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President Obama has taken a dramatic step regarding the immigration problems that are wracking the nation's purse and conscience. Out of the blue, he is sending 1,200 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to back up the Border Patrol. He will ask Congress for $500 million to boost border security. This marks a real change in the Obama administration's approach to immigration, which until now has been confused and half-hearted, with lots of talk about a "comprehensive" immigration policy but without much enthusiasm or action.

Little attention has been paid recently to Nicaragua. "Only right," you may well respond. "After all, that tiny, troubled country in Central America became only relatively important when the Marxist Sandinistas took over in 1979 -- becoming temporarily the 'second Cuba' in the hemisphere." But recently, despite the dearth of news coverage, Nicaragua has become pivotal again. Recent events there confirm that there is indeed a new pattern emerging in the hemisphere that is certainly cause for alarm.

Oddly enough, of all the myriad issues the Obama administration has tirelessly -- and sometimes tiresomely -- addressed, it has been utterly silent over the highly emotional one of immigration. Not a mention of the fact that, despite some runaway returnees to Mexico from this bad economy, there remain millions of illegals living off-the-grid lives in America. Over the years, generally 80 percent of Americans polled have said they want immigration reform, yet not a word from the president on that issue. Even more silence from Congress. So I went recently to the 30th annual meeting of the major immigration...

-- The strangest thing about our "now-you-see it, now-you-don't" relationship with Somalia, that ungoverned space on the Horn of Africa, is why we have any relationship at all. Myself, I remember it well. I spent a week there on a USIA speaking tour in 1980. That was the country's "Age of Pericles," and it was pretty awful then.

Before the inauguration of Barack Obama, five would have got you 50 that Hillary Clinton, so long the wailing Greek chorus to her husband's problems, would now be the one who talked too frivolously overseas and caused problems for the new president. How wrong one can be! Now, as the administration enters the serious days of August, when wars so often start and leaders reveal their weak suits, puzzling recharacterizations are already beginning. It is Joe Biden, who from his long Senate background should know about as much as anybody about foreign affairs, who is traveling about the world making...

For decades, even centuries, the bane of Latin American democracy has been the military takeover. Democrats from Guatemala to Peru and from Argentina to Chile have fought valiantly to keep political power from falling into the uncompromising hands of the generals. And now, after an amazing number of years without military coups, we wake up and find one topping the news, in little Honduras in Central America. It happened in the night, of course. The elected president, a wealthy rancher named Manuel Zelaya, was ousted from his home Sunday in his pajamas and unostentatiously flown to neighboring Costa Rica. Of...

If a writer were to make the ultimate satiric remark about Islam's increasing presence in America, he would say something like, "And soon they'll be having the 'call to prayer' in Harvard Square." Except, for those who have been paying attention, the line is neither ironic nor humorous: The call to prayer of a Muslim muezzin or priest was broadcast in Harvard Yard at the Widener Library in Cambridge several times in February, as well as on earlier occasions. As well, the undergraduate college has this winter restricted one of the three largest gyms on its main campus to "women...

NASA appoints Constellation Program managers NASA NEWS RELEASE Posted: November 2, 2005 Jeffrey Hanley has been appointed manager of NASA's Constellation Program. He will lead development of the nation's new spacecraft and launch system, which as part of the Vision for Space Exploration will take astronauts to the moon, Mars and beyond. Mark Geyer was appointed as deputy program manager. The Constellation Program will be based at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. All of NASA's 10 field centers have program roles and responsibilities. The program will develop launch and transfer vehicles, landers and other systems. Initial missions will launch...

But the biggest reason behind Cindy Sheehan's lightning effect on the country is that she has been saying -- with her actions, gestures and intonations, if not exactly in words -- what has been left deliberately unsaid in America until now: That the war in Iraq is useless, and that all those Americans who died or were wounded there died and suffered in vain. That Iraq is not and never was a war that America needed to fight, but that it was an adventure on the part of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith and the rest. And that it still...

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Now, with the American election over, the negative images of Europe planted in Americans' minds over the last four years by the fervently anti-European Bush administration will surely grow. Europe is a bunch of pacifists who wouldn't lift a sword in their own defense if the Mongols themselves reappeared! Organized Europe -- i.e., the European Union -- doesn't care a whit about helping to democratize the world, or "regime change" in dictatorships! Finally, Europe is "old" (particularly you-know-who), and we Americans are eternally, innocently, hopefully young! The only problem with these "truths," which have predominated in the...