What would Mark Twain make of America today? When he wrote his utopian satire, The Gilded Age (1873), there were certainly a lot of targets for his barbed shafts. The country worshipped gold, its politics were venal, and 1 percent of Americans sat on 20 percent of the nation's wealth. And they weren't shy about it, either. At a dinner in New York, by one account, guests smoked cigarettes rolled in hundred-dollar bills (about $2,000 today).
We're a nation of beautiful babies. In a remarkable achievement, the loss of babies during their first year of life has plummeted by almost 70 percent since 1970. Yet the nation's infant mortality rate is used time and again as evidence of America's failed health system. Just last week, the Commonwealth Fund issued a score card that flunked U.S. health system performance with newborns. The reason? Our current infant mortality rate of 6.4 per 1,000 live births is high compared with the 3.2 to 3.6 per 1,000 estimated for the three top-scoring countries in the world-Iceland, Finland, and Japan. It's also higher than the 6 deaths per 1,000 for the European community as a whole. Before putting on the hair shirt, let's take a look behind these numbers as these comparisons have serious flaws. They also convey little about why we lose nearly 28,000 babies a year, a starting point if we want to bring universal health to our nation's cradles.
AP - After keeping her gruesome secret for days, a woman accused of killing a pregnant acquaintance and her fetus finally told police she drowned the woman's three children and stuffed them into a washer and dryer, authorities say.
AP - Democrats on Sunday seized on an intelligence assessment that said the Iraq war has increased the terrorist threat, saying it was further evidence that Americans should choose new leadership in the November elections.
AP - In a combative interview on "Fox News Sunday," former President Clinton defended his handling of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden, saying he tried to have bin Laden killed and was attacked for his efforts by the same people who now criticize him for not doing enough.
Bill Clinton says he did more to try to kill Osama bin Laden than "all the right-wingers who are attacking me now." The former president blasted his critics during an interview where he was asked why he didn't do more to put bin Laden and the terrorist group al Qaeda out of business.