Editorials

With a drawdown of 33,000 U.S. surge troops now under way, and plans for all U.S. and NATO combat forces to exit Afghanistan by December 2014, the fate of the civilian mission -- the diplomats and aid workers -- in Afghanistan is uncertain.

The U.S. Congress may have narrowly avoided a government-debt disaster, but financial troubles are resurging across the Atlantic. If European leaders can’t find the political will to implement the drastic measures needed to stem their crisis, markets could soon put them in an untenable position.

Here are three remarkable facts about the United States Postal Service: Its union workers have no- layoff contracts; no post office branches can be closed solely because they lose money; and, as revealed in an investigation by Bloomberg Businessweek, the service is so dependent on low- profit junk mail for revenue that it has a marketing officer tasked with lobbying banks not to switch to electronic statements.

In 2009, Congress extended jobless benefits to 99 weeks, the longest period in U.S. history. Those payments were meant to help unemployed workers get through a tough recession, while shoring up a faltering economy. Was it a wise approach? And with extended benefits expiring at year’s end, should compensation be prolonged again?

The deal reached by the U.S. Congress to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling has spared the nation an immediate catastrophe while potentially setting a path for longer-term disasters.

Should health insurance companies be required to cover the entire range of birth-control services, and do so in full -- no copayments, no deductibles?

With this summer’s debt-ceiling fiasco, it is clearer than ever that Washington’s leadership is not what it used to be. For that reason, there is a greater need for the U.S. to act in concert with other major powers to solve international problems.

One healthy development to emerge from the generally poisonous debt-ceiling debate is that some Republicans have come to embrace the phrase “corporate welfare.”

Visit the Federal Aviation Administration’s website, and you will be greeted by a short video in which the U.S. agency urges pilots, mechanics, suppliers and aircraft builders to be mindful of passengers’ lives. “We all have to make a commitment to put safety first,” declares FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt.

In the history of medicine, only one disease has ever been eradicated, but it was a terrible one. Smallpox, which claimed 2 million lives in 1967, was stamped out by 1980 through an enormous vaccine campaign.