Editorial: No Easy Answers in Mali

The extremist Islamist militias that seized control of northern Mali in April have imposed their fanatical beliefs and barbaric punishments on the region's defenseless people, sending tens of thousands of refugees fleeing into neighboring Mauritania. And they have given sanctuary to notorious terrorist groups like Nigeria's Boko Haram and Algeria's Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a group that Washington suspects may have been involved in the September attack on the American consulate in Libya.

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Neighboring countries are understandably eager to help Mali's army expel these militias. This month, the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved a resolution supporting an African-led military force of 3,300 to begin preparing for that mission. But there are formidable obstacles, the biggest being the political ambitions and military ineffectiveness of Mali's army.

Army officers opened the door to the extremists in March by overthrowing the democratically elected government. They claimed the government was not letting them wage an effective fight against the Libyan-armed Tuareg rebels who streamed into northern Mali after the overthrow of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

But following the military coup, first the Tuareg rebels and then the Islamist militias easily took over Mali's desert north, a region the size of France. International pressure forced the soldiers to install a civilian-led government in April. But the army, which has been accused of engaging in torture and sexual abuse of detainees, retains real power, and Mali's institutions remain shattered.

Yet it is this army and this figurehead government that the United Nations now counts on to retake the north. The African-led force that is supposed to train the Malians is experienced mainly in peacekeeping, not actual combat. That might mean drawing in American and European military trainers.

The resolution also calls for contributions to finance the operation, estimated to cost more than $200 million a year, though it is unclear which nations would be willing to pay. Washington played a useful role in the Security Council deliberations by insisting on an initial period of planning and attention to human rights concerns before any military action takes place.

The transformation of northern Mali into a sanctuary for terrorists and the subjection of its people to medieval cruelties are a threat to the entire West African region. But even with the Security Council vote, it seems unrealistic to expect an effective solution anytime soon.

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Letters: Debate Over Women’s Prayer at the Western Wall

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Re "Israel Moves to Review Restrictions on Women's Prayer at Western Wall" (news article, Dec. 26):

The "outrage" expressed by some over longstanding restrictions on vocal women's prayer at the Western Wall is unfortunate.

For more than three decades, the Western Wall has been a place, perhaps the only one in the world, where Jews of all affiliations and persuasions have regularly prayed side by side.

That has been possible because of the good will of non-Orthodox Jews — Israelis and Westerners alike — who, though they may opt for very different services in their own homes, synagogues or temples, have chosen to accommodate the religious sensibilities of their fellow Jews and respect the Jewish religious tradition at the most historically Jewish site on earth.

Allowing for services that will violate the religious sensibilities of most of the Jews who pray at the site daily might afford some the gratification of a "victory." But it will advance neither Jewish worship nor Jewish unity.

(Rabbi) DAVID ZWIEBEL
Executive Vice President
Agudath Israel of America
New York, Dec. 26, 2012

To the Editor:

Your article about Women of the Wall ("A Divide Over Prayer at a Sacred Site," news article, Dec. 23) was illuminating, but it did not mention an important point of Jewish law.

There is a strain of argument in Jewish law itself that supports women donning prayer shawls and phylacteries. Several rabbinical authorities have taken this view as early as the 12th and 13th centuries; not all consider this act to be wearing men's attire.

These women are neither Jewish nihilists in the strict sense nor "crazy American ladies," as some in the secular Israeli world view them.

They have a leg in Jewish law upon which they stand.

(Rabbi) IAN SILVERMAN
Greenlawn, N.Y., Dec. 24, 2012

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Op-Ed Columnist: Babes in Arms

From: David Keene, president

To: Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president

Re: "Good Guys With Guns" Campaign, Phase Two

Dear Wayne,

Phase One of our plan to defuse that P.R. disaster in Newtown has had great results. Your performance at the news conference and on the weekend talk shows was masterly. "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." It gave me goose bumps! We have answered the old bleeding-heart fallacy (guns are the problem) with a bold Second-Amendment response (guns are the solution). "Good guys with guns" (cc'ing Legal to see if we can TM) is undoubtedly the best slogan we've come up with since "Guns don't kill people ..." and "If guns are outlawed ..." While the old slogans simply changed the subject, the new approach is positive and proactive. We're actually for something now.

The polling team and psych consultants love that we have made "more guns in schools" a serious subject of mainstream discussion. We're particularly proud of the idea that advertising a "gun-free school" is an open invitation to homicidal crazies. Take THAT Michael Bloomberg! For years we have owned the issue of freedom. Now we stand a good chance of owning the issue of safety.

And it should not go unmentioned that this whole project has been greeted with appreciation by our friends in the manufacturing and sales community. First, by reviving the fear of confiscation, we helped generate a nice little just-in-case pre-Christmas bump in firearm sales. And of course more guns in schools will mean a significant boost in demand. I have the Development team stepping up its outreach to a grateful industry.

Still, the issue has not receded as quickly as we anticipated. As you know, Research estimates that the mean lapsed time from a high-body-count firearm event to baseline apathy is nine days. Yet this particular event has continued to receive media attention through the Christmas season, the clamor on the pro-disarmament editorial pages continues, and the polling metrics continue to be unfavorable. A few of our friends on the Hill are wobbly.

Therefore I think we need to gear up for Phase Two, with the option of executing early in the new year if the public fails to return to its standard level of indifference.

To recap, Phase Two is tentatively called Arm Our Kids — A.O.K. — and its objective is a comprehensive K-12 carry program. If an armed guard in every school is prudent, how much more secure will we feel to have a Smith & Wesson in every cubby? We all know (as the media scolds keep pointing out) there was an armed sheriff's deputy on duty at Columbine High School the day Harris and Klebold committed their mayhem; but he was eating lunch. So let's up the ante to full coverage, from toddler to teen, from assembly to dismissal. Even the most deranged killer will think twice about entering a classroom knowing any of those adorable youngsters could be a licensed, trained, locked and loaded, Glock-packing Good Guy.

I know a few board members have expressed concern that this campaign could encounter significant backlash, and not just from the nanny-state brigade. But it is the logical evolution of our safety argument, and it appeals to a core American value, individual responsibility. I anticipate that with our usual combination of messaging and political muscle, we can enroll a significant number of school districts. But even if we fall short on penetration, A.O.K. will give the chatterers something to chatter about besides ammo clips and the gun-show loophole.

Research has promised data by next week on how many jobs would be created by a comprehensive program, including not only ramped-up firearms and accessories production but also new demand for trainers, shooting-range operators, and engineers to develop new lines of weapons for little fingers.

Here are a few other issues for consideration:

Spokesman. There will never be a frontman to match Charlton Heston, God rest his soul. Former Congressman Asa Hutchinson, as the head of our National School Shield Program, has struck just the right note of smooth, always-on-message reasonableness. The man could sell snake oil to snakes. But for the next phase we need mom appeal. Is Sarah Palin too obvious? Maybe one of the doctor-moms on "Grey's Anatomy" — Hey! The pregnant one!

Curriculum. We will be presenting this as not just a safety program but an educational opportunity, with training to improve situational awareness and quick judgment. (Can we get that "Blink" guy to do a testimonial?) Also, I am sure Rick Perry would happily tell the Texas State Board of Education to work with us on a line of animated textbooks that restores firearms to their proper place in American history and integrates issues like caliber and muzzle velocity into the math curriculum.

Merchandising. Marketing is confident that we will have no problem migrating the boy market from toy guns and video arcades to live fire. The Cub Scouts already promote BB-gun skills. We're checking to see whether they're willing to expand into pistols and rifles, perhaps with a Good Guy merit badge. But much remains to be done on the girl front. I'm attaching the early test-market results from the "My Little Colt" product (comes in a rainbow of colors, but pink is still the clear winner). We've been in touch with half a dozen makers of bulletproof backpacks, including one with a Disney Princess line. We've also scheduled meetings with a few more companies to propose branding opportunities. How about a "Little House on the Prairie" holster line? Or, from the makers of the Easy-Bake Oven, a line of Easy-Cast home bullet-making kits?

Military tie-in. The Pentagon has not been terribly responsive to our proposal to embrace this as a boon to the volunteer military, but we will continue to work that angle. Meanwhile, I've had a strange call from someplace in Africa — is there a country called Sergio Leone? — where they claim to have had a whole ARMY of kids who really did the job. We need to check that out.

