Free Republic

WASHINGTON - While there has been progress against child obesity in the U.S., government efforts to do something about it remain underfunded and there's no way to tell what programs actually work, the Institute of Medicine, one of the nation's leading scientific advisory groups, said on Wednesday. The need for action is clear. By the end of the decade, it's projected that one in five American children will be obese. Currently, 17.1 percent of children and youth are overweight, an increase from 16 percent in 2002. At least one program that succeeded just lost its federal funding, the IOM experts...

It's always risky to celebrate good times, especially in an age when there is no way to rule out that along with the usual perils of life, we will suffer another terrorist attack. But this spring, more than 3 1/2 years after Sept. 11, it does seem that since that day America has weathered a rough passage awfully well. That, and with the cherry trees just done blooming in Washington and New York's Central Park full of flowers (and, in the grand old tradition, amateur baseball teams), it feels worth a moment to stand back and observe that for all...