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War is being waged all across the country against the invasive plant and animal species - some 50,000 of them - now spreading across the U.S.
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On a normal day, we value heroism because it is uncommon. On Sept. 11, we valued heroism because it was everywhere.
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Whatever people thought the first time they held a portable phone the size of a shoe in their hands, it was nothing like where we are now, accustomed to having all knowledge at our fingertips.
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We want laws to be applied predictably.
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Obama promised a return to competence and confidence and asked the nation to believe again that the government could do big things well. In the end, he got his big thing, a once-in-a-generation revision to the basic social compact, a commitment of health coverage to nearly all Americans. He has yet to prove he can do it well.
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Rooting from the sidelines is the most democratic of sporting rites: no skyboxes, no tickets required, just an unabashed will to holler and wave.
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I don't think it's necessary to shout if you have a good story. But I also don't think you should shy away from being bold in the statement that you're making.
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Back in the really olden days, dinner was seldom a ceremonial event for U.S. families. Only the very wealthy had a separate dining room. For most, meals were informal, a kind of rolling refueling; often only the men sat down.
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I'm sentimental about many things: the lumpy feel of a baby's unused feet, the metallic smell of the air before the first snow, the last scene in 'It's a Wonderful Life.' But Valentine's Day leaves me cold.
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My husband and I don't have sons, so we never had to ask ourselves how we'd have felt about them playing football.
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You can't hold up a blog; you can hold up a magazine.
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'Sesame Street's' genius lies in finding gentle ways to talk about hard things - death, divorce, danger - in terms that children understand and accept.
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Be bored and see where it takes you, because the imagination's dusty wilderness is worth crossing if you want to sculpt your soul.
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Photographer James Nachtwey has spent his professional life in the places people most want to avoid: war zones and refugee camps, the city flattened by an earthquake, the village swallowed by a flood, the farm hollowed out by famine.
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Americans sometimes ask what the government does and where their tax money goes. Among other things, it pays for all kinds of invisible but essential safety nets and life belts and guardrails that are useless right up until the day they are priceless.
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It's the experts in adolescent development who wax most emphatic about the value of family meals, for it's in the teenage years that this daily investment pays some of its biggest dividends.
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Most of us were probably less than immaculately honest as teenagers; it's practically encoded into adolescence that you savor your secrets, dress in disguise, carve out some space for experiments and accidents and all the combustible lab work of becoming who you are.
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Pain is the most private experience, but its causes, whether natural or man-made, demand public accounting.
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When you are a media celebrity, every word you speak is dissected, as are those you choose not to speak.
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A president can't go to every memorial service.
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There are many things that matter much more than an editor's gender in shaping the direction of the leadership.
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The path of progress cuts through the four-way intersection of the moral, medical, religious and political - and whichever way you turn, you are likely to run over someone's deeply held beliefs.
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Presidents make their hard decisions and then abide forever with their mistakes and regrets.
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Sure, we want to know what a president believes in... but that doesn't always mean he should tell us.