petula dvorak

DVORAK: Easier to shoot off guns than mouths

Last Wednesday, keeping guns out of the hands of people like James Holmes, Jared Lee Loughner, Seung Hui Cho and Adam Lanza took a back seat to the political survival of a bunch of suits who cannot be moved by death, grief, the will of the people or even common sense.

By Petula Dvorak , April 24, 2013

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DVORAK: Rape: Scary stranger is not the worst part

Remember when we first started talking about date rape and acquaintance rape? The widespread assumption was that attackers were otherwise nice guys who got a little too drunk and carried things a bit too far.

By Petula Dvorak , November 23, 2012

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DVORAK: Don’t look at zoos or humans for perfection

Let’s just put aside the cute little bloody-eyed wallaby for a second. I know. You can’t, right?

By Petula Dvorak , October 05, 2012

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DVORAK: Professor has poor reaction to criticism

WASHINGTON — The American University professor who breast-fed her baby while teaching a class was inappropriate, judgmental and flat-out absurd.

By Petula Dvorak , September 14, 2012

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DVORAK: Time to stop ignoring the lacking child care system

Our nation takes care of its youngest citizens through a mishmash of neighborhood babysitters, high-paid nannies, off-the-grid, sketchy but affordable centers, homemade day cares run out of someone’s basement and the rare and difficult-to-afford corporate center that works well for the tiny population that can get in.

By Petula Dvorak , August 10, 2012

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DVORAK: Kids’ mischief and odd injuries put the ‘er’ in summer

WASHINGTON — “Two brothers were here just before you. They were playing Frisbee. With glass plates,” the emergency room nurse at Children’s National Medical Center told me.

By Petula Dvorak , July 12, 2012

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OPINION: Stay single, Bert and Ernie

WASHINGTON — Absolutely not. Bert and Ernie should not get married.

By Petula Dvorak , August 19, 2011

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Opinion: Price right with dyes for kids

WASHINGTON — We get it. Loopy cereal the color of a circus tent or yogurt that glows an unholy green is not good for us or the kids.
But when it turns out that barbecue sauce, beef bouillon, pickles, bread, the skin of oranges, cheese, meat and crescent rolls are also dyed to make you want to eat them, healthy eating becomes a game of hide-andseek that few people have time to play.

By Petula Dvorak , April 07, 2011

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Opinion: Exoneration erases only part of accused’s debt

The state of Virginia gave Thomas Haynesworth one heck of a birthday gift last week. After 27 years in prison, the commonwealth set him free. On his 46th birthday. How sweet.
The problem is, that’s only the beginning of what the government owes this man, even though Haynesworth may not see that yet.

By Petula Dvorak , March 28, 2011

Opinion: Achievement race is going down the toilet

WASHINGTON — Every year, Maria Zimmitti fields the panicked calls as summer winds down and the school year looms.
Parents leave frantic messages on her cellphone. They bombard the D.C. child psychologist with e-mails. They need her — NOW!
What’s the Bat Signal for? Pee. But more likely, poop.

By Petula Dvorak , February 11, 2011

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Opinion: Will they pat down little Sally?

Over the river and through the body scanner to grandmother’s house we go!
What a fun, new twist on traveling with the kids this holiday season. Parents get to choose between a scanner that will generate portraits of your kids looking like nude ghosts and, according to some reports, give off questionable levels of radiation, or they can take the little ones for a rubber-glove pat-down that will upend years of stranger-danger training.

By Petula Dvorak , December 30, 2010

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Opinion: Partners in crime isn’t something to aspire to, ladies

WASHINGTON — Years spent on the bench as a judge, the founder of social service organizations to help underprivileged women, a PTA mom, a grandmother, a public official — and what will most folks think of when Leslie Johnson comes up?
That bra. The cash. And the seemingly improbable physics of the whole caper.

By Petula Dvorak , November 19, 2010

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Opinion: U.S. needs a diversity lesson from Va. school

They remember their parents coming early to scoop them up from school that day. And the television channels that were changed quickly so they didn’t see the planes hitting the towers, over and over again.
So they sat in their social studies classroom at Centreville (Va.) High School last week, ready for a history lesson about the day America was devastated, back when they were just third-graders.

By Petula Dvorak , September 17, 2010

Opinion: Capital, country still straddle a racial divide

WASHINGTON — Can we stop playing make-believe on this whole race thing?
We tried to declare our country’s racial division over with and overcome once President Obama came into office.
Too many Americans believed that after the inauguration, we would have a post-racial America — a world in which white folks enjoy hip-hop, a black family lives in the White House, prosperity and equality is there for all and we just don’t have to talk about this stuff anymore.

By Petula Dvorak , September 03, 2010

Opinion: ‘Cluster’ on paper, rage in a father’s heart

It began with a neighbor dying, then an uncle who lived down the street, then all the livestock on one Maryland farm fell dead, one cow after another.
And then it hit closer to home — a wife fell terminally ill and a young daughter was gone.
The pattern became familiar, the stories swapped between neighbors sounding more and more alike: cancer, tumors, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, leukemia.

By Petula Dvorak , August 12, 2010