And, yes, that’s meant ironically. My Sunday column argues that the latest budget battles have been a supreme example of dysfunction. At the last minute Friday night, the two sides agreed to a budget deal and averted a government shut-down, but this is still a wretched way to run a superpower. And while I particularly blame the Republicans for threatening to shut down the government (a threat that Democrats did not make during the Bush years), it’s also true that the Democrats are at fault for not passing a budget and spending bills when they should have last year before the fiscal year began, when they controlled both houses in Congress.

While I was appalled at the shut-down threat, I do think that John Boehner proved a savvy negotiator who managed to extract huge concessions from the Democrats. I wouldn’t mind seeing the Democrats get spine transplants, and the Republicans heart transplants.

Sadl, this crisis was only the first act in at least a three-act play. We still have the 2012 fiscal year budget to work out, and then the raising of the federal debt ceiling. Aaaargh. I have a headache already. And I’d welcome your comments.

My Sunday column argues that there are indeed lots of uncertainties and legitimate criticisms of President Obama’s operation in Libya — but weighed against it are the many lives that it has saved, and the prospect that it will ultimately remove Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. On balance, I think the intervention was not only essential but maybe a step toward the emergence of a bit more of an international conscience, the growth of the doctrine of the “responsibility to protect.” As for the argument that we’re inconsistent in our interventions: of course we’re inconsistent, but would you rather we consistently save no one?

And I also announce the winners of my Win-a-Trip contest. Thanks so much to all of you who applied, or who posted your comments — and stay tuned for the trip itself.

Please post your comments either on the Libya intervention or on the Win-a-Trip results.

We’re all focused right now on Libya and budget battles at home, but this story from Bangladesh just broke my heart and outraged me — and offers a reminder of the daily human rights struggles of so many women and girls in villages around the world. A 14-year-old Bangladeshi girl, Hena,allegedly was ambushed when she went to an outdoor toilet, gagged, beaten and raped by an older man in her village (who was actually her cousin). They were caught by wife of the alleged rapist, and the wife then beat Hena up. An imam at a local mosque issued a fatwa saying that Hena was guilty of adultery and must be punished, and a village makeshift court sentenced Hena to 100 lashes in a public whipping.

Her last words were protestations of innocence. An excellent CNN blog post, based on interviews with family members, says that the parents “had no choice but to mind the imam’s order. They watched as the whip broke the skin of their youngest child and she fell unconscious to the ground.”

Hena collapsed after 70 lashes and was taken to the hospital. She died a week later, by some accounts because of internal bleeding and a general loss of blood. The doctors recorded her death as a suicide. (Women and girls who are raped are typically expected to commit suicide, to spare everyone the embarrassment of an honor crime.) I’ve covered enough of these kinds of stories to know that it’s difficult to know exactly what happened unless you’re on the scene talking to everyone who was there; maybe the imam has a different version of events. But all accounts that I’ve seen such that this was a brutal attack on a helpless girl in the name of sharia and justice.

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When an Italian priest and his cadre of nuns founded the Munyaga Health Center in 1986, it was a barebones operation. Tucked among the rolling green hills and small mud homes of eastern Rwanda, the health center had limited services; the nearest source of potable water was five miles away, and kerosene lamps were often the only source of light. The center’s most expensive technology was an array of solar cells to provide power for part of the day.

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My Sunday column is about the way Mubarakism is continuing in Egypt, even without Mubarak. I tell this largely through the story of a young woman who was arrested this month by the army for her political activism, then beaten, given electric shocks, and subjected to a forced “virginity exam” as a way to humiliate and punish her. These extrajudicial tools of torture and military detention reflect the efforts of the Egyptian armed forces to intimidate democracy activists and prevent the democratic revolution from chipping away at army control.

I should also say that while I’m disappointed by the Army conduct, I’m just awed by the courage of activists. For Salwa to tell me her story on the record and on camera for a video I did about her story takes immense bravery. And the lawyers and human rights activists who are holding the army’s feet to the fire over these cases reflect the very best of the democratic spirit. And here’s the video of Salwa. Read the column and post your thoughts.

(Also, speaking of courageous women speaking out, read the article about the Libyan woman who barged into the hotel where journalists are staying in Tripoli, protested the rape and torture she had endured, and was finally dragged out. Here’s a video of her.)

Mike McCausland/Rwanda Girls Initiative School girls at the Gashora Girls Academy, which opened in March, 2011.

When I try to get people interested in the education cause in Rwanda, they often tell me that they’re up to their eyeballs in work on public or charter schools in their own neighborhoods – Upper West Side, Noe Valley, wherever. Some people, though, have a broad definition of “neighborhood.”

A couple of years back, two women from Seattle approached me about the possibility of establishing a girls’ school here in Rwanda. I’ve grown accustomed to receiving countless entrepreneurial inquiries from well-meaning people and seeing little come of them, so I must admit that my first reaction was skepticism.

Luckily, Soozi McGill and Shal Foster defied my initial doubts and have followed through on their plans with aplomb. While training together for a marathon in the United States, the two long-time friends found themselves discussing the high-quality education that their own children were receiving. From there, they started to form a vision to help children who had not been born so lucky.