Endorsements. A board member suggested we align ourselves with Mike Huckabee, who, as you know, linked the Newtown killings to the abolition of prayer in schools. The idea would be to add a little First Amendment kick to our Second Amendment campaign — first they get rid of God, then they get rid of guns, or something like that. Worth exploring. Although, between us, personally I find these religious zealots a little creepy.

Happy New Year!

David

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Editorial: A Broken System for Tracking Guns

As President Obama looks to reduce gun violence after the Connecticut massacre through reforms like reinstating the assault weapons ban, he and supporters of sane gun laws in Congress need to be equally serious about strengthening the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the beleaguered agency charged with enforcing federal firearm regulations.

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Ending the bureau's leadership vacuum is the first challenge. The bureau, which has been mired in a scandal over Operation Fast and Furious, the botched scheme to investigate gun trafficking across the Mexican border, has been without a permanent full-time director for six years — ever since the National Rifle Association persuaded Congress that the position should require Senate confirmation. Mr. Obama's 2010 nomination of Andrew Traver, now head of the bureau's Denver division, has stalled for no good reason, except for N.R.A. opposition and White House reluctance to wage a battle to fill the post.

It is a fight worth having. The current acting director, B. Todd Jones, who also serves as the United States attorney in Minnesota, is the fifth acting director since 2006. Mr. Obama has called on the Senate to make confirming a permanent director "a priority." But it will take a lot more than a polite request to break the logjam.

One immediate task for Vice President Joseph Biden Jr., who is heading the new White House group on gun violence that will report recommendations in January, is to focus on dismantling the senseless obstacles impeding the bureau's day-to-day functioning.

The bureau — which should have a lead role in protecting the nation from gun crimes — has been severely hindered by an array of N.R.A.-backed legislative restrictions. For example, a 1986 law prohibits A.T.F. agents from making more than one unannounced inspection a year on a gun dealer, a rule that serves no purpose other than protecting unscrupulous dealers. (As it is, a lack of agents means that a gun shop can go years between inspections.)

The same law makes it extremely difficult to pull the licenses of rogue gun dealers. The government must show not just that the conduct was intentional but that the violator knew it was illegal.

Language included in every A.T.F. appropriations bill since 1979 has prohibited the bureau from putting gun sales records into a central computer database. That means workers at the bureau's tracing center often must call gun makers and sellers and go through paper files to identify the buyer of a gun linked to a crime.

Finally, the so-called Tiahrt amendments, attached to federal spending bills, require the federal government to destroy the background check records of gun buyers within 24 hours of approval. That makes it very hard to identify dealers who falsify sales records.

On "Meet the Press" on Sunday, President Obama reiterated his commitment to lay out a package of gun reforms quickly and put his "full weight behind it." In addition to a tough assault weapons ban, he should be pushing to bar sales of high-capacity ammunition clips and to close the loophole that allows felons and other buyers to evade background checks at gun shows. Empowering the A.T.F. is another step that clearly needs to be part of his agenda.

•

This is part of a continuing series on the epidemic of gun violence and possible solutions. Other editorials are at nytimes.com/gunchallenge.

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Room for Debate: Has Facebook Ruined Love?

The year's end has always been a time to stir up a new romance or hunker down for the winter. But where there used to be intrigue in these choices, social media like Facebook seem to pinpoint exactly where a couple is along the timeline of love.

Are tweets, status updates and tagged photographs encouraging romance or ruining it?

Read the Discussion »

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Editorial: Why the Economy Needs Tax Reform

Over the next four years, tax reform, done right, could be a cure for much of what ails the economy. Higher taxes, raised progressively, could encourage growth by helping to pay for long-neglected public investment in education, infrastructure and basic research. More revenue would also reduce budget deficits, helping to put the nation's finances on a stable path. Greater progressivity would reduce rising income inequality, and with it, inequality of opportunity that is both an economic and social scourge.

The big obstacle to comprehensive tax reform is the persistent Republican myth that spending cuts alone can achieve economic and budget goals. That notion was sounded rejected by voters during the election. Yet it still has adherents among many Republicans, which will make it that much harder for Congress to grapple with the bigger and more complex issue at the heart of tax reform: how to pay for government in the 21st century.

The main problem is that the current tax code is incapable of raising the revenue needed to pay for the goods and services of government. Over the last four years, federal revenue as a share of the economy has fallen to its lowest level in nearly 60 years, a result of the recession, the weak recovery and a decade's worth of serial tax cuts. Even with deep spending cuts, the chronic revenue shortfall is expected to continue, swelling the federal debt — unless taxes go up. To stabilize the debt over the next 10 years while financing more investment would require at least $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion in new revenue, above what could be raised by letting the top income tax rate revert to its pre-Bush-era level of 39.6 percent.

A logical way to help raise the additional needed revenue would be to tax capital gains at the same rates as ordinary income. Capital gains on assets held for more than a year before selling are taxed at about the lowest rate in the code, currently 15 percent and expected to rise to 20 percent in 2013. That is an indefensible giveaway to the richest Americans. Research shows that the tax breaks do not add to economic growth but do contribute to inequality. Currently, the top 1 percent of taxpayers receive more than 70 percent of all capital gains, while the bottom 80 percent receive only 6 percent.

Another sensible approach is to cap deductions at 28 percent, or to convert deductions, which disproportionately benefit high-bracket taxpayers, to tax credits, which would provide the same benefit to all taxpayers, regardless of tax bracket. President Obama must also pursue other revenue raisers, including a restoration of the estate tax, higher tax rates or surcharges on multimillion-dollar incomes, and higher corporate taxes, including an end to the deferral of tax for American companies that stash their earnings abroad.

All that would only be a start, because the new revenue would only slow the growth of the debt in the near term. After 10 years, the pressures of an aging population and health care costs would cause the debt to accelerate again.

With that in mind, Mr. Obama would be wise to instruct the Treasury Department to start work on tax reform now, exploring carbon taxes, both to raise revenue and to protect the environment; a value-added tax, coupled with provisions to protect lower-income taxpayers from higher prices, to tax consumption and encourage saving; and a financial transactions tax, to ensure that the financial sector, whose profits have substantially outpaced those of nonfinancial corporations, pay a fair share.

Not all of the proposed new taxes would gain support, but all deserve to be part of the debate. Controlling the terms of that debate, and then advancing from debate to action, could well be the toughest challenge of Mr. Obama's second term and, if met, his defining economic legacy.

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Editorial: Drones for South Korea

Less than a month after North Korea's latest missile test, the Obama administration has offered to sell South Korea advanced spy drones so it can keep a closer eye on its northern adversary. The decision raises some concerns, and Congress would be wise to ask a lot of questions before going along, including whether the deal is part of a comprehensive strategy or just a way to penalize North Korea.

The proposed $1.2 billion sale of four Global Hawks made by Northrop Grumman was first requested by South Korea several years ago. The drones, remotely piloted aircraft with enhanced surveillance technology, would expand South Korea's intelligence-gathering capabilities when it takes over wartime control of its troops from the United States in 2015, as previously agreed. The United States has held wartime command since the Korean War; the Seoul government regained peacetime control of its military in 1994.

South Korea has serious concerns about the North's nuclear and missile capabilities. But the drones deal would weaken a 34-nation arms agreement called the Missile Technology Control Regime. That agreement was created in 1987 to discourage the export of ballistic missiles and other unmanned systems with a range of at least 300 kilometers, or 186 miles, and a payload of more than half a ton that could include nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Under the agreement's guidelines, there is a strong presumption that requests to buy these systems should be denied.

The agreement has already taken one blow this year, when the administration agreed to let South Korea develop longer-range ballistic missiles. Is the proposed deal important enough to make another exception? The burden is on the administration to explain why selling Global Hawks to South Korea does not undermine President Obama's arms control goals and give cover for Russia, China and others to also sell systems that exceed the guidelines.

While the drones are intended for intelligence gathering, they could be modified to carry a weapon. If the United States proceeds with the sale, it should include a commitment that South Korea will not arm the drones.

North Korea, despite its nuclear weapons program and threatening behavior, is militarily inferior to the South. The two countries have had several violent confrontations in recent years. Equipping South Korea with drones that could reach all of North Korea could increase the risk of inadvertent war during a crisis. To guard against that threat, there would need to be close American-South Korean coordination.

Keeping the pressure on North Korea, including the use of sanctions, is important. But the administration, wedded to an ineffective approach called "strategic patience," also needs to look for ways to re-engage North Korea. South Korea's new president-elect, Park Geun-hye, has expressed interest in resuming a dialogue with the North. President Obama should support and follow that example.

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Editorial: Progress Where They Make iPhones

Apple, whose products the world cannot get enough of, has been justifiably criticized for poor working conditions and low wages at the factories of its chief supplier in China, Foxconn. Now, however, there are signs that all the negative attention, including reports in this newspaper, has caused the companies to make changes, like raising wages, limiting work hours and providing chairs with backs instead of stools at workstations.

As Keith Bradsher and Charles Duhigg recently reported in The Times, Apple and Foxconn are working to reduce workweeks, first to 60 hours and eventually to 49. Wages have also been increased, in some cases by as much as 50 percent, to make up for fewer hours of overtime.

While tentative and disputed by some independent labor groups, these changes, along with improvements made by Hewlett-Packard and other companies, are a positive first step in what will very likely be a long process of ensuring fair compensation and sound factory conditions for the millions working in this industry.

Safety remains a big concern at Foxconn. In September, just as Apple was unveiling the iPhone 5, a major riot broke out at a Foxconn factory in Taiyuan in northern China. In addition, journalists from a French TV program recently reported that Foxconn was housing some workers in a dormitory that was still under construction and lacked electrical wiring, elevators and running water.

Overtime work and wage rates also remain contentious problems. Even though Foxconn and other suppliers appear to have reduced the average hours worked by each employee, most still work far more than the nine hours of overtime per week, on top of a standard 40-hour week, that Chinese law allows, according to the Fair Labor Association, which has been auditing Foxconn factories for Apple. Foxconn has said it would meet the 49-hour requirement by July 2013. Understandably, some employees complain that they would like to work 60 hours or more a week because they want to make more money to support their families. This suggests that the base pay rates remain too low and that many workers are struggling to make ends meet given the rising cost of living in China and the difficulty that single children have in supporting two aging parents.

Independent labor activists acknowledge that Apple and Foxconn, which is China's largest private sector employer with 1.4 million workers, are no worse than other companies in the industry and are probably doing more than their competitors to improve working conditions. As leaders in technology manufacturing, they should chart the course for others to follow. But Apple and Foxconn, which is based in Taiwan, have both been very secretive about factory conditions and even reforms, refusing to release audit and investigative reports that would help raise standards across the industry.

In May, Timothy Cook, the chief executive, said Apple would be "the most transparent company" in the world on issues related to workers' welfare and supplier responsibility. It is time for the company to start living up to that promise. The production of iPhones and iPads requires skilled and semiskilled workers who increasingly have more bargaining power and cannot be as easily replaced as, say, the Bangladeshi women who stitch clothes for American retailers like Walmart. For companies operating in China and earning billions in profits, corporate responsibility demands that workers be treated and paid fairly.

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Editorial | Sunday Observer: So Many Snapshots, So Few Voices Saved

I just got my voice back. At least I'm told it's my voice. A surgeon did a couple of hours' work on one of my vocal cords, removing a papilloma, and on Christmas Day, after two weeks of silence, I spoke.

Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image

Phonograph cylinders, invented by Edison in 1877. Before that, a few sounds were caught on phonautograms.

For 20 years, my voice has sounded the way hickory bark looks. Now it sounds like I don't know what. My brother tells me I sound like my old self. My ears tell me that what comes out of my mouth is now ungravelled, pure in tone, if still uncertain in pitch. It's also unfamiliar. And yet it's authentic. The photos show that my vocal cords now look completely normal, with nothing to damp or obstruct their vibration. I walk around the house playing myself like a new bassoon.

What strikes me is that I have only one brief recording — a minute or two — of the way I sounded 20 years ago, before my voice got smoky, though there are plenty of photos from that time. I remember the regret I felt after my mom died, years ago, that we had no recording of her voice on tape. And yet when my dad died in 2008 — same thing. Plenty of photographs, but no record of the sound of his voice. I'm glad to have the photos, but I miss the immediacy of those voices, the way that even a recorded voice captures the movement of time and the resonance of the body with extraordinary intimacy.

The recording of sound has always lagged behind the recording of images. There is a gap of more than 40 years between the first practical photographs, taken in the 1830s, and the first practical sound recordings, made in the late 1870s, and a gap between "The Great Train Robbery" in 1903, the earliest narrative silent movie, and "The Jazz Singer" in 1927, the first successful talking movie.

For most of us, the gap that really matters is the one between the first consumer camera, the Brownie, which was introduced in 1900, and the audio equivalent of the Brownie, the recordable cassette tape, in the 1960s.

Now, it's every bit as easy to record sound on a smartphone as it is to record images. And yet because sound is always a function of time, most of us still prefer to capture digital snapshots instead of digital audio samples, even in the form of video. There is still a kind of documentary formality in setting out to record the sound of your parents' voices — a formality that has vanished entirely from photography.

The present is the place where sound thrives. After all, sound is motion, nearly life itself, and compared with the roar of the present, the silence of the past is deafening. Work your way back to the early 20th century, and the thicket of recorded voices (almost none of them the voices of ordinary people) grows ever thinner. In the late 19th century, there is Florence Nightingale and Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Gladstone and P. T. Barnum. Go back further and you reach 1877, the year Edison invented his phonograph cylinder. And before that, there is silence, except for a few stray sounds captured from phonautograms made in the 1850s but first heard only a few years ago.

In that silence, there are only descriptions of voices. Lincoln was said to be a tenor, with a voice capable of expressing a fervor we have never seen in photographs of him. Of Dickens's voice we learn how mobile it was — like the rest of him — and how readily it captured the spirit of his characters. Wordsworth spoke with "a deep and roughish but not unpleasing voice," said his contemporary Leigh Hunt. Boswell tells us that when Samuel Johnson spoke, his mode was "very impressive," "sonorous," with "a firm manly manner." What we can hear in such descriptions is the impression these voices created in those who heard them but nothing of the physical vocalization itself. It is as if the voice were a kind of psychological posture, not a matter of timbre, pitch and resonance.

What would we know if we could hear the voice of Cleopatra? How odd would Napoleon's Corsican accent sound to modern French speakers? And what if we had two minutes of the voice of Shakespeare, who managed to leave so little of his personal self behind?

We might feel awe at hearing these voices, but very likely the recordings would be mere artifacts, overwhelmed by legend, deed and word. And these figures would still be strangers. It would be nothing like hearing again the intimate sound of a voice that has gone missing in your own life, a voice that recovers memory and emotion and loss itself.

As for me, I'm getting used to this new old voice. Soon, I'm afraid, I won't hear any difference in it, and the sense of having traveled in time will go away. And if I really could go back to an earlier self, here's what I'd say: While capturing sound is now so easy, make sure you record the voices you will want to hear again. The sound alone will say everything someday. 

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Op-Ed Columnist: How to Read in 2013

COME what may in the next 12 months, 2013 has this much going for it: It's a year without a midterm election, and a year that's as far removed as possible from the next presidential race. This means that for a blessed 365 days you can be a well-informed and responsible American citizen without reading every single article on Politico, without hitting refresh every 30 seconds on your polling-average site of choice, without channel-hopping between Chris Matthews's hyperventilating and Dick Morris's promises of an inevitable Republican landslide.

So use the year wisely, faithful reader. For a little while, at least, let gridlock take care of itself, shake yourself free of the toils of partisanship, and let your mind rove more widely and freely than the onslaught of 2014 and 2016 coverage will allow.

Here are three steps that might make such roving particularly fruitful. First, consider taking out a subscription to a magazine whose politics you don't share. I'm using the word "subscription" advisedly: it may sound fusty in the age of blogs and tweets and online hopscotching, but reading the entirety of a magazine, whether in print or on your tablet, is a better way to reckon with the ideas that its contributors espouse than just reading the most-read or most-e-mailed articles on its Web site, or the occasional inflammatory column that all your ideological compatriots happen to be attacking.

