The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page told a riveting story Wednesday about parents in Compton, California, who are trying to stage a revolution in their local school, one of the worst in the city. They’re wielding a new “parent trigger” law in the state to force out the administrators and bring in a charter school operator. They’re learning that parents who put their children first are seen as

President Obama has thrown his support behind a bill to let states opt out of key features of the healthcare reform law before they take effect, including the controversial requirement that virtually all adult Americans buy insurance. The caveat, though, is that states must offer alternatives that provide comparable coverage to at least as many of the uninsured as the new law would, at no greater

The intellectual roots of the current democracy movement in the Middle East lie with those Muslim thinkers who hold that there is conceptual compatibility between Islam, modernity and democracy. They put stress on concepts such as liberty, human rights and human dignity, freedom of thought, scientific inquiry, contextual interpretation of sharia, the legal principles of the Koran, support for demo

Water resources management, highlighted in the No 1 central document issued in January, will in all probability be discussed at the annual sessions of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Water resources management is very important for China because the per capita availability of water in the country is about one-third of the world average. Pe

Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what your country has done for you lately.With apologies to John F. Kennedy, that’s what concerned citizens should be doing to get their heads around the debate in Washington about the appropriate size and role of government.Despite how riveted we are by Washington blood sports, average citizens don’t always understand what “government” means. That’s n

As the world’s second largest economy, China’s continuous and concrete efforts to raise its energy efficiency are important not only for itself, but for the world. That China has managed to cut energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product by 19.06 percent between 2006 and 2010 on the 2005 levels is a cause for both optimism and caution. It is encouraging to see that the Chinese economy ha

No one doubts the importance of U.S. action to end the regime of Moammar Gadhafi. Unlike Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, whose overthrow inspired a resistance movement in Libya, Gadhafi has made war on his own people. The United States’ response has been muscular, if delayed. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton explicitly have called for Gadhafi’s removal, a dramatic de

On April 7, 1977, members of the revolutionary committees had plastered a poster of Moammar Gadhafi’s image on my father’s car. On that same day they had, under the dictator’s direct supervision, publicly hanged several dissidents in Benghazi.On the day of the execution, the Ghibli winds blowing from the desert filled the air with dust and turned the sky into a reddish-gray canopy. I’d taken a bus

Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi remains an obsession for advocates of decency. He personifies what is unknowable about the uprisings roiling the Arab world. What does the revolution mean, besides being an outlet for rage? What new order might emerge? After unwanted leaders are removed, what is there to stop like-minded individuals from insinuating themselves into power? Of what enduring value could

The Democratic Party of Japan and its junior coalition partner People’s New Party managed to pass the fiscal 2011 92.411 trillion yen budget through the Lower House early Tuesday morning. The opposition-controlled Upper House is certain to vote down the budget. But the budget will be enacted anyhow. Article 60 of the Constitution says that the budget will be enacted within 30 days of being sent to

As of January this year, Taiwanese travelers can visit the Schengen Area visa-free, marking yet another step toward the island’s goal of acquiring wider visa exemption privileges for its passport holders.The inclusion of the European Union brings the number of countries and territories offering Taiwanese citizens visa exemptions to 96, with 75 granting Republic of China passport holders visa-waive