An Editorial

How far should the Obama administration go to persuade states to expand their Medicaid programs?

The stock market, in normal times a reliable proxy for an economy’s health, reached record levels this week. And why not? Corporate profits are higher than ever. The housing market is springing back. Auto sales are on pace for the best year since 2007.

Much of what President Obama hopes to accomplish in his second term would tap into what’s known as the “discretionary budget” — money not already claimed by entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. But the discretionary budget itself is about tapped out, squeezed by the growth of entitlement spending. That’s what makes the minimal presidential leadership on entitlement reform so baffling.

Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to retire Feb. 28, a well-kept secret announced Monday by the pontiff himself, took both the Roman Catholic Church and the wider world generally by surprise. But maybe it shouldn’t have.

The world got a sample of the cultural sensitivities of al-Qaida-influenced Islamic extremists when, in 2001, the Taliban began dynamiting some of Afghanistan’s greatest historical treasures — notably, the two Bamiyan Buddhas carved into a towering cliff during the sixth century. One, at 165 feet high, was the world’s largest standing Buddha.

Influenza vaccines are the best weapons we’ve got against a disease that each year kills as many as a half-million people, including 3,000 to 49,000 Americans. Yet this season’s worse-than-usual flu in the United States underscores the limitations of the existing vaccines.

Syrian President Bashar Assad delivered a speech Sunday that had the virtue, at least, of offering clarity. No, he insisted, he would not step down. He would not negotiate with the rebels who control much of the countryside and parts of major cities. He would not consider the compromise “transition” proposal being peddled by a U.N. envoy with the backing of his ally Russia, as well as the United States. Instead, he said, he would fight to the end against “enemies of God and puppets of the West.”