So if you love National Review's political coverage, add The New Republic or The Nation to your regular rotation as well. If you think that The New Yorker's long-form journalism is the last word on current affairs, take out a Weekly Standard subscription and supplement Jeffrey Toobin with Andy Ferguson, Adam Gopnik with Christopher Caldwell. If you're a policy obsessive who looks forward every quarter to the liberal-tilting journal Democracy, consider a subscription to the similarly excellent, right-of-center National Affairs. And whenever you're tempted to hurl away an article in disgust, that's exactly when you should turn the page or swipe the screen and keep on reading, to see what else the other side might have to say.

Second, expand your reading geographically as well as ideologically. Even in our supposedly globalized world, place still shapes perspective, and the fact that most American political writers live in just two metropolitan areas tends to cramp our ability to see the world entire.

So the would-be cosmopolitan who currently gets a dose of British-accented sophistication from The Economist — a magazine whose editorial line varies only a little from the Manhattan-and-D.C. conventional wisdom — might do well to read the London Review of Books and The Spectator instead. (The multilingual, of course, can roam even more widely.) The conservative who turns to Manhattan-based publications for defenses of the "Real America" should cast a bigger net — embracing the Californian academics who preside over the Claremont Review of Books, the heartland sans-culottes at RedState, the far-flung traditionalists who write for Front Porch Republic. And the discerning reader should always have an eye out for talented writers — like the Montanan Walter Kirn, the deserving winner of one of my colleague David Brooks's Sidney Awards — who cover American politics from outside D.C. and N.Y.C.

Finally, make a special effort to read outside existing partisan categories entirely. Crucially, this doesn't just mean reading reasonable-seeming types who split the left-right difference. It means seeking out more marginal and idiosyncratic voices, whose views are often worth pondering precisely because they have no real purchase on our political debates.

Start on the non-Republican right, maybe, with the libertarians at Reason magazine, the social conservatives at First Things and Public Discourse, the eclectic dissidents who staff The American Conservative. Then head for the neo-Marxist reaches of the Internet, where publications like Jacobin and The New Inquiry offer a constant reminder of how much room there is to the left of the current Democratic Party.

And don't be afraid to lend an ear to voices that seem monomaniacal or self-marginalizing, offensive or extreme. There are plenty of writers on the Internet who are too naïve or radical or bigoted to entrust with any kind of power, but who nonetheless might offer an insight that you wouldn't find in the more respectable quarters of the press.

If these exercises work, they'll make 2013 a year that unsettles your mind a little — subjecting the views you take for granted to real scrutiny, changing the filters through which you view the battles between Team R and Team D, reminding you that more things are possible in heaven and earth than are dreamed of by John Boehner and Harry Reid.

Then, and only then, will you be ready to start counting the days till the 2016 Iowa caucuses arrive.

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Op-Ed Columnist: Guns and Mental Illness

Many years ago, when I was a young reporter at Texas Monthly magazine, I spent the better part of six months in the company of a man who suffered from schizophrenia. His name was Fred Thomas; he was 23 years old; and he had been steadily deteriorating since high school, which is when most men first show symptoms of the disease.

I watched Fred as he was shuttled in and out of the state hospital in Austin, Tex. — one of the few that had not been closed down by the mid-1980s — where he was wildly overmedicated, and then released to either his mother's home, which was invariably disastrous, or a halfway house ill equipped to help someone as delusional as he was.

I learned about the group homes that had sprung up after the closure of the mental hospitals. They were so gruesome that one outplacement worker told me she had never been to one "because I don't want to know where I am sending them." I spent time at a homeless shelter that had become, in effect, a mental institution without doctors or aides. Ultimately, the article I wrote was about how the "deinstitutionalization movement" of the 1960s and early 1970s — a movement prompted by the same liberal impulses that gave us civil rights and women's rights — had become a national disgrace.

What spurs this recollection are two things. The first is Nina Bernstein's powerful report in The Times this week about the plight of the mentally ill in New York. Although the article was pegged to the loss of services after Hurricane Sandy, in truth, Sandy only exacerbated a situation that was already terrible. With the mentally ill rarely institutionalized for any length of time — on the theory that their lives will be better if they are not confined in a hospital — other institutions have sprung up to take their place.

Prisons, for instance. According to E. Fuller Torrey, a psychiatrist who founded the Treatment Advocacy Center, a staggering 20 percent of the prison population is seriously mentally ill. Around a third of the homeless are mentally ill.

And one more statistic: "Ten percent of homicides are committed by seriously mentally ill people who are not being treated," says Torrey.

In the wake of the massacres in Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, Conn., there have been essentially two central arguments about the cause. Liberals have stressed the need for new gun regulations that would make it more difficult for the likes of James Holmes and Adam Lanza to get ahold of killing machines like semiautomatics. There is no lack of sensible ideas: background checks for all gun purchasers, a national registry that would allow guns to be traced, an assault weapons ban, controls on ammunition, and so on. Nouriel Roubini, the economist, wrote in a Twitter message that gun owners should be required to have liability insurance, an intriguing idea. Some legislators who once blindly followed the bidding of the National Rifle Association are now saying they are reconsidering in the wake of Newtown.

Many conservatives, however, have placed the blame for the recent rash of mass shootings not on the proliferation of guns but on the fact that James Holmes and Adam Lanza were allowed to go about their business unfettered, despite their obvious mental illness. The editorial writers at The Wall Street Journal recently wrote that changing the way we treat the mentally ill "strikes us as a more promising path" for reducing mass killings than a fight over gun control.

In truth, both are necessary. If conservatives need to face the need for gun regulations — controls that will make guns less ubiquitous while still staying on the right side of the Second Amendment — liberals need to acknowledge that untreated mental illness is also an important part of the reason mass killings take place. Yes, it is true, as has been noted in recent weeks, that most mentally ill people don't commit crimes. But it is equally true that anyone who goes into a school with a semiautomatic and kills 20 children and six adults is, by definition, mentally ill.

The state and federal rules around mental illness are built upon a delusion: that the sickest among us should always be in control of their own treatment, and that deinstitutionalization is the more humane route. That is not always the case. Torrey told me that Connecticut's laws are so restrictive in terms of the proof required to get someone committed that Adam Lanza's mother would probably not have been able to get him help even if she had tried.

"Mentally ill street people shame the society that lets them live as they do," I wrote toward the end of that article in Texas Monthly. It has been 50 years since deinstitutionalization became the way we dealt with the mentally ill.

How much more proof do we need that it hasn't worked?

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Op-Ed Contributor: The Taboo of Menstruation

KHUSHI knew it was cancer. Ankita thought she was injured. None of the girls knew why they were suddenly bleeding, why their stomachs were "paining," as Indian English has it. They cried and were terrified and then they asked their mothers. And their mothers said, you are normal. You are menstruating. You are a woman now.

But that is not all. The girls, whose names I've changed here for the sake of their privacy, were also told: when you menstruate, don't cook food because you will pollute it. Don't touch idols because you will defile them. Don't handle pickles because they will go rotten with your touch.

Pickles, I asked Ankita? Yes, madam, she told me, in her schoolyard in rural Uttar Pradesh. My mother says it is so. Her mother believed it, and her mother before her. It must be true.

I read of another girl who said that her nail polish had spoiled because she had applied it during her period. She saw nothing weird about this.

I met Ankita and her peers in November, while accompanying a sanitation and hygiene carnival, the Great Wash Yatra, which has traveled a thousand miles across rural India. The aim of the Yatra, organized by a nonprofit called WASH United, is to spread the right messages about health and hygiene — do not defecate in the open, wash your hands with soap after the toilet and before eating — using singing, dancing, games and support from cricket players and Bollywood stars. The tactic works: all of its stalls have queues of men and boys waiting to play. All except one: a curtained tent, where only women are allowed.

This is the Menstrual Hygiene Management Lab, where girls and women can come to learn how to safely make and maintain cloth sanitary napkins (use clean cloth; dry it in the sun; iron it to remove moisture) as well as for something even more revolutionary: to talk frankly about periods.

The taboo of menstruation in India causes real harm. Women in some tribes are forced to live in a cowshed throughout their periods. There are health issues, like infections caused by using dirty rags, and horror stories, like that of one girl who was too embarrassed to ask her mother for a clean cloth, and used one she found without knowing it had lizard eggs in it. According to one of the Yatra outreach workers, the subsequent infection meant her uterus had to be removed when she was 13. She would be forever tainted as a barren woman, so that whoever saw her first in the morning had to take a bath to wash her stain away.

