By Juliette Kayyem

JOPLIN, Mo. — In a nation that has had its fair share of disasters, the way towns bounce back says something — whether it's New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, New York City after Sept. 11, or the tiny town of Joplin after the tornado that killed 161 and devastated the area one year ago Tuesday.

The numbers are telling.

The tornado's winds exceeded 200 miles per hour. In addition to the deaths, more than 1,000 people were injured, 7,500 homes destroyed, and 530 businesses damaged. Nearly 600 lost pets.

To put those numbers in perspective, Joplin has only 50,000 residents. The tornado, one-half to three-quarters of a mile wide, travelled approximately 13 miles on the ground throughout the main road of the city that had just celebrated its high school graduation.

Those are the numbers Joplin was up against in its recovery — which makes its success so far all the more remarkable.

There are many theories why Joplin has rebounded the way it has: a passionate city manager; a school committee focused solely on getting children back into classrooms; citizens who gave up their day jobs to manage and administer the rebuilding; the Federal Emergency Management Agency that stood by to help and assist, but never got in the way. And money: from the federal government, the state government, private companies, even Middle Eastern nations that saw what unfolded on CNN and sent computers to every school kid here.

The numbers tell one story. But Joplin’s rebound tells a bigger story than just numbers can ever disclose.

Twitter: @juliettekayyem

By Joanna Weiss

These last few weeks have been fairly rotten, PR-wise, for certain segments of the 1 percent, between the well-paid JPMorgan Chase traders who lost a cool $2 billion to the Liberty Mutual executives whose excesses have been documented so amusingly by the Globe’s Brian McGrory. The quest for more money, and then still more, has always been a part of the American psyche. But what if most people don’t care as much about all of that anymore?

That’s the suggestion from a new national poll commissioned by Boston public relations firm Solomon McCown, which is hosting a panel discussion today on the post-recession reality it’s calling “The New Normal.” The survey of 1009 adults, conducted by Anderson Robbins Research, found that most Americans rank “success in a high-paying career” near the bottom of their most-desired aspects of the American dream.

Those polled were asked to rate the importance of eight different aspects of the dream, from “a happy marriage” to “home ownership” to “living in an environmentally responsible and sustainable way.” Marriage ranked first, with 83 percent naming it very or extremely important. A long, healthy retirement ranked second, with 77 percent. Environmentally-sustainable living, interestingly, ranked third. A high-paying career ranked last, with only 46 percent.

Another interesting tidbit, on the money front: Respondents were asked to choose which would be “a better start in life for most young people today:” a high-quality education, or $250,000 in cash. College won, with 71 percent.

You can find more poll results here or check out this nifty infographic.

By Joanna Weiss

When I interviewed Barney Frank last week about the dramatic evolution of gay rights, he was in the process of finalizing the guest list for his July wedding. He was also planning the ceremony: most notably, who would officiate.

Frank wouldn't tell me who he had chosen, but he did tell me his first choice: Margaret Marshall, the retired chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court, who wrote the Goodridge decision that legalized gay marriage in Massachusetts.

"In fact," he said, "I left a voice mail: 'Margie, will you marry me?'"

Frank said Marshall called him back laughing, and said that she would love to do it, but that she and her husband, former New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, were going to be out of the country that day.

Any speculation on who the officiant will be? Remember, in Massachusetts, anyone can get a license to perform a wedding ceremony. And we already know that it won't be President Obama.

No issue touches on more constituencies, or is more important to the welfare of the Commonwealth, than health care. The Massachusetts House and Senate have each proposed sweeping bills aimed at reducing health-care costs, while preserving the national leadership of the state’s world-class health care institutions. Negotiators from both chambers will be working on a compromise bill, with a deadline of July 31.

They’ll also be listening to the many stakeholders, from hospitals to doctors to insurers to patients to local businesses, who cite the rising cost of health care as a significant impediment to new hiring. As a Globe editorial pointed out, there are some areas of broad agreement between the two bills, but also some significant differences, particularly in the level of regulation. In the Globe’s op-edpages, former Governor Michael Dukakis has argued for a stronger regulatory hand, while former Medicare chief Donald Berwick has called on negotiators to zero in on unnecessary procedures, economist Edward L. Glaeser warned that rising health care costs are threatening our children's future, and columnist Jeff Jacoby said further regulations would backfire.

Meanwhile, much of the nation is watching Massachusetts: Its health care system will be under scrutiny throughout the presidential campaign.

Through July 31, the Globe invites its readers to offer their views in columns and posts ranging from 200 to 600 words. We will highlight the best on them in a special page on BostonGlobe.com, which will also include information about the issues at hand. Many of the pieces will be published in summary form in the op-ed pages of the Globe. Submissions can be sent to healthcare@globe.com. This is a chance for all of Massachusetts to be heard on an issue that touches every citizen. Let the discussion begin.

By Joanna Weiss

Here is what I want for Mother’s Day: Silence. Not from my kids, who are physiologically incapable of silence, but from other mothers — the ones who publish self-aggrandizing quasi-confessional books, who attack each other in comments at the bottom of blog posts, and who appear on the covers of magazines, with perfectly coiffed hair and perfectly-applied lip gloss and perhaps a preschool-aged son attached to their breasts, gazing at the camera with a look that says, “You got a problem with this?”

Yes, I have a problem: I do not want to hear about your parenting style. I don’t care where your children sleep, what they call their private parts, when they learned to play the violin, what they eat and for how long, whether you discovered your discipline ideas in China, France, kindergarten, or the belly of a spaceship.

Don’t get me wrong — this kind of stuff can make for entertaining reading, and it’s great fodder for satire. (It’s also a challenge: When I was writing “Milkshake,” my novel about the breastfeeding wars, my biggest problem was inventing outrageous things for characters to do that hadn’t already happened real life.) People love to get worked up, which is why magazines and publishers try so hard to get them angry.

But I think we’ve hit our limit. We aren't helping each other or helping ourselves; we're simply making noise. So I’m hoping that the current cover of Time, carefully calibrated for to freak out the most people possible, represents some sort of high-water mark for parental exhibitionism.

Yes, that’s a pipe dream. And yes, of course, I still want you to post this on Twitter. But if you are one of the 3.9 million mothers who have read or commented on a mommy blog in the past month, and if you are now wondering when it will be your turn to cash in, here are some simple questions about that photo in Time:

• Would they have put this woman on the cover if she didn’t look like a supermodel?

• What will her son think when he’s in junior high and somebody digs up this picture and posts it on Facebook?

• Is there such a thing as a natural act that is also an intimate act? Or are we too busy sharing to care about that?

By Alan Wirzbicki

In five years, will President Obama’s switch to support same-sex marriage on Wednesday look like a turning point in mainstream acceptance?

Or will it have the opposite effect — snuffing out the tiny but growing pro-marriage rights wing within the GOP and entrenching same-sex marriage as a partisan issue favored only by Democrats?

Although most Republicans remain opposed to same-sex marriage, a handful voted in favor of same-sex marriage rights in New York last year, and the GOP-led legislature in New Hampshire upheld the state’s same-sex marriage law earlier this year. The plain fact is that if same-sex marriage rights are to continue expanding, they’ll need to keep attracting Republican supporters.

But what happens to that contingent now? After all, there seems to be nothing that scares GOP office holders into changing their views as swiftly as Obama agreeing with them. Whether it’s health insurance mandates or cap-and-trade, reflexive partisan opposition to the president often seems to overrule those positions.

But that’s hardly Obama’s fault. It’s up to Republicans — hopefully including Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown — to keep the party from doubling-down on same-sex marriage opposition merely because Obama’s now for it.

To its credit, the GOP leadership’s response to Obama’s announcement has been muted. Presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney reaffirmed his opposition to same-sex marriage, but acknowledged how "tender and sensitive" the topic was. Congressional Republican leaders have been busy trying to change the subject back to the economy.

At the same time, though, other voices within the GOP are clearly pushing to make same-sex marriage a defining issue in November. Wednesday night, within hours of the announcement, House Republicans staged a symbolic vote reaffirming the Defense of Marriage Act.

Many Republicans are sincerely opposed to same-sex marriage, and won’t be shifting their views. The danger is that, provoked by Obama’s stand, they will make it a partisan litmus test.

Backers of same-sex marriage hope that the movement will follow the path of interracial marriage to widespread, bipartisan acceptance. But the issue could just as easily turn into abortion instead — a culture-wars battleground that hasn’t faded almost 40 years after Roe v. Wade.

To prevent that, centrist Republicans need to speak up now. Brown was an opponent of the same-sex marriage law in Massachusetts, but has since declared that he considers it settled law without actually endorsing it. But if there were ever an ideal time for Brown to declare himself for same-sex marriage, this is it.

After losing a GOP primary against a Tea Party-backed candidate on Tuesday, veteran senator Richard Lugar released this statement decrying intense partisanship in Washington:

I would like to comment on the Senate race just concluded and the direction of American politics and the Republican Party. I would reiterate from my earlier statement that I have no regrets about choosing to run for office. My health is excellent, I believe that I have been a very effective Senator for Hoosiers and for the country, and I know that the next six years would have been a time of great achievement. Further, I believed that vital national priorities, including job creation, deficit reduction, energy security, agriculture reform, and the Nunn-Lugar program, would benefit from my continued service as a Senator. These goals were worth the risk of an electoral defeat and the costs of a hard campaign.

Analysts will speculate about whether our campaign strategies were wise. Much of this will be based on conjecture by pundits who don't fully appreciate the choices we had to make based on resource limits, polling data, and other factors. They also will speculate whether we were guilty of overconfidence.

The truth is that the headwinds in this race were abundantly apparent long before Richard Mourdock announced his candidacy. One does not highlight such headwinds publically when one is waging a campaign. But I knew that I would face an extremely strong anti-incumbent mood following a recession. I knew that my work with then-Senator Barack Obama would be used against me, even if our relationship were overhyped. I also knew from the races in 2010 that I was a likely target of Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and other Super Pacs dedicated to defeating at least one Republican as a purification exercise to enhance their influence over other Republican legislators.

We undertook this campaign soberly and we worked very hard in 2010, 2011, and 2012 to overcome these challenges. There never was a moment when my campaign took anything for granted. This is why we put so much effort into our get out the vote operations.

Ultimately, the re-election of an incumbent to Congress usually comes down to whether voters agree with the positions the incumbent has taken. I knew that I had cast recent votes that would be unpopular with some Republicans and that would be targeted by outside groups.

These included my votes for the TARP program, for government support of the auto industry, for the START Treaty, and for the confirmations of Justices Sotomayor and Kagan. I also advanced several propositions that were considered heretical by some, including the thought that Congressional earmarks saved no money and turned spending power over to unelected bureaucrats and that the country should explore options for immigration reform.

It was apparent that these positions would be attacked in a Republican primary. But I believe that they were the right votes for the country, and I stand by them without regrets, as I have throughout the campaign.

From time to time during the last two years I heard from well-meaning individuals who suggested that I ought to consider running as an independent. My response was always the same: I am a Republican now and always have been. I have no desire to run as anything else. All my life, I have believed in the Republican principles of small government, low taxes, a strong national defense, free enterprise, and trade expansion. According to Congressional Quarterly vote studies, I supported President Reagan more often than any other Senator. I want to see a Republican elected President, and I want to see a Republican majority in the Congress. I hope my opponent wins in November to help give my friend Mitch McConnell a majority.

If Mr. Mourdock is elected, I want him to be a good Senator. But that will require him to revise his stated goal of bringing more partisanship to Washington. He and I share many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate. In effect, what he has promised in this campaign is reflexive votes for a rejectionist orthodoxy and rigid opposition to the actions and proposals of the other party. His answer to the inevitable roadblocks he will encounter in Congress is merely to campaign for more Republicans who embrace the same partisan outlook. He has pledged his support to groups whose prime mission is to cleanse the Republican party of those who stray from orthodoxy as they see it.

This is not conducive to problem solving and governance. And he will find that unless he modifies his approach, he will achieve little as a legislator. Worse, he will help delay solutions that are totally beyond the capacity of partisan majorities to achieve. The most consequential of these is stabilizing and reversing the Federal debt in an era when millions of baby boomers are retiring. There is little likelihood that either party will be able to impose their favored budget solutions on the other without some degree of compromise.

