Marijuana should be legalized, regulated and taxed. The push to repeal federal prohibition should come from the states, and it should begin with the state of Washington. In 1998, Washington was one of the earliest to vote for medical marijuana. It was a leap of faith, and the right decision. In 2003, Seattle was one of the first places in America to vote to make simple marijuana possession the l...

Largely hidden in its attack on the federal budget, the House of Representatives has approved a key Republican campaign promise to big business: Protecting it from what the new majority argues are the handcuffs of environmental safeguards. The Republicans would cuff the Environmental Protection Agency instead. If they prevail in the Senate and overcome a White House veto, they would hobble the C...

It comes with a nice office and a grand title. You would probably have a pretty generous expense account. And there may well be a lucrative consulting gig with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. when it is all over. Even so, you would have to be bordering on insanity to accept the role of European Central Bank president when Jean-Claude Trichet steps down in October this year. It’s the job from hell. The...

Target has adopted new guidelines for donations to trade associations that prohibit the use of the company’s contributions in political campaigns. The decision is a victory for gay rights activists, who objected to the retailer’s donation to a group that supported a candidate opposed to same-sex marriage. But Target’s turnaround has a wider importance. It shows that consumers and activists can ho...

The nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People & the Press has released a fascinating poll that finds that people on the West Coast are far more likely to regard their states’ budget crises as “very serious” and are increasingly open to solving them through a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. Those findings suggest that circumstances and popular attitudes may be turning in favo...

After a seven-month hunt for its new leader, the Federation of Korean Industries has finally installed Huh Chang-soo, GS Group chairman, as its chairman. The new chief of the nation’s most powerful business lobby will certainly have his hands full as he tries to reset its relations with the government. The FKI has been denounced for pursuing the interests of big businesses and nothing else. But ...

Incumbent lawmakers tend to put their reelection before anything else. Nothing is wrong with their single-mined pursuit of reelection unless they engage in an act that can be morally or legally sanctioned. Still, they may cause problems for their party if their actions, though taken legitimately for the sake of their reelection, conflict with their party’s policies. It may also create a problem ...

A part from agreeing on a set of indicators to measure economic imbalances, the Group of 20 emerging and developed economies that met in Paris last week shared the observation that rising prices of primary industry commodities including food are becoming a risk factor for the global economy. Finance ministers and central bankers from the G20 economies agreed to analyze the causes of excessive pr...

It was a bleak scene that prevailed after Tuesday’s earthquake in New Zealand ― buildings and other structures were reduced to piles of rubble, including an old British-style brick church. The disaster that struck Christchurch, the largest city on the country’s South Island, has palpably demonstrated the ferocity of quakes that have their focus just below urban areas, known as near-field temblor...

The Philippines sent a special envoy to Taipei on Monday to explain away a misunderstanding in regard to its deportation of 14 Taiwanese nationals to China rather than Taiwan for trial on fraud charges. Manuel Roxas, a former senator and confidant of Filipino President Benigno Aquino III, refused to apologize on Wednesday for what Manila calls a regrettable incident. It all started right after 2...

Korea’s inflation woes are deepening as the worsening turmoil in Libya has sent oil prices on an upward spiral. The price of Dubai crude oil, South Korea’s benchmark, stayed above the $100 mark for the three consecutive days on Thursday. If the Dubai oil price remains above $100 for two more days, the government has to upgrade its energy alert level from the current “blue” to “yellow.” The surge...