But beyond superstition and discrimination, many Indian women face the straightforward lack of clean, safe lavatory facilities. Back in my high school in England, we may have been embarrassed by our periods, as most girls are, but we had clean bathroom stalls in which to change our sanitary pads in privacy, and trash bins in which to throw them.

Many students in India, where around 650 million people still lack toilets, can't say the same. Most schools I visited had filthy latrines, used only because there was no alternative. Some had none at all. Students and teachers made do with fields and back alleys.

Concentrating on lessons when you are desperate for the bathroom is hard on anyone. It's nearly impossible for a girl who is menstruating and has nowhere to change or dispose of her pad. Girls grow tired of dealing with it. Often their families encourage them to stay home from school and get married. In one survey, 23 percent of Indian school-age girls dropped out of school when they reached puberty.

"Girls suffer if they aren't empowered to manage their menstrual cycle without pain and shame each month," said Chris Williams, the executive director of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council, which runs the Menstrual Hygiene Management Lab. "Their health, schooling and dignity are in the balance." And the world suffers, too: educated women are healthier, have smaller families, often earn more and have a positive impact on development.

It can take years, even generations, to change a taboo. But anecdotally, outreach workers note that the only girls who don't believe the superstitions about menstruation are those with educated mothers. So the best way to change the minds of future women is to keep girls in school today, and basic lavatory facilities are one of the easiest ways to do that.

Back in Ankita's schoolyard, something revolutionary was happening. Although many male teachers in rural India are terrified that broaching the subject of menstruation will be considered inappropriate or worse, one of Ankita's teachers was different. After attending a Yatra outreach session, he used 200 rupees (less than $4) of his own money to turn a disused latrine into a simple incinerator, which girls could use to burn their dirty cloths.

It isn't perfect: girls still face the embarrassment of going to the incinerator with everyone knowing why. But this rudimentary construction, with its vent made from a discarded well-water pump, could have huge consequences. Not only could it bring educational salvation to Ankita and her classmates, but a better future for generations to come.

Rose George is the author of "The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters."

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Op-Ed Columnist: Dwindling International Adoptions

When Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, signed a law on Friday banning the adoption of Russian children by Americans, it brought the issue of international adoptions by United States citizens back into the spotlight.

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As it turns out, the number of international adoptions by Americans has been falling for years. American adoptions from Russia in particular fell from a high of nearly 6,000 children in 2004 to fewer than 1,000 in 2011.

As The Associated Press pointed out in May, "the number of international adoptions has fallen to its lowest point in 15 years, a steep decline attributed largely to crackdowns against baby-selling, a sputtering world economy and efforts by countries to place more children with domestic families."

But as adoptions from some traditional sources have plummeted, those from less-traditional sources have surged. Adoptions of Ethiopian children were nearly nonexistent until the mid-2000s, when, suddenly, the number began to jump. In 2010, there were about 2,500 Ethiopian children adopted by American families. (Those numbers fell some in 2011.)

That may well be the Zahara Jolie-Pitt effect. Angelina Jolie adopted 6-month-old Zahara from Ethiopia in 2005. Jolie's partner, Brad Pitt, soon joined in the adoption.

This chart of adoption trends by children's country of origin tells the bigger tale.

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Editorial: Rape in India

The brutal gang rape of a young woman in New Delhi this month has cast a cold light on how badly India treats its women.

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On Dec. 16, the 23-year-old physiotherapy student was viciously assaulted by a group of men while she was riding a bus with a male companion. The two had just seen a movie. Both she and the man were beaten with an iron rod and eventually stripped, robbed and dumped on the roadside. After three surgeries at an Indian hospital, the woman was flown to Singapore on Thursday for further treatment. She died early on Saturday after suffering what hospital officials said were "signs of severe organ failure."

This reprehensible crime reflects an alarming trend in India, which basks in its success as a growing business and technological mecca but tolerates shocking abuse of women. Rape cases have increased at an alarming rate, roughly 25 percent in six years. New Delhi recorded 572 rapes in 2011; that total is up 17 percent this year.

And those are just the reported cases. Many victims, shamed into silence and callously disregarded by a male-dominated power structure, never go to the authorities to seek justice. Women are routinely blamed for inciting the violence against them. On Wednesday, an 18-year-old girl from Punjab who had been gang-raped in an earlier incident killed herself after police and village elders pressured her to drop the case and marry one of her attackers.

India's news media now regularly carry horrific accounts of gang rapes, and this has begun to focus national attention on the problem. But the rape of the 23-year-old woman seemed to take the outrage to a new level, prompting tens of thousands to protest in New Delhi and elsewhere across the country. Still, political leaders were slow to react. It was days before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appeared on television to plead for calm and to promise to make India safer for women.

Since the attack, six suspects have been arrested and the government has announced the formation of two commissions, one to identify police "lapses" and another to recommend ways to speed up sexual assault trials. Reforms are needed in the law enforcement system to make convictions more possible and punishments more convincing. And Indian leaders like Sonia Gandhi, head of the ruling Congress Party, must speak out more forcefully about bringing rapists to justice.

More broadly, India must work on changing a culture in which women are routinely devalued. Many are betrothed against their will as child brides, and many suffer cruelly, including acid attacks and burning, at the hands of husbands and family members.

India, a rising economic power and the world's largest democracy, can never reach its full potential if half its population lives in fear of unspeakable violence.

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Op-Ed Contributor: Save Mali Before It’s Too Late

HOW would the United States government react if a huge section of its territory were occupied by terrorists and drug traffickers who raped women and forced them to marry? If children were conscripted and deprived of their education? If citizens had their hands and feet cut off? That is precisely what has happened to the once peaceful and democratic nation of Mali.

Life in northern Mali before the rebels and Islamic extremists arrived was calm; we lived together harmoniously in a community of various languages and backgrounds, including people of Tuareg, Sonraï, Bambara and Peul ethnicities. Coexistence of different ethnic groups in a secular society has long been a fundamental value in Mali, and our cultural diversity enriched us.

In 2004, I became the first woman to be elected mayor of a town in northern Mali. It wasn't easy in this ultraconservative region. We built a community center to encourage the economic self-sufficiency of women, who accounted for more than half the town's population of about 16,000. Despite many difficulties, the initiation of development projects created a real sense of hope among the population. Even if the economy was slow to take off, it was progress. Now it is all in shambles.

Jihadist criminal groups like Ansar Dine and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, working with drug traffickers and armed separatists, are threatening democratic institutions, national unity and secularism in Mali.

Our democracy, achieved through great struggle, has shown its weaknesses. Poorly handled rebellions, a failure to decentralize political power and an influx of armed men and drug traffickers during and after the 2011 war in Libya have all contributed to our present crisis.

In the spring of 2011, a group of secular Tuareg separatists, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, grew stronger when its fighters returned from nearby Libya with heavy weapons to liberate northern Mali, which they call Azawad. The movement formed a military alliance of convenience with jihadists in the region. Together, they quickly routed the Malian Army, but simmering mistrust and bitter disagreements eventually led to a split, with the jihadists gaining the upper hand. The collapse of our military in the north left us in an appalling situation: a country without an army to protect its citizens.

I was forced to flee the town I govern earlier this year when jihadists and separatists took over. Goundam, like other northern towns, was left foundering in total chaos: there was no government, no schools, no libraries, no electricity and no freedom for our citizens.

The rebels and extremists looted our health center's stores of medicine and equipment. Not even our personal belongings were spared. Women were driven from the community center, where they had been working to earn a living — and all of this was supposedly in the name of establishing Shariah.

Lawless and godless men — who hide behind Shariah and demands for Tuareg independence — are now beating and raping women and conscripting children to fight their "holy" war.

And the greatest tragedy is that people are starting to get used to it. Isolated from public life, women can no longer dress as they wish or freely go about their business. Children no longer attend school. In short, our development efforts have been destroyed.

Immediately reclaiming northern Mali from violent extremists must become a priority. And it can't be done without international help, especially from key powers like America and France. The United Nations, the European Union, the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States must all do their part to resolve the crisis before it becomes a greater threat.

After recovering its lost territory, Mali needs help in organizing free, transparent and credible elections to choose representatives who are elected by — and not imposed upon — the citizens. We also need help reconstituting a national army, accelerating political decentralization, strengthening civil society groups and making economic development a fundamental part of re-establishing security.