Unfortunately, we have an increasing number of legislators in both parties who have adopted an unrelenting partisan viewpoint. This shows up in countless vote studies that find diminishing intersections between Democrat and Republican positions. Partisans at both ends of the political spectrum are dominating the political debate in our country. And partisan groups, including outside groups that spent millions against me in this race, are determined to see that this continues. They have worked to make it as difficult as possible for a legislator of either party to hold independent views or engage in constructive compromise. If that attitude prevails in American politics, our government will remain mired in the dysfunction we have witnessed during the last several years. And I believe that if this attitude expands in the Republican Party, we will be relegated to minority status. Parties don't succeed for long if they stop appealing to voters who may disagree with them on some issues.

Legislators should have an ideological grounding and strong beliefs identifiable to their constituents. I believe I have offered that throughout my career. But ideology cannot be a substitute for a determination to think for yourself, for a willingness to study an issue objectively, and for the fortitude to sometimes disagree with your party or even your constituents. Like Edmund Burke, I believe leaders owe the people they represent their best judgment.

Too often bipartisanship is equated with centrism or deal cutting. Bipartisanship is not the opposite of principle. One can be very conservative or very liberal and still have a bipartisan mindset. Such a mindset acknowledges that the other party is also patriotic and may have some good ideas. It acknowledges that national unity is important, and that aggressive partisanship deepens cynicism, sharpens political vendettas, and depletes the national reserve of good will that is critical to our survival in hard times. Certainly this was understood by President Reagan, who worked with Democrats frequently and showed flexibility that would be ridiculed today – from assenting to tax increases in the 1983 Social Security fix, to compromising on landmark tax reform legislation in 1986, to advancing arms control agreements in his second term.

I don't remember a time when so many topics have become politically unmentionable in one party or the other. Republicans cannot admit to any nuance in policy on climate change. Republican members are now expected to take pledges against any tax increases. For two consecutive Presidential nomination cycles, GOP candidates competed with one another to express the most strident anti-immigration view, even at the risk of alienating a huge voting bloc. Similarly, most Democrats are constrained when talking about such issues as entitlement cuts, tort reform, and trade agreements. Our political system is losing its ability to even explore alternatives. If fealty to these pledges continues to expand, legislators may pledge their way into irrelevance. Voters will be electing a slate of inflexible positions rather than a leader.

I hope that as a nation we aspire to more than that. I hope we will demand judgment from our leaders. I continue to believe that Hoosiers value constructive leadership. I would not have run for office if I did not believe that.

As someone who has seen much in the politics of our country and our state, I am able to take the long view. I have not lost my enthusiasm for the role played by the United States Senate. Nor has my belief in conservative principles been diminished. I expect great things from my party and my country. I hope all who participated in this election share in this optimism.

By Lucy Berrington

The men’s crew of Tufts University was almost up the creek without a paddle this weekend after a suspension threatened to keep them out of the New England Championships. The punishment was imposed by the team’s own coaches after the rowers showed up at a spring fling event in t-shirts bearing the unauthorized slogan “Check out our cox.” An anonymous observer, spotting sexism, filed a “bias incident” report.

Judging from student message boards, the disciplinary action was widely regarded as unfair. A post on Barstool Sports Boston blamed “batshit crazy feminists and delusional school administrators.” On Thursday, after crew members apologized, the suspension was lifted by the university president.

Perhaps suspension was overly harsh. Then again, the T-shirts were overly puerile. It can seem almost futile these days to protest the sexualization of pretty much everyone and everything — but let’s try anyway. If a team representing an institution of higher education (where I’m a grad student) is aiming for clever and funny, is it unreasonable to expect a version of clever and funny that doesn't target and sexualize the one woman in the boat (the cox), or hint approvingly at the aggressively sexualized culture within some fraternities and college sports teams? And could we perhaps resist characterizing protestors as sexless, humorless crones? Some feminists will have been offended. Other feminists won’t. Anyone had the right to raise the issue.

Here’s an alternative t-shirt slogan, used at Oxford: “Non circum coitus.” That’s Latin (sort of) for “We don't [expletive] around.” It’s smart and self-mocking. It contains the daring sexual reference that rowers apparently require, yet the message is clearly about athletic performance — not penis size, dorm hook-up plans, the sexual availability of the cox, or the fatuity of the wearer. As far as I know, this slogan isn’t copyright protected. Feel free to borrow it.

