Three days before the congressional elections last fall, Hillary Rodham Clinton stood halfway around the world, pledging to young victims of human trafficking at Cambodia's s Siem Reap Center that they would continue to enjoy the support of the U.S. State Department, which then provided some $336,000 to the shelter. The acclaimed center, situated near the magnificent temples of Angkor Wat, was an oasis of peace for some 50 survivors who, before they were rescued or escaped, ...

In a Washington hearing last week, the chairman of the House Banking Committee stared at one of the nation's top managers of money. Grumbled Texas Representative Wright Patman: "You can absolutely veto everything the President does. You have the power to veto what the Congress does, and the fact is that you have done it. You are going too far."The object of Patman's wrath was ascetic-looking Alfred Hayes, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and a ranking member of the U.S.'s powerful central banking ...

Capitalism has never been thought of as an Olympic sport before, so it is a little startling to look up and find that the flag under which the Games will be conducted all over Southern California next summer is the vest from a three-piece suit. In the most remarkable private business deal in the history of free enterprise, patriotism is seeing nationalism, and raising the bet outrageously. "It is akin to patriotism," says Dan Greenwood, a committeeman in the Olympic ...

The House Armed Services Committee received an unusual assignment: in effect, it had to fight over again one of the celebrated naval actions of the War of 1812—the capture of the U.S. frigate Chesapeake by the British frigate Shannon, off Boston Harbor. The American hero in that encounter was Captain James Lawrence. The villain, according to a later Navy court-martial, was 3rd Lieut. William S. Cox. Last week the House Committee had a resolution before it that would reverse the verdict against ...

Barely a month ago, big , bluff William Bennett looked upon his early works as Secretary of Education and declared them good. "I have more affinity with the views of the American people than do most of my academic colleagues," he announced. "I think I am in the mainstream of American thinking." If so, then it is a turbulent mainstream, and at times Bennett has seemed in need of a pilot. Since taking office Feb. 6, he has been a ...

Whatever good this week's visit by Senator John Kerry had done to soothe U.S.-Pakistan tensions was complicated by Tuesday's firefight between Pakistani troops and a NATO helicopter that had crossed into the country from Afghanistan. During his meeting with Pakistan's top civilian leaders, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman and White House confidante Kerry was critical about the anti-American environment cultivated in Pakistan in the wake of the operation to kill Osama Bin Laden. After a couple days of ...

When the Portland, Maine, School Committee voted 7-2 Wednesday night to make birth control pills available to middle school girls as young as 11, the response provided the latest evidence that adults still have trouble talking about sex with each other, much less with our kids. The debate was passionate, as you'd expect over an issue that touches so deeply our concerns about what our kids know and do — and when — and the messages we send ...

In May, David Steward, a former president of TV Guide, and his partner Pierre Friedrichs, a caterer, hosted an uncomfortably crowded cocktail party at their Manhattan apartment. It was a typical gay fund raiser--there were lemony vodka drinks with mint sprigs; there were gift bags with Calvin Klein sunglasses; Friedrichs prepared little blackened-tuna-with-mango-chutney hors d'oeuvres that were served by uniformed waiters. Billionaire philanthropist Edgar Bronfman Sr. was there; David Mixner, a gay activist and longtime friend of Bill Clinton's, was ...

BALDEMAR VELASQUEZ President, Farm Labor Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO The key problem is making felons out of everyone who is here without documents. What people miss is that includes 1.6 million children. Who thinks of this crazy stuff? These measures are just horrendous. We've taken enough bad-mouthing from these talking heads on radio and TV. If this House bill passed, I would be a criminal. And I wouldn't stop what I'm doing, so I'd be one of the first people arrested. ...

The congressional investigation of Communists turned last week from a story of espionage to a story of Communists in high places in Government. The course was changed by the testimony of a soft-voiced ex-Communist, who sat down before the House Un-American Activities Committee and calmly told a tale of high powered plotting in New Deal days.He was Whittaker Chambers, 47, for 13 years a member and "paid functionary" of the Communist Party, a strong anti-Communist since 1937. In 1939, two years after his break from Communism, ...