I was staggered to hear the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, express his fear in a report last month that a humanitarian disaster might result from military intervention in Mali. The disaster is already upon us. Could there be any disaster more grave than the one we're already living?

President Obama must not allow northern Mali to become a hotbed of terrorists and drug traffickers that poses a danger to the entire world.

The United States has intervened in less dire situations. I call upon its conscience. Please help us get our families out of their wretched distress. We are innocent victims. We cannot do it alone.

Oumou Sall Seck is the mayor of Goundam, a town in northern Mali. This essay was translated by Edward Gauvin from the French.

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Editorial: An Affront to Michigan Women

Despite clear public support for women's reproductive rights, Michigan's Republican-controlled Legislature used the just-ended lame-duck session to ram through harmful measures eliminating insurance coverage of abortions and imposing medically unnecessary regulations on providers of safe and legal abortion care.

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The state's Republican governor, Rick Snyder, can show real leadership and demonstrate respect for women in his state by refusing to sign these ideologically driven bills into law.

The first measure would bar insurance coverage for abortion services without the purchase of an additional "rider" at added expense. The restriction would extend to both plans purchased through the health insurance exchanges created by the federal health care reform law and to private insurance plans sold outside the exchanges.

There is a single exception limited to life endangerment, but none for a woman's health or cases of incest or rape — an omission that shows Republican lawmakers learned nothing from the public's rejection of reprehensible attitudes toward sexual assault that led to the defeat of Republican Senate candidates in other states in November.

A second measure would make it harder for reproductive health offices to stay in business by requiring facilities that provide 120 or more abortion a year to comply with new staffing, equipment and physical plant requirements, essentially regulating them as "mini-hospitals" even in the absence of a real medical or safety need.

The measure contains a waiver provision for some existing facilities, but it is unclear how state officials would use it. What is certain is some women's health clinics will have trouble meeting the new requirements and some may be forced to close. That would reduce access to needed abortion care as well as a variety of other essential services, like cancer screenings, to suit the agenda of opponents of abortion rights.

Another damaging section in this bill would hurt low-income and rural women particularly by barring the use of medicine abortions when doctors oversee the procedure through online consultations with the patient. Under such a regimen, patients are examined at a local health clinic by an on-site professional and then electronically consult with a doctor working at a different location who would review her health records, answer questions, and approve the pills. In other contexts, Mr. Snyder has voiced support for expanding the use of telemedicine to improve access to health care.

Mr. Snyder has already done enough to advance his party's right-wing agenda by signing new anti-union legislation earlier this month turning Michigan into a right-to-work state. He should not follow that up by acquiescing to a retreat on women's health and reproductive rights. He should veto the bills.

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Letters: The Marketing of Toys Based on Gender

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Re "Guys and Dolls No More?," by Elizabeth Sweet (Sunday Review, Dec. 23): Although there is a glut of gender-specific toys, we don't agree that Lego is going backward with construction sets for girls. To be fair, it avoided the shopping mall and beauty themes used by other toy makers. Lego's sets include a veterinarian, invention workshop, stables, dog show and home.

Our first response was apprehensive. But what our testing families told us made us think anew about our long-held view that primary-colored blocks work for all. Who needs lavender blocks? Apparently, some girls do. Parents reported that daughters who avoided blocks were now avid builders.

Why is that important? Blocks develop children's abilities with spatial and mathematical thinking. Traditionally, boys had such toys, and girls have not. To develop engineers, architects, scientists and mathematicians, we need to give girls and boys equal play.

Of greater concern are themes in the boys' aisles, reinforcing aggressive play before they get to electronic killing games.

JOANNE OPPENHEIM
New York, Dec. 23, 2012

The writer is the president of Oppenheim Toy Portfolio, a consumer organization that reviews children's toys and media.

To the Editor:

Like Elizabeth Sweet, I once thought that biological gender preferences were "ridiculous" until I raised a girl and a boy born in 1983 and 1990, respectively. I raised my children — to the best of my feminist knowledge — without stereotypes and with a minimum of television.

But as a toddler, my daughter would mostly ignore the cars and trucks and spend hours with the dolls, while my son, seven years later, would discard within minutes his sister's leftover dolls and find the cars and trucks — and most disconcertingly, form a gun with his pointer and thumb and shoot at things. His drive for toy guns, swords and light sabers knew no bounds, yet he has always been sweet and gentle.

The fact that toy marketers tap into biological preferences does not necessarily mean that we are being pushed back into an "unequal past" or homophobia or "gender conformity."

SHIRLEY COPPERMAN
Tarpon Springs, Fla., Dec. 25, 2012

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Editorial | The Gun Challenge: A Tougher Assault Weapons Ban

New legislation proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein in response to the Newtown, Conn., murders would provide a far more effective ban on military-style assault weapons than the loophole-riddled law that lapsed in 2004.

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The measure would not only outlaw the manufacture and sale of new semiautomatic rifles, handguns and shotguns with large ammunition feeds, but also mandate federal registration and background checks on the owners of millions of rapid-fire weapons that were sold legally after the old ban expired. This is a crucial element since the nation has been inundated with such firearms, like the one used by the Connecticut shooter.

Ms. Feinstein said her proposal, which will be the major gun control initiative for the incoming Congress, would close loopholes in defining what constitutes an assault weapon. The old assault weapons ban prohibited only firearms that had two or more military-style characteristics. That meant the ban could be skirted simply by eliminating a minor characteristic like a bayonet mount and flash suppressor. The measure would also ban fast-feeding ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.

Ms. Feinstein would exempt hundreds of simpler hunting weapons from the proposed ban. But she said the measure should mandate financing to make sure stronger gun controls can be enforced, and possibly even include a gun buyback provision. This is the kind of approach needed if the nation is ever to come to grips with gun violence.

President Obama should rally support for tighter controls against the onslaught of opposition from the National Rifle Association. Ms. Feinstein has invited proposals from both sides of the aisle. Congress's gun-lobby loyalists cannot deny that assault weapons have enabled the multiple-victim homicides that no nation should have to endure.

This is part of a continuing series on the epidemic of gun violence and possible solutions. Other editorials are at nytimes.com/gunchallenge.

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Letters: Seeking Answers After Newtown

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Re "Why, God?," by Maureen Dowd (column, Dec. 26):

The loss of a loved one in the natural course of things carries with it one kind of emotional pain. The unnatural loss of innocent children, known or unknown to us, carries with it another, perhaps a more universal sense of loss and sadness, especially when we know in our hearts that we did not do all we could to protect them, that we let them down when they needed us most.

God makes no secret of the presence of death. It surrounds us every day and is inevitable for all. Some die after many decades of life lived to the fullest, some after only a few moments. I have been taught not to ask why, that there are questions to which we do not demand an answer. God makes some decisions on his own.

However, when it comes to one another, no question is too big. Indeed, we are responsible to one another, and shame on us when we shy away from that duty. I have heard the reasons we allow dangerous weapons to pervade our lives. They amount to false principles, and by hiding behind them, we let down the children and those who were left to try to defend them, who died at young ages as a result.

In the face of what we allowed to happen, it is God who will have questions. We are left with the pain of our own failures. I pray that we do better.

BRUCE NEUMAN
Sag Harbor, N.Y., Dec. 26, 2012

To the Editor:

I have been thinking a great deal about tragedy, since I, too, lost a beloved child suddenly. This past week I recognized that the single saving factor for me was the unconditional love of my friends and their constant support.

That love put tragedy in perspective. There were people I knew 20 years before whose children I had taught who came and offered loving solace. They truly were God incarnate, just as cruelty and cynicism are the opposite. We need to remember that we are the vehicles of God's word.

It is a tough lesson to learn. However, when love surrounds you in its light, the darkness dissipates, and you can move on to the next phase of your life. You are not stultified by tragedy.

ANN ILTON
Boca Raton, Fla., Dec. 26, 2012

To the Editor:

Too often we allow religion to be an excuse for inaction. When there is a difficult issue to address like mass killings, well-intentioned people and clergy will say the same thing: We can't understand why, but God's love will help us through it.

From a societal point of view, that answer isn't enough. If one believes that God works through us, then you can believe that he works through us to solve problems, not to sit by and watch preventable tragedies go on unchecked. Despite the ranting of the National Rifle Association that people, not guns, kill people, the simultaneous attacks on schoolchildren in Connecticut and China clearly demonstrate that people kill people much more effectively with Bushmaster .223 caliber rifles.