By Juliette Kayyem

The historic $107 million sale on Wednesday of a version of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" has raised a lot of questions. Why would an unidentified private buyer spend that much money on one of four copies of a work of art that has become an icon about modern life?

Munch has described the scene not as an actual scream, but as a depiction of existential anxiety. As Sebastian Smee wrote in the Globe, "it depicts a person reacting with defensive horror to a scream — 'an endless scream passing through nature,' as the artist himself put it."

But if you have that much money to spend on a piece of art (the price doesn't include the extra $12.9 million sale charge), life has treated you pretty well. Maybe the kids are bratty, or the fourth house wasn't worth the investment, but overall things are looking pretty good.

So what gives with the existential angst? Really. I know everyone tells us that money doesn't buy happiness, and I honestly believe that — having encountered my fair share of miserable one percenters.

But the Munch pastel-on-board drawing is about the traumatic and miserable state of mankind, about the horrors that are part of our modern life — a remote state of affairs for someone whose loose change is apparently counted in the millions.

The buyer of the iconic work is unknown, though there is speculation that it's a Silicon Valley billionaire or Middle Eastern royal. Ironically, at least based on the price, it seems "The Scream" may have been wasted on someone particularly ill-suited to relate.

Reuters photo: A version of Edvard Munch's "The Scream." A different version of the work sold at auction for $119.9 million on Wednesday.

By Alan Berger

A superficial first glance would make it seem that the disqualification of three leading presidential candidates by an election commission in Egypt is akin to a racing commission in Kentucky suspiciously scratching three top contenders from the the Derby just weeks before the big race. And in Egypt, where a paranoid assumption of conspiracy is often the first explanation for all political events, the abrupt discarding of the former regime's intelligence chief, a prime leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a more radical Salafist candidate certainly makes it seem that some hidden hand is trying to narrow the field of presidential contenders.

In each case, however, there is a standing law or rule that requires the barred candidate to be disqualified. One can blame the rules; some were instituted by one faction to keep a rival group out of power. Indeed, Islamists wanting to prevent a Western-leaning liberal from becoming president were responsible for the requirement that no candidate can run for president whose spouse or parents had citizenship in another country. This is the rule that disqualifies the ardent Islamist, Abu Ismail, whose mother apparently held American citizenship.

The reality is that post-revolutionary Egypt is endowed with contradictory and conflicting rules, powers, and institutions, creating political chaos in the mode of a Cairo traffic jam. The secular liberals who pulled off the Tahrir Square uprising neglected to build effective political parties to compete in legislative elections, allowing the Muslim Brothers and the more extreme Salafists to take 70 percent of seats in Parliament. The Constitutional Commission that Parliament appointed was so one-sided that the secular and Christian members resigned in protest.

Consequently, it looks like a new Constitution will be written only after a new president is elected -- someone who will, initially at least, preside over a barely reformed system that funnels nearly all power to the president. And it is far from certain that the military will yield civilian control of its budgets, its vast economic interests, or its direction of Egyptian foreign policy.

Yet, despite the messiness of a revolution making up new rules as it goes along, there is something that should be encouraging in the spat over disqualified presidential candidates. As contradictory and chaotic as the new rules of the road may seem, Egyptians are trying to play by those rules. Egypt is not Syria. The Egyptian struggle for
power is being waged by legal means, peacefully and politically.

Joan Vennochi

Bill Maher is an entertainer who believes comedy has no boundaries. He may be right about that, but political campaigns do.

Because Maher is also $1 million donor to a super PAC aligned with President Obama, his rude comments about Ann Romney are a real problem for the White House.

Reacting to Hilary Rosen’s comment last week that Romney had “never worked a day in her life,” Maher said on his HBO show, “What she (Rosen) meant to say, I think was that Ann Romney has never gotten her ass out of the house to work.”

The comment is bad for Obama on several levels. It keeps alive the “Mommy Wars” theme, to the benefit of the Romney campaign. And, it makes it harder for Obama to complain about incivility and misogyny on the right, as long as a variation of it emanates from the left, too.

