By Douglas Holtz-Eakin
The young drop coverage to avoid higher premiums

Surrenders, like modern wars, are not what they used to be. Tuesday marks the 68th anniversary of the surrender of the German armies that ended the European half of World War II. The last explosions of the war were the popping of champagne corks at 3 o'clock in the morning in the city of Reims in northern France.

Analysts agree that the erosion of the Syrian regime’s capabilities is accelerating, that it continues to retreat, making a rebel breakthrough and an Islamist victory increasingly likely.
Analysts agree that the erosion of the Syrian regime's capabilities is accelerating, that it continues to retreat, making a rebel breakthrough and an Islamist victory increasingly likely. In response, I am changing my policy recommendation from neutrality to something that causes me, as a humanitarian and decades-long foe of the Assad dynasty, to pause before writing: Western governments should support the malign dictatorship of Bashar Assad.
Killing influential Russians overseas is nothing new for Russian leaders. It is almost like a tradition.
Residents of the southern Vermont town that was once the home-in-exile of former Soviet dissident and writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn are considering whether to convert an historic church into an exhibit to honor the Nobel laureate's 18 years in Cavendish.
Residents of the southern Vermont town that was once the home-in-exile of former Soviet dissident and writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn are considering whether to convert an historic church into an exhibit to honor the Nobel laureate's 18 years in Cavendish.

For some gun shop owners, President Obama's push to tighten Second Amendment rights isn't all bad. One New Hampshire gun store has a picture of the president, along with photos of two AK-47s, next to this banner in its front window: "Firearms Salesman of the Year," CBS reports.
Alexei German, a Russian film director best known for his works offering a bitter view of life in the Soviet Union under dictator Josef Stalin, died Thursday, his son said.
When famed viola player Yuri Bashmet declared that he "adored" President Vladimir Putin, he stirred little controversy in a country where classical musicians have often curried favor with the political elite.

Although he never held elective office, Harry Hopkins was arguably the most important figure in President Franklin Roosevelt's administration. As a federal relief administrator, he dispensed billions of dollars to the relief programs that were a hallmark of the New Deal. Then, even though he had absolutely no foreign policy experience, he became the wheelchair-bound Roosevelt's personal envoy to Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin in forging a joint war policy.
The German capital, center of Nazi power, represented the big prize at the end of World War II. The victorious Allies -- the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France -- occupied and divided the city into four zones. The arrangement was meant to guarantee access to all.
Time magazine has named President Obama as its Person of the Year for 2012. This has been, of course, controversial, and for the usual reasons: Much like with the president's Nobel Peace Prize, one has to wonder what he actually did to deserve it.
As the sun rose from time zone to time zone across the world on Friday, there was still no sign of the world's end _ but that didn't stop those convinced that a 5,125-year Mayan calendar predicts the apocalypse from gathering at some of the world's purported survival hot spots.
Though the Mayans never really predicted that the world would end on Friday, some New Agers are convinced that humanity's demise is indeed imminent. Or at least that it's a good excuse for a party.
Capturing the "see no (or little) evil" mentality that plagued a war-weary America in 1949 requires no small amount of research. That was post-war America. Both peace and prosperity had returned for the first time since the 1929 market crash .
He argues that the U.S. cover-up delayed a full understanding in the United States of the true nature of Stalinism — an understanding that came only later, after the Soviets exploded an atomic bomb in 1949 and after Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe were already behind the Iron Curtain.
He said the material does not appear in the record of the Congressional hearings in 1951-52, and appears to have also been suppressed.