So what is God going to work through us to do about that?

BRIAN BROKER
Phoenixville, Pa., Dec. 26, 2012

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Letter: Black Conservatives and the Republican Party

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Re "The Puzzle of Black Republicans," by Adolph L. Reed Jr. (Op-Ed, Dec. 19):

There is room for debate as to what policies lift our nation up, but I wholeheartedly reject the notion that to advance the cause of the black community one must accept and adhere to Democratic policies.

I am young, black and happen to be right of center.

Republicans do not need to fundamentally change their approach to policies like government spending and taxes to be palatable to minorities.

The party's real problem has been too many disparaging, dismissive comments that serve no purpose but to divide.

But Professor Reed's essay is part of our nation's larger problem of needlessly demonizing those with whom we disagree. To equate the appointment of conservative blacks with poll taxes is not only irresponsible but also downright repugnant.

KENNETH SIMON
Philadelphia, Dec. 19, 2012

To the Editor:

As a 79-year-old African-American born in North Carolina who grew up in Texas, I remember that time when, as Adolph L. Reed Jr. writes, "white Southern Democrats once used cynical manipulations — poll taxes, grandfather clauses, literacy tests — to get around the 15th Amendment."

But I think that Mr. Reed is a bit hasty in his cynicism about what Representative Tim Scott might bring to the Senate as a Republican who is African-American. I recall the Congressional Black Caucus proclaiming, "We have no permanent friends, no permanent enemies — just permanent interests."

I consider myself a strong supporter of President Obama. But the needs of the nation and the African-American community are best met when Republicans and Democrats blend the best of their perspectives.

My hope is that Mr. Scott will be as effective as a conservative Republican senator as Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts, another African-American, was as a moderate-liberal Republican.

GILBERT H. CALDWELL
Asbury Park, N.J., Dec. 21, 2012

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Editorial: ‘Fiscal-Cliff’ Endgame

Just before the Christmas break, negotiations on the so-called fiscal cliff ended on an absurdist note. House Republicans not only rejected President Obama's overly generous budget deal, including his offer to lift the income threshold for higher tax rates to $400,000 a year from $250,000, they also rejected their own leadership's proposal to raise the threshold for higher taxes to $1 million and to preserve tax breaks for the heirs of multimillion-dollar estates.

Most of the fiscal-cliff discussion has focused on higher income tax rates from the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts and automatic across-the-board spending cuts. But failure to reach a deal by year-end would also bring about deeper and more immediate pain for low- and middle-income Americans.

No deal means the end of federal unemployment benefits, averaging $290 a week. Some two million people would be cut off immediately, and nearly one million more who would be cut off in the first quarter of 2013. It means the end of the 2 percent payroll tax cut, which, for the past two years, has reduced taxes for 125 million households, boosting pay by nearly $1,000 a year for the typical household making $50,000.

It also means the end of improvements in tax credits for low-income working families, as well as a credit for low- and middle-income families with college costs, enacted in 2009. If the credits are pared, some 25 million Americans would lose an average of about $1,000 a year in benefits in 2013, and roughly eight million children would either fall into poverty or sink deeper into poverty. The child tax credit for a single mother working full time at the minimum wage, for instance, would be cut from $1,725 to $165. That would be a huge and shameful step backward.

Failure to resolve the fiscal cliff would also force 28 million Americans, most of them making between $100,000 and $500,000 a year, to pay the alternative minimum tax when they file their 2012 tax returns next year. Their situation is obviously not comparable to that of the working poor, but it is also unfair. The alternative tax was supposed to apply to multimillionaires whose tax breaks reduce their tax liability below a level that is considered a minimum fair share. But, for more than a decade, it has not operated that way. Rather, superrich Americans have largely escaped the alternative tax, while those further down the income scale are ensnared — unless Congress votes to exempt them from the tax that they were never intended to pay.

With only five days left to make any progress this year, President Obama has sensibly called on Congress to pass a scaled-back plan that would extend the Bush-era tax cuts on incomes below $250,000, suspend the automatic spending cuts and extend federal jobless benefits. He has also called for a quick fix to the alternative minimum tax, so that the tax filing season can proceed without the administrative nightmare of retroactive adjustment.

All that would help to stabilize household budgets — and the economy, which has shown signs of slowing recently, and which, in the absence of a deal, has no hope of faster growth in early 2013.

Passage of Mr. Obama's scaled-back plan would also buy time to reach a bigger deal later — one that provides additional government spending to replace the stimulus that will be lost when the payroll tax cut expires and makes the low-income tax credits permanent, coupled with a higher debt limit and with deficit reduction that takes place as the economy recovers.

But if Congress cannot approve a deal by New Year's Day, the anticipated sell-off on Wall Street in early January would, one hopes, force House Republicans to budge.

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Editorial: The Gun-Game Complex

In its bizarre response last week to the shootings in Newtown, Conn., the National Rifle Association heaped blame on "vicious, violent video games" for corrupting young Americans and called them the "filthiest form of pornography." As it turns out, many of those very games have marketing relationships with the makers of firearms and ammunition, which are also big financial supporters of the N.R.A., through deals that appear to be designed to increase sales of their deadly wares.

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As Barry Meier and Andrew Martin reported in The Times this week, the gun industry works in partnership with the makers of games like Medal of Honor Warfighter and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 to publicize their brands to potential customers.

In the case of Medal of Honor, its maker, Electronic Arts, proudly and prominently promoted its ties to the gun industry by listing on its Web sites partners that included the McMillan Group, a gun and ammunition producer, and Magpul Industries, which makes gun magazines and other firearm equipment. The company's Web site proudly declares the bona fides of its game with the motto "Authentic Game. Authentic Brands." and, for a time, even offered a direct link to the Web sites of the companies where its young customers could peruse catalogs of real weapons. While those links have been removed, the Web site still encourages visitors to "Check out the McMillan Website and shoot to win!"

These troubling relationships expose the N.R.A.'s disingenuous strategy of blaming the media, songwriters, filmmakers and anybody else it can think of for mass shootings while denying that the association, which is the most influential opponent of sensible gun-control policies, bears any responsibility for the growing number of massacres like Newtown and Columbine.

On Friday, Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the association, excoriated games like Bulletstorm, another game made by Electronic Arts. Will he and his association now speak just as harshly about the firearms producers that support and try to generate sales of their weapons by agreeing to have their likeness used in such games?

When asked about the relationships between gun makers and the video game industry, an N.R.A. spokesman said that the association had no comment because it does not speak for the firearms industry and simply represents America's gun owners. But that claim is completely hollow since companies like the McMillan Group and Magpul support the association through corporate donations and other initiatives like a giveaway of ammunition magazines and other equipment on the association's Facebook page that was later taken down. These ties make clear that the N.R.A. is an aggressive supporter of the firearm industry, which benefits financially from its powerful lobbying efforts to prevent regulations on gun sales and ownership.

In responding to The Times's reporters, Electronic Arts defended its use of images of real guns in its games as no different than the company's use of licensed images of sports teams or buildings to give its games a real-life-like appearance. In addition, some gun makers and video game companies also said such deals do not include payments to have their weapons included in games. But regardless of whether money changed hands, this kind of marketing is deeply disturbing because it aims to connect the visceral thrill of video games directly with real weapons in the minds of a young, impressionable audience.

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Editorial: Egypt’s Flawed Constitution

Ideally, a new constitution in Egypt would unite citizens around a consensus vision for their country and set a firm foundation for a democratic transition. The Islamist-backed constitution that took effect this week has only exacerbated divisions and left millions of non-Islamists feeling disenfranchised, angry and determined to force changes in the document.

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If there is to be a durable solution, President Mohamed Morsi will have to take the lead in steering Egypt out of the chaos he did so much to create and toward compromise, including amendments to constitutional provisions many Egyptians find objectionable. He sounded a conciliatory note in a speech Wednesday, though he made no concessions. But the opposition — secularists, liberals and Coptic Christians — also has an important role. If it wants a larger voice in government, then it needs to behave like a responsible opposition, organizing and forging a common agenda among themselves and running candidates for the lower house of Parliament in elections expected in two months.

Although the constitutional referendum that concluded Saturday passed with about 64 percent "yes" votes, only 32.9 percent of nearly 52 million registered voters cast ballots. That, in turn, reflects disgust with a political process that included violent street protests and a president who, for a time, asserted dictatorial powers.