FULL ENTRY

By Chelsea Diana

Everyone makes mistakes, though usually not mistakes that are splashed across national news for strangers and the media to analyze.

In the last few days I have been rightly criticized for publishing a satirical “April Fools” newspaper that mocked sexual assault at a time when Boston University is working hard to expunge the rape culture that pervades our campus. I apologized, I made amends with BU student groups, and I resigned as editor-in-chief of The Daily Free Press, the independent student newspaper that I have come to love and respect over the past two years.

Yet still The FreeP, as we lovingly call it, and I were continuously criticized and harassed for our mistake. I acknowledge the decision to print the issue was callous and, as my journalism professor told me, “pretty sophomoric.”

But, guess what? I’m a sophomore.

College is the time to learn and make mistakes before we enter the workforce, and from this horrible situation I’m gaining experience that most student journalists cannot put on a resume. As for my future, it’s in journalism and I will not succumb to those calling for me to give up for a mistake I made as a 19-year-old.

FULL ENTRY

By Margie Dillenburg

It was a teacher’s dream come true — the ever-elusive teachable moment.

Seven years ago, three friends asked me to help start a company called Invisible Children. My role was to direct a movement that would rally young people who were responding to a movie they had made about a violent Ugandan warlord named Joseph Kony. While they returned to Uganda to gather video footage, I was to show our first documentary, The Rough Cut, to as many high school and college students as possible, and then create programs that would further educate these students on the war in the region.

But students did not want to stop there. They wanted to help stop Kony. Young people were sharing the film, and getting inspired — calling their representatives, lobbying Washington, and hosting fundraisers to contribute to our Ugandan scholarship program. Schools encouraged us to put on assembly programs, and teachers swooned over captivating content that aligned with high school state standards they were required to teach, such as social studies or world cultures. It was a teacher’s dream come true.

Recently, Invisible Children released its 10th film, Kony 2012, which soon became the most viral video in history. If by now you have heard of the phenomenon the video has created, you have also most likely heard a fair amount of its criticisms. Such critiques have come from every angle — from calling the film a harmful oversimplification of the conflict, to suggesting that Invisible Children misuses funds by spending too much on “awareness” while promoting neocolonialism.

Most of the critiques have been based on assumptions or misinformation about the organization, and has damaged the campaign, hampering the rich dialogue it was intended to create. Fearing they’d be accused of political incorrectness, students who finally felt excited and empowered to participate in humanitarian issues once again feel relegated back behind their desks.

Invisible Children’s long-term educational goals are much more ambitious than merely promoting “awareness” of the conflict in central Africa, and I fear the harsh, uninformed critique of Kony 2012 could undermine the tool it is intended to become. The overlooked part of our mission is the thoughtfully developed, and pedagogically sound, interactive experience designed to reintroduce a civically cynical generation back into democratic engagement.

FULL ENTRY

By Cathy Shufro

Nearly every story out of Myanmar lately has mentioned the image of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi on newspaper front pages and on T-shirts. Certainly the news photos of Suu Kyi do signal greater media freedom in a country where just months ago people feared even speaking the name Suu Kyi. But the T-shirts suggest a more complicated story — of both new confidence in Myanmar’s future and enduring anxiety about the military that still controls the government.

The T-shirts have certainly changed the face of the T-shirt printing shops along Gabar Aye Pagoda Road in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city. In the busiest of them, owner Daw Baby has replaced the Chinese-made Manchester United and Arsenal T-shirts with her own. Her employees have printed shirts with the face of Suu Kyi or the fighting peacock-and-star logo of the opposition party she founded, the National League for Democracy (the NLD). Daw Baby says sales have quadrupled.

In one sense, this is a sign of great change: after years of house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi is a candidate in today's national by-elections to fill 48 vacant seats in the Parliament. She draws crowds of tens of thousands at campaign stops. When she went to Mandalay in early March, it took her motorcade six hours to drive into town from the airport through a sea of motorbike-riding supporters. Normally the trip takes an hour.

But something is amiss. In a week of traveling the streets of Yangon on the eve of the elections, I have not seen a single person wearing an NLD T-shirt.

“People support the NLD, but they don’t dare display their support openly,” says Daw Baby. “They’re still afraid.”

