One of the great failings of the American education system (in our view) is that young people can graduate from university without any understanding of poverty at home or abroad.

Once you've created a connection of empathy, rational arguments can play a supportive role.

I try to be careful about wording. One of the things I've tried to combat in my blog is the notion that journalists are arrogant and unconcerned with the readership.

While Americans have heard of Darfur and think we should be doing more there, they aren't actually angry at the president about inaction

Rising seas create a higher baseline for future storm surges. The New York City Panel on Climate Change has projected that coastal waters may rise by two feet by 2050 and four feet by the end of the century.

American airstrikes...create risks, especially if our intelligence there is rusty. The crucial step, and the one we should apply diplomatic pressure to try to achieve, is for Maliki to step back and share power with Sunnis while accepting decentralization of government. If Maliki does all that, it may still be possible to save Iraq. Without that, airstrikes would be a further waste in a land in which we've already squandered far, far too much.

America's education system has become less a ladder of opportunity than a structure to transmit inequity from one generation to the next.