishment for electing Hamas as its governing party), farmers could make a good living growing carnations and strawberries for export and vegetables for the local market.

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Living in these United States, there comes a point at which you throw your hands up in exasperation and despair and ask a fundamental question or two: how much excess profit does corporate America really need? How much bigger do executive salaries and bonuses have to be? How many houses or jets or artworks can be crammed into a life?

After all, as billionaire movie director Steven Spielberg is reported to have said, when all is said and done, "How much better can lunch get?"

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Graduating from college is a great feeling. Not so great: being saddled with $23,200 in student loans, the average debt owed by graduates of the class of 2008, according to the Project on Student Debt.

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