FULL ENTRY

How far should the state go to keep troubled families intact?

The shocking allegations against Tanicia Goodwin, the Salem mother accused of slashing the throats of her two children and then setting their apartment on fire, has raised questions about the state's handling of her case. Child protection workers had returned the older of the children to Goodwin's custody in 2010.

Globe columnist Lawrence Harmon argued that the state places too much emphasis on reuniting children and parents. "Some families simply aren’t worthy of preservation," he said. Instead, more children should be placed in orphanages.

Goodwin poses a severe test to the underlying family preservation philosophy of the state Department of Children and Families, the agency charged with protecting children from abuse and neglect. The agency sees its mission not only as physical protection but as making “every reasonable effort’’ to keep family units intact. That mission reflects, in part, the social work profession’s decades-long bias against long-term institutional care. But it also reflects a simplistic view of orphanages as some Dickensian throwback where little kids go begging for bowls of gruel. What social workers should fear instead is the isolation of the Salem public housing unit where, according to police, Goodwin tried to kill her children.

Joanna Weiss took the opposite view. No system is perfect, she writes, but on balance keeping kids with their parents is still the best policy.

What if the system works, the rules are followed, the risks are correctly assessed, and something still goes terribly, tragically wrong?

This is a cold reality of the child welfare system: It is a matter of calculated risk, built around risk-laden lives.

By Derrick Z. Jackson

While Roger Goodell is at it, he should vacate the New Orleans Saints’ 2010 Super Bowl title, earned while the Saints had a bounty system for deliberately injuring opposing players. It was bad enough the system existed for the last three seasons. But players and coaches also engaged in a cover-up. Goodell, the commissioner of the National Football League, said without hesitation in an interview Wednesday on the NFL Network, "We were misled, there denials throughout that period. Clearly we were lied to. We investigated this back in 2010. We were told it was not happening and it continued for another two years."

There is plenty of precedent in college sports for vacating the performance of scandalous top teams. Many basketball teams, including the University of Massachusetts, have had Final Four appearances vacated since 1961. The University of Southern California football team had its 2004 Bowl Championship Series national title stripped and was banned two seasons from bowl games for the improper benefits to Reggie Bush. Bush was also stripped of his Heisman Trophy. In 1987, the National Collegiate Athletic Association gave Southern Methodist the "death penalty," a complete ban from play over its play-for-pay scandal.

Most of the cheating and slush-fund infractions in collegiate sports, while deserving of their punishments, pale in comparison to a system of players and coaches pooling money as an incentive to go out and deliberately cripple other players. To be sure, Goodell is off to a strong start in addressing the bounty scandal, suspending head coach Sean Payton for a year without pay and indefinitely suspending former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, who is current with the St. Louis Rams.

But if college teams can have titles and Final Four appearances vacated for improper gifts to players, improper recruiting by coaches, Goodell is well within the bounds of logic to send an unprecedented message for a literally far more injurious system. Football is a violent enough sport as it is without adding the cynical, mercenary dimension of a bounty. The biggest message Goodell can send is to tell the Saints to return the Vince Lombardi Trophy back to NFL headquarters in New York, and tell the players to return their Super Bowl rings. These were not rings earned in honor.

Two billionaires, each with Boston area roots — and two different explorations of loyalty and identity.

The day after Globe columnist Farah Stockman dug deep into the roots of Dorchester-bred Sheldon Adelson, to ask how a son of ultra-liberal, hardscrabble Dorchester could emerge as Newt Gingrich's biggest backer, New York Times reporter Michael Grynbaum looks at how that city's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, never forgot his hometown of Medford. From libraries to synagogues to arts organizations, Bloomberg was a quiet, behind-the-scenes presence. He even helped the son of a local restaurant owner get contacts on Wall Street. This was partly because of Bloomberg's loyalty to his mother, who'd continued living in his childhood home until her death last year at 102.

Adelson has no such ties to Dorchester. This may be explained by the vast demographic and cultural changes in his Erie Street neighborhood since his childhood in the 1930s and '40s. His relatives are also long gone. But while Bloomberg left the Boston area after his childhood, Adelson built his fortune in the Boston area, living here until he was well into middle age. The different approaches, no doubt, reflect different experiences — but also different characters.

