Toledo Blade: "Michigan becomes the 26th state to ban smoking in bars and restaurants, according to the American Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation, which tracks smoking legislation across the country.  Kansas will be next, when its ban goes into effect July 1, and Wisconsin will follow on July 5."

Washington Post: "The national "tea party" movement toppled its first incumbent Saturday as long-serving Sen. Robert F. Bennett was defeated at the Utah Republican Party's nominating convention, the most powerful demonstration yet of the anti-Washington tide that is altering the nation's political landscape."

Nicholas Kriftof: "And because so many people feel that way, some $14 billion will be spent in the United States for Mother’s Day this year...To put that sum in context, it’s enough to pay for a primary school education for all 60 million girls around the world who aren’t attending school. That would pretty much … Continue reading Celebrate: Save a Mother

Reggie Littlejohn: "The Chinese Communist Party denies that it forces women to abort wanted pregnancies or to be sterilized. This is propaganda. The breaking story—Population and Family Planning Bureau has detained 1,300 people in a campaign to sterilize nearly 10,000 people in the city of Puning, Guangdong Province—proves it."

Gordon Chang: "Coerced sterilization, however, is not the roughest tactic the state employs. One-child officials have, across China, resorted to forced abortions and the killing of babies just seconds old. Murder may not be state policy, but the practice is widespread, well-known and condoned. Beijing's leaders know or should know what is being done. In … Continue reading Beijing's Plan For National Decline

Joseph J. Ellis: "Yet the constitutional doctrine of original intent has always struck most historians of the founding era as rather bizarre. For they, more than most, know that the original framers of the Constitution harbored deep disagreements over the document's core provisions, that the debates in the state ratifying conventions further exposed the divisions … Continue reading The bizarre doctrine of original intent

E. J. Dionne: "Ever heard the one about the guy who hated government until a deregulated Wall Street crashed, an oil spill devastated the Gulf of Mexico, a coal mine collapsed, and some good police work stopped a terrorist attack? Rarely has the news of the day run so counter to the spin on the news of … Continue reading The Myth of 'Big Government'

Gerald L. Shargel: "The Democrats surely have the better side of the debate. In the eyes of the law, Faisal Shahzad, an American citizen who is alleged to have committed a crime in the heart of New York City, is entitled to have his case tried under the same rules as any other American citizen."

"Pro-life" free market fundamentalists sure do make it hard to save unborn lives... Washington Post:  "The proportion of poor women getting abortions has jumped sharply, according to a new report....There are likely a variety of reasons for the increase, but at least part of it is due to the recession pushing more women into poverty, … Continue reading Poverty and Abortion

Time: "After reappearing in late March in Beijing, a Chinese human rights lawyer has vanished once again, raising fears that he has returned to a secret detention at the hands of Chinese state security officers. It is the latest twist in the saga of Gao Zhisheng, a leading attorney who fell afoul of Chinese authorities … Continue reading Chinese Human Rights Lawyer Disappears — Again