Six essential questions about the deficit, Wall Street and Washington ASK THIS Fiscal expert Stan Collender points out that the bond market is not demanding deficit reduction -- in fact, quite the opposite. So where is the Washington establishment's obsession with the deficit coming from? Whose interests does it serve?

For a model health care system, how about Australia's? ASK THIS 'Medicare for all' isn’t just an expression in Australia, it’s a reality, and there aren’t any death panels or government intervention in the choice of doctors or treatment. Bill Claiborne, a longtime Washington Post reporter now living in Australia, describes the system.

How severe is the public employee pension problem across the U.S.? (Hint: Is a $3 trillion debt severe?) ASK THIS Columnist and author Steven Greenhut looks at the ongoing pension issue, including abuses of it, and deals with some of the key questions.

It’s time to do more than just say the economy is the No. 1 issue ASK THIS If voters are to go into the midterm elections with any understanding at all, the press needs to get away from he-said, she-said reporting and look into the positions that candidates and the two parties are taking. Martin Lobel offers some vital questions.

A how-not-to guide | News flash! Journalists prepared to once again utterly misread annual Social Security Trustees report
ASK THIS| August 04, 2010
Thursday's report will once again describe an essential program in admirable fiscal health. But every year, journalists twist the facts to fit a narrative favored by the political elite: that the program is in crisis. Rather than manufacturing a false drama that shakes people's confidence about their future benefits, two Social Security experts write, reporters should stick to the facts.

Are the CIA torture tapes next? | New questions raised about prosecutor who cleared Bush officials in U.S. Attorney firings
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Four days before Nora Dannehy was appointed to investigate the Bush administration’s U.S. attorney firing scandal, a team of lawyers she led was found to have illegally suppressed evidence in a major political corruption case. Andrew Kreig writes that this previously unreported fact calls her entire investigation into question as well as that of a similar investigation by her colleague John Durham of DOJ and CIA decision-making involving torture.

What's the mission? | Possibly seeking the impossible
ASK THIS| July 20, 2010
The American effort in Afghanistan is doomed if the Afghans don’t share our goals, and if the Taliban have a sanctuary in Pakistan. Are we prepared to stay there as long as it takes?

Letter from Des Moines | Which is more bizarre: The Iowa GOP platform or the failure of the press to report it?
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The platform, claiming to promote moderation, would allow concealed guns in schools, end minimum wage and abortion laws, teach creationism, and impeach ‘activist judges.’ Anybody paying attention? The Iowa press sure doesn't seem to be.

Cui bono? | Afghanistan’s mineral wealth won’t help Afghanistan or the U.S. -- but it might help China
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The Chinese won’t hesitate to pay off the people who need to get paid off in order to get access to Afghanistan's natural resources, says author and professor Michael Klare. But the Afghan people and the American people have nothing to celebrate.

Obama's Afghan strategy | A war that only the War Machine could love
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President Obama's Afghanistan war strategy is failing everyone except his enemies and the profiteers. Author Ann Jones writes that the war is generating immense sums of money for relatively small numbers of people, along with immense debt for our nation, immense sacrifice from our combat soldiers, and intense despair for ordinary Afghans.

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