Adelson left Dorchester behind.

Bloomberg always kept Medford in mind.

By Juliette Kayyem

Adjectives used by outsiders to describe Boston are often not very complimentary: cold, parochial, academic, unattractive. (And, yes, they mean the people).

So it's worth giving some credit to a new report commissioned by Citigroup that found that of 120 of the world's major cities, Boston ranks 10th in overall competitiveness. Yes, 10th in the world. The research report by the Economist Intelligence Unit found that, when ranked on 31 indicators including "economic strength, human capital, institutional effectiveness, global appeal and... social and cutural character," we were even ahead of Singapore, which came in 15th.

The report is substantive and thorough. And it highlights how governments can make cities more attractive to investors and foreigners. We can still attract capital, talent, and tourists — even if others may find us unattractive.

By Derrick Z. Jackson

The clock is ticking on next year’s tournament ban for teams with poor graduation rates, but a stunning number of major powers are frozen in time, as if they are daring the National Collegiate Athletic Association to really kick them out of March Madness. In my annual alternative look at the long-term academic performance of Division 1 tournament teams, to be published in full later this week, 21 men's programs, the same number as last year, have African American player graduation success rates of below 50 percent. Repeat offenders are Connecticut, Syracuse, Florida, Nevada-Las Vegas, Michigan, Temple, Texas, and Kansas State.

On the positive side, there were three teams that I would have flunked out of last year’s tournament that raised their black and team graduation rates to at least 50 percent, roughly the level that the NCAA will begin requiring next year. To give credit where it is due, those schools are Missouri, Michigan State, and Kentucky.

If you want to watch the brainiest of basketball in the first round, you do not want to miss 100 percent Vanderbilt vs. 100 percent Harvard, nor 100 percent Notre Dame vs. 93 percent Xavier. If you want to watch programs that demonstrate through their black graduation rates that they couldn't care less, check out Connecticut (14 percent) vs Iowa State (29), and Florida (20) vs. Virginia (33).

And if you want to see achievement gaps between white and black players on single teams, in real time and living color, then you must get your popcorn for Florida, Iowa State, Wisconsin, New Mexico State, Virginia, Michigan, and Kansas State — all teams with racial gaps between 62 and 80 percentage points. Better catch them now, because under the tournament rules going into effect next year, some of those teams might not be back anytime soon.

By Alan Wirzbicki

Why should the MBTA care about "seat hogs," when it has so many bigger problems?

That seems to be general reaction to complaints about inconsiderate passengers who put their bags on the seat next to them. The T could follow New York City's lead by issuing tickets, but saddling the T's police force with an extra enforcement burden when the agency is already struggling to close a $161 million deficit doesn't seem like a great idea.

Still, there's a pragmatic reason why seat hogs merit at least an extra public address announcement or two: they can be a source of conflict that escalates into much worse.

I had a first-hand illustration one morning on a crowded Orange Line train, when a woman politely asked a man to move his large bag from a seat. With an angry glare, he did — and then swung the bag at her shoulder after she sat down, with enough force to knock a cell phone out of her hand and send it careening across the train. Moments later, a third rider leapt out of his seat, walked past the broken remains of the cell phone, and punched the offender in the teeth. Other passengers called police and the train was stopped at the Mass. Ave. station, but both men disappeared once the doors opened. (I left my phone number with T personnel, gave a statement to the police the next day — and never heard another word.)

Was that an isolated incident? When I emailed Joe Pesaturo, the MBTA's spokesman, to ask if the T kept track of crime stemming from seat disputes, he wrote back that the agency had no such statistics. He added that in 13 years of riding the Green Line, he'd never experienced anything similar.

More importantly, though, would a policy of issuing tickets to seat hogs — like the one in New York City, where thousands of $50 tickets were issued last year, according to a story in Monday's Boston Herald — have prevented the altercation I witnessed? Probably not. After all, the man did move his belongings when asked; the real problem was when he walloped his neighbor with the bag, and that's already illegal.

But the T could raise the issue's profile by making seat hogs a more prominent target of its "courtesy counts" announcements. Doing so might foster a climate that emboldens passengers to ask other riders to move their bags — and send a message to the hogs themselves that they've got no right to object.