Death Panels

By Paul Jablow The news about the new prostate cancer drug came just as I got the "all clear" on my latest screening for the disease. I get a PSA (prostate-specific antigen) test regularly despite some controversy about its effectiveness. The test sometimes yields false positives or detects cancers so slow-growing that something else will almost surely kill the patient first. Still, as a healthy man on Medicare, I don't feel guilty about having Uncle Sam pay for it. But the news of the drug gave me pause.

Ezekiel J. Emanuel values intelligence, but don't accuse him of Harvard-itis. He'll tell you an Ivy League degree doesn't prove anyone's worth. "That's exactly what used to drive me crazy at Harvard," he snaps, a place where many students believed, "I got into Harvard. I've arrived!" "You have been given the privilege of the best education in the world!" he'd say. "Your obligation is to take that and do something good for the world! You've only got a limited time on this earth.

IF MICHAEL Vick really wants to show he's a changed man, I say take on a difficult challenge: Mentor Vince Fumo, teach Brett Myers some new alibis (or how to duck), maybe propose a national health-care program - for dogs. Just run the draft through pit-bull Sarah Palin's office. We don't want any "death panels" included. Richard Iaconelli, Philadelphia

Citizens have found their voice Without reading it, politicians pushed through President Obama's stimulus plan, which was mostly a collection of long-lost earmarks and a stimulus for campaign contributions, on Obama's insistence that it be passed - immediately. Now the politicians are asked to push through a health-care plan, expected to cost a great deal more, and giving significantly more power to bureaucrats to again mess up our country, again without reading it. This time the people felt that it directly affected their families and pocketbooks, and also gave the government too much power.

Let's stop misusing the term conservative. A conservative believes in conserving - not spoiling. This is a reasonable and honorable stance. Liberals want to change, perhaps too quickly at times; conservatives are more likely to prefer the status quo. Compromise is the basis of our political system. A system in which the views of conservatives and those of liberals complement each other is a system that works. So, it is not conservative to demonize everyone who disagrees with you. It is not conservative to be against everything certain people suggest just because they are for it. It is not conservative to refuse to give people a chance to voice differing views or to drown out those with whom you disagree.

The way the debate over health care has played out in this country makes me wonder if the United States is coming to resemble the Middle East. In the Middle East, and in Pakistan, the public views the world through a haze of conspiracy theories. No scenario is too outlandish to believe, and many fill the airwaves and the local press. Facts are largely absent, or buried under mountains of fiction. You may recall one of the most egregious of such theories: that Israel carried out the 9/11 attacks, as "proved" by the fact that Jews didn't show up for work at the twin towers that day (a ludicrous lie)

IF THERE'S ANY chance of even some health-care reform this year, President Obama tonight needs to reassert himself as someone to be trusted. He needs to reconvince America that he's an honest agent of change. He needs to draw on his oratory strengths and ability to inspire. And he needs to do so against angst over a still-sluggish economy and in the face of what for many is pure rage at government. His address to Congress comes at a critical moment of his incumbency. It's not unlike the moment he confronted in his campaign in March '08 when he spoke at the National Constitution Center on race and his ties to the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

FRONTLINE: FACING DEATH. 9 tonight, Channel 12. TWO DAYS BEFORE Thanksgiving may not seem ideal for an unflinching documentary about end-of-life dilemmas, but maybe I shouldn't fault the timing of PBS' "Frontline," which tonight explores the issues involved in "Facing Death. " If you're spending the holiday with people close enough that you or they might someday be involved in a dicey medical discussion about one another, the film might even be the start of an important conversation.

'If the great American people will only keep their temper, on both sides of the line, the troubles will come to an end, and the question that now distracts the country will be settled. " No, that's not President Obama talking about today's national divide on health-care reform. It's President-elect Abraham Lincoln talking about the pre-Civil War animosity over slavery. Unfortunately, Lincoln's appeal to reason didn't prevail over the generated fervor that led to rebellion.

Ezekiel J. Emanuel values intelligence, but don't accuse him of Harvard-itis. He'll tell you an Ivy League degree doesn't prove anyone's worth. "That's exactly what used to drive me crazy at Harvard," he snaps, a place where many students believed, "I got into Harvard. I've arrived!" "You have been given the privilege of the best education in the world!" he'd say. "Your obligation is to take that and do something good for the world! You've only got a limited time on this earth.

By Paul Jablow The news about the new prostate cancer drug came just as I got the "all clear" on my latest screening for the disease. I get a PSA (prostate-specific antigen) test regularly despite some controversy about its effectiveness. The test sometimes yields false positives or detects cancers so slow-growing that something else will almost surely kill the patient first. Still, as a healthy man on Medicare, I don't feel guilty about having Uncle Sam pay for it. But the news of the drug gave me pause.

FRONTLINE: FACING DEATH. 9 tonight, Channel 12. TWO DAYS BEFORE Thanksgiving may not seem ideal for an unflinching documentary about end-of-life dilemmas, but maybe I shouldn't fault the timing of PBS' "Frontline," which tonight explores the issues involved in "Facing Death. " If you're spending the holiday with people close enough that you or they might someday be involved in a dicey medical discussion about one another, the film might even be the start of an important conversation.

Let's stop misusing the term conservative. A conservative believes in conserving - not spoiling. This is a reasonable and honorable stance. Liberals want to change, perhaps too quickly at times; conservatives are more likely to prefer the status quo. Compromise is the basis of our political system. A system in which the views of conservatives and those of liberals complement each other is a system that works. So, it is not conservative to demonize everyone who disagrees with you. It is not conservative to be against everything certain people suggest just because they are for it. It is not conservative to refuse to give people a chance to voice differing views or to drown out those with whom you disagree.

European culture bankrupt, doomed One has to admire Trudy Rubin's near-religious faith in liberalism ("Health-care lessons from Europe, Asia," Sunday). Somehow, despite the clear evidence that the societies she most admires (Germany, France, and Japan) are financially bankrupt and doomed to extinction, she clings to the social welfare state creeds that brought them to this end. Not only are they fiscal wrecks, as clearly illustrated in the Currents article by Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.

EVEN Phillipe Petit - the acrobat who stunned the world 35 years ago by walking a tightrope between the towers of the World Trade Center - might have been intimidated by the balancing act that President Obama tried out last night. Consider the tricky and narrow middle path that Obama staked out last night in urging Congress to pass a sweeping health-care reform package, in what has become the epic struggle defining the first year of his presidency: The president posed an unexpected challenge to Republicans who so far have engaged in lockstep resistance to Democratic reform ideas - but not so much by criticizing GOP ideas as embracing a few of them and then daring those same Republican lawmakers to get on board.

The way the debate over health care has played out in this country makes me wonder if the United States is coming to resemble the Middle East. In the Middle East, and in Pakistan, the public views the world through a haze of conspiracy theories. No scenario is too outlandish to believe, and many fill the airwaves and the local press. Facts are largely absent, or buried under mountains of fiction. You may recall one of the most egregious of such theories: that Israel carried out the 9/11 attacks, as "proved" by the fact that Jews didn't show up for work at the twin towers that day (a ludicrous lie)

IF THERE'S ANY chance of even some health-care reform this year, President Obama tonight needs to reassert himself as someone to be trusted. He needs to reconvince America that he's an honest agent of change. He needs to draw on his oratory strengths and ability to inspire. And he needs to do so against angst over a still-sluggish economy and in the face of what for many is pure rage at government. His address to Congress comes at a critical moment of his incumbency. It's not unlike the moment he confronted in his campaign in March '08 when he spoke at the National Constitution Center on race and his ties to the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright.