Independent voices from the TWT Communities

The Treasury Department loves redesigning our money. A new $20 bill began circulating a decade ago, the $10 was changed in 2006, and the $5 was modified in 2008. In October, Ben Franklin will grace a new $100 that includes features that are supposed to make the work of counterfeiters harder.

When you hear that Congress has taken up the "farm bill," what images come to mind? Farmers in overalls, driving beat-up tractors, trying to scratch out a living from the soil? A lot of politicians are counting on that.

Among the 140 participants at the Bilderberg Conference that begins Thursday in the spectacular Grove Hotel, some 20 miles northwest of London: American Enterprise Institute fellow Richard Perle, former CIA Director David H. Petraeus, former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, former Treasury secretaries Timothy F. Geithner and Robert Rubin, Washington Post CEO Donald Graham, Stratfor geopolitical analyst Robert Kaplan, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and The Economist Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait.

President Obama wants to be involved in drafting the curriculum in our local schools. It's part of an initiative called "Common Core," the brainchild of state educational bureaucrats crying out for more centralization.

The National Security Agency, the electronic spy and code-breaking service whose name frequently is mentioned with the words "super-secret," recently declassified details of its history.

Anyone who reads a daily newspaper such as The Washington Times will regularly see references to public opinion polls. The polling data gathered from trends and insights has historically provided helpful guidance for consumers, academics and businesses.

A University of South California political science professor was captured on video calling former President George W. Bush lazy, stupid and incompetent — a mentally unstable man who wasted his youth on drugs and alcohol.

It has happened again. Our gaffe-prone president has filed another blunder on his presidential record. At the dedication of George W. Bush's presidential library, he invoked history with his usual mastery of detail. He placed President John F. Kennedy in Air Force One, "on the flight back from Russia, after negotiating with Nikita Khrushchev at the height of the Cold War."
I attended the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas last Thursday ("Emotional Bush at presidential library dedication: 'Our nation's best days lie ahead,'" Web, April 25). It was a profoundly moving event. The day was gloriously beautiful, the crowd of 10,000-plus was in a joyous mood, and the event itself was well-organized and went off without a hitch. I was happy to run into more than a few old friends and colleagues, including some I had not seen since Iraq in 2003 or 2004. Of course, the event was a "who's who" of former world leaders, state and local officials and mobs of former Bush administration officials, of which I proudly was one.

An emotional former President George W. Bush dedicated his presidential library and museum Thursday, calling it a tribute to his pursuit of freedom and to America's bright future.

Shortly after Barack Obama was elected in 2008, a fellow reporter who'd covered President George W. Bush all eight years told me she'd had enough of the travel and stress and strain of the White House beat, that she was moving on.

President Obama came into office promising to be the opposite of George W. Bush, but after nearly five years as commander in chief, his policies are more like his Republican predecessor than he would care to acknowledge.

George W. Bush's turbulent presidency, from the Florida vote recount to the Great Recession, from 9/11 to Iraq, will go on display for posterity Thursday with the dedication of the $250 million presidential library and museum.

Late-night comedian Bill Maher has an idea on how Hillary Rodham Clinton can win a presidential bid in 2016: She needs to be more like Jimmy Carter.
Here are just a few reasons how that is so: the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the African Growth and Opportunity Act, anti-malaria and education programs and, as Mr. Carter rightly pointed out, the peace treaty between southern and northern Sudan and the subsequent founding of the new nation of South Sudan in 2011.
he stressed that Israel setting the Palestinian murderers free is a necessary condition for peace, Israel Today reports.