Opinion

I just read the Bob Herbert piece about a 16 year old girl in Nacogdoches, Texas, whose battle against cancer max-ed out her parents' health insurance policy. This story will make you want to cry.

It's not just the millions of Americans without health insurance who go without medical care.

It's not just the millions of Americans who lose their jobs and discover that COBRA health coverage is 10 times the price of their old coverage.

Today, reporters are feverishly investigating which presidential candidates tip their waitresses and which do not. Oh. My. God. It's Tipgate. Is that the best that the press corps can do? Osama bin Ladin is still loose---six years after 9/11, American armed forces were ordered into an unnecessary pre-emptive war, the credit markets are groaning under the weight of U.S. debt, 43 million Americans don't have health insurance, an American city drowned when the levees broke, and all we want to know is whether the candidates are poor tippers. How can a poor man stand such times and live?

On January 26, 2003, the three women known as the “Dixie Chicks” were riding a wave of popularity. They were one of the hottest acts in America, and their status was confirmed that afternoon in San Diego, when they sang the National Anthem at the Super Bowl.