The constitution would fulfill some basic demands of the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak by ending the all-powerful presidency and strengthening Parliament. But it would also give Egypt's generals much of the power and privilege they had in the Mubarak era, and it is weak on civil rights.

After Mr. Morsi signed the decree on Tuesday putting the charter into effect, he relinquished legislative power to the usually toothless Shura Council, or upper house of Parliament. While that is a sign of progress, the council, like the government, is Islamist-dominated. It would be a serious mistake if the Shura Council, which itself will relinquish lawmaking responsibilities once the lower house is elected, overplayed its hand and enacted laws that provoked the opposition even more.

The State Department has urged Mr. Morsi to seek compromise. Egypt needs stability. Since 2010, its foreign currency reserves have plummeted from $36 billion to $15 billion, and, on Tuesday, there were signs that some Egyptians were hoarding dollars.

The country requires a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund but can't complete the deal until fiscal reforms are enacted — reforms that would go down more easily if Egyptians trusted the government and felt they were part of a plan that would benefit the common good. Other aid, from the United States and elsewhere, also is waiting on the fund and reforms.

Egyptians can continue internecine warfare and watch their economy collapse. Or they can pull together and a build a more constructive future. It's their choice.

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Op-Ed Columnist: How Giving Became Cool

It was 15 years ago that Ted Turner needed something interesting to say in a speech — and decided, in a rush, to give away $1 billion.

"I was on my way to New York to make the speech," Turner recalled to me. "I just thought, what am I going to say?"

So, in front of a stunned dinner audience, he announced a $1 billion gift to United Nations causes such as fighting global poverty.

In nominal terms, before adjusting for inflation, that semiaccidental donation was, at the time, believed to be the biggest single gift ever made, and it has helped transform philanthropy.

Tycoons used to compete for their place on the Forbes and Fortune lists of wealthiest people. If they did give back, it was often late in life and involved museums or the arts. They spent far more philanthropic dollars on oil paintings of women than on improving the lives of real women.

Turner's gift helped change that culture, reviving the tradition of great philanthropists like Rockefeller and Carnegie. Turner publicly began needling other billionaires — including Bill Gates and Warren Buffett — to be more generous. That was a breach of etiquette, but it worked.

"It's a starting point for me of this modern era of high-profile big public giving," reflected Matthew Bishop, co-author of "Philanthrocapitalism," a terrific book about how the business world is reshaping philanthropy. "He called on others to step up, which did have a crystallizing effect on others. It allowed journalists and others who were talking to Bill Gates to say: 'Why aren't you giving more?' " Then they tormented Buffett with the same question.

Ultimately, Gates and Buffett made huge contributions that are transforming the struggle against global disease and poverty. My hunch is that Gates will be remembered less for his work on personal computers than for his accomplishments against malaria, AIDS and poverty itself.

Gates and Buffett are both now recruiters for the Giving Pledge, which commits zillionaires to give away at least half their wealth. The giving pledge adds to the expectation that those who have won the global jackpot should give something back.

Turner channeled his money through the United Nations Foundation, where it was leveraged to get other contributions so as to bring $2 billion to finance causes from malaria to polio, from climate change to family planning.

The gift brought new respect to the United Nations and made it increasingly fashionable for billionaires to worry about global poverty. These tycoons bring not just their checkbooks to the table but also a business sensibility that introduces greater rigor and evaluation to the world of bleeding hearts.

All this has helped shine a greater spotlight on neglected issues — which, in turn, has led to extraordinary results. A study this month reported that infant mortality around the world dropped by more than half from 1990 to 2010. That's millions of lives saved each year.

Of course, not everybody has gotten the memo. Take Donald Trump, who has contributed his name to a foundation but little more. An investigation by The Smoking Gun Web site described him as possibly "the least charitable billionaire in the United States," for he apparently gave the foundation just $3.7 million — over 20 years. Trump, who has said he is worth $7 billion, is not even the largest contributor to his own foundation.

(A spokesman for Trump suggested that it would be "totally incorrect" to characterize him as uncharitable, saying that he has also donated land in upstate New York for public parks and "millions of dollars" to other causes.)

Turner isn't shy about encouraging others to jump on board. When I asked if he had any advice for my readers, he grew particularly animated: "You don't have to have any money to make a difference; you can pick up trash walking down the street, and I do that all the time," he said. "You can volunteer your time. You can be a big brother or a big sister."

Look, it makes me a little squeamish to extol a billionaire, for our society already has too much worship of the wealthy — and, in any case, the working poor in America are often more generous in percentage terms (and in volunteering) than those far better off.

That said, it warms my heart that a mogul donated $1 billion to enliven a speech, didn't even put his name on the foundation and then let the money quietly save lives around the world.

If you're still reading, Donald Trump, it's your move.

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Op-Chart: The Year in Questions

If, as Soren Kierkegaard believed, life is best understood backward, then the holidays are an ideal time to attempt to unravel the secrets of our age through an end-of-the-year quiz. Below are more than a hundred questions to ponder over a cup of coffee, with your feet up. For, as Kierkegaard also knew, "Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good." (Answers will appear tomorrow.)

MATCH THE TWEET TO THE TWEETER

1. "I highly approve of Romney's decision to be kind and gentle to the retard."

2. "This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!"

3. "One of the biggest pleasures during potato-picking-season was to throw rotten potatoes in the faces of your loved ones."

4. "GALE CRATER I AM IN YOU!!!"

5. "Uh egrejvvvmhhhkncb vvuk jhugjvklyju hgi@yj Ji June v"

6. "RIP Avalanna. i love you"

7. "Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart."

8. "Why is Jewish owned press so consistently anti- Israel in every crisis?"

QUESTIONS

1. Which vessel was captained by Francesco Schettino when it capsized in January?

2. To which stars was Blue Ivy Carter born?

3. To what speech did Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana reply?

4. Who sought asylum in Ecuador's London embassy?

5. Which publication announced it would go out of print, after 244 years?

6. Where was Expo 2012 held?

7. Who shot Trayvon Martin?

8. What caused the cancellation of the opening day of the Republican National Convention?

9. Who were the moderators of the first, second and third presidential debates?

10. Who was the moderator of the vice-presidential debate?

11. Who debated in "The Rumble in the Air-Conditioned Auditorium"?

12. At a showing of which movie did James Eagan Holmes allegedly kill 12 people and wound 58 others?

13. What is Alana Thompson better known as?

14. How many Tour de France titles was Lance Armstrong stripped of?

15. Which Ugandan warlord did Jason Russell expose, before allegedly exposing himself on the streets of San Diego?

16. Which punk band are Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich members of?

17. The Taliban shot Malala Yousafzai because of her advocacy of what cause?

18. How did Lydia Callis prove a silver lining to the clouds of Hurricane Sandy?

19. Who beat whom 4-6, 7-5, 6-3, 6-4 to take his seventh such title, and where?

20. Who is Ri Sol-ju's husband?

21. "P4" quit after going "All In." Who is he?

22. Which TV show did Angus T. Jones describe as "filth"

23. Who is Park Jae-sang, and what is his style?

24. President Obama visited the country where his grandfather worked as a cook. Which country was it?

25. What did Officer Lawrence DePrimo give to Jeffrey Hillman?

26. Why were the New York Road Runners stopped in their tracks?

27. Who fell 24 miles?

28. What was the subject of the Leveson Inquiry?

29. What was Clint's four-legged friend at the Republican National Convention?

30. What shrunk from 9.7 inches, diagonally, to 7.9?

31. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to…?

32. How did the D.J.'s Mel Greig and Michael Christian make world headlines?

33. What crazy word did Congress ban from use in federal legislation?

34. Who didn't do what in "a two-hour and 50-something"?

35. Who is "never ever ever ever getting back together. Like, ever"?

36. Whom did Megyn Kelly ask, "Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better?"

37. Who publicly insulted Sandra Fluke?

38. Which adversaries shared a lunch of white turkey chili and grilled chicken salad?

39. Which previously all-male club did Condoleezza Rice and Darla Moore join in August?

40. Which puppet did Kevin Clash control?

41. What is hyperemesis gravidarum a rare and severe form of?

42. Who sang the national anthem at the 2012 Super Bowl?

43. In what capacity did Paolo Gabriele serve Pope Benedict XVI?

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