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My sunday column looks at the way Japan has pulled together in the aftermath of its earthquake/tsunami/nuclear crisis and argues that we Americans could learn a thing or two from that reaction. The backdrop is the distress I’ve felt in the last few months as it has become apparent that in budget battles the tendency is to throw the weakest and most vulnerable sectors (i.e. children) overboard. In contrast, Japan seems to me to offer an example where stress knits a country more tightly together and where there has been a certain tendency for people to look after each other. (If you’ve come to this blog to see how to weigh in on my Win-a-Trip finalists, check out this post.)

This column is an outgrowth of a blog post I wrote a week ago, right after the earthquake. Since then, the situation has if anything gotten worse because of radiation leaks and weak Japanese government leadership. I must say that I think the weak government leadership and strong social cohesion are two sides of the same coin. The same forces that knit the public together make society suspicious of strong leaders, and Japan has had remarkably few real leaders. In World War II, for example, Tojo was nothing like the dictator that Hitler or Stalin were. And one of the stronger post-war leaders was Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, whom Americans liked but whom many Japanese disliked and thought was arrogant. Leadership tends to be collective, which means it’s usually weak.

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Every year I hold my win-a-trip contest to take a university student with me on a reporting trip in the developing world. This year will be the fifth trip and a milestone because I’ll also be taking along a senior citizen — and because this year for the first time I’m inviting readers to help me choose the winning student and winning senior. To weigh in, please go to my Facebook slide show or comment below.

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My Sunday column argues that the political battle in Wisconsin and elsewhere about public sector unions rests on a fallacy: teachers aren’t overpaid, but underpaid.

My interest in education arises from its role as a long-term driver of economic competitiveness and its role as an effective tool to chip away at poverty. In general, anti-poverty programs in America haven’t been enormously effective, and increasingly I’ve come to believe that education (early childhood, k-12 and tertiary) is among the tools that really can work. The best study of this is “Race Between Education and Technology,” by two Harvard economists, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz — a dense but hugely important book.

There’s a particular problem with teacher pay in high-poverty inner-city schools. They have students who get less support from home and so particularly benefit from outstanding teachers, but the reality tends to be the opposite: rich white kids in the suburbs get outstanding teachers, and poor black and Latino kids get less qualified teachers. This should be the civil rights issue of the 21st century. And you can see why the best teachers are reluctant to go to those schools: they get less money, less prestige and a difficult working environment. There has to be a major increase in overall compensation — some combination of income, benefits, prestige, job satisfaction and working environment — to attract better teachers there.

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Our hearts are all with the Japanese today, after the terrible earthquake there – the worst ever recorded in Japan. But, having covered the 1995 Kobe earthquake (which killed more than 6,000 people and left 300,000 homeless) when I lived in Japan as Tokyo bureau chief for The New York Times, I have to add: Watch Japan in the coming days and weeks, and I bet we can also learn some lessons.

It’s not that Japan’s government handles earthquakes particularly well. The government utterly mismanaged the rescue efforts after the 1995 quake, and its regulatory apparatus disgraced itself by impounding Tylenol and search dogs sent by other countries. In those first few frantic days, when people were still alive under the rubble, some died unnecessarily because of the government’s incompetence.

But the Japanese people themselves were truly noble in their perseverance and stoicism and orderliness. There’s a common Japanese word, “gaman,” that doesn’t really have an English equivalent, but is something like “toughing it out.” And that’s what the people of Kobe did, with a courage, unity and common purpose that left me awed.

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A few days ago I stirred a hornets’ nest with a column looking at why the Middle East lags economically and politically behind the rest of the world. The column was based on a terrific new book, “The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East,” which was written by a Duke University scholar, Timur Kuran, who is an expert on the economic history of the region.

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A nagging thought on the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day:

There’s a natural tendency to think that the oppression so many women face around the world is just a function of male exploitation, and that the solution is simply more women leaders. In fact, a quick look at Bangladesh shows that it is far more complicated than that. Bangladesh has a woman prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, who has done nothing much for women – and who now is pursuing a campaign of vilification against Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who has been a champion of impoverished women all around the globe.

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That’s the topic of my column for Sunday. (Frankly, it’s hard to write about rapidly changing events, like Libya, in my Sunday column because the deadline is Friday evening and then I can’t make changes on Saturday even if there is stunning news — but the Middle East is likely to remain backward on Sunday….)

There have been lots of theories for why the Middle East has lagged in the last 800 years, after earlier serving as a center of trade and scholarship. Many Westerners think the basic problem is Islam’s inherent incompatibility with capitalism. And many Arabs and other Muslims think the basic problem is Western colonialism and exploitation. I argue, based on a fascinating new book and the research it discusses, that the best answer is: none of the above. And I hope the upheavals in the Middle East will be able to move beyond this paralyzing debate. Instead of just talking about why development hasn’t happened, let’s see if we can make it happen.

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I find it interesting that in possibly the most prominent place of sexual violence in the world, I’ve overlooked sex workers. Maybe at first, I thought it was actually a profession; a choice. However, after speaking with a group of sex workers, I’ve realized it’s not a job, it’s a desperate last resort.

Earlier this month, two visiting wazungu (white person) colleagues and I met with a group of sex workers in a small concrete room. They were sitting in a half circle facing us; it was like being in a royal court made up of some of the most strangely beautiful women I’d ever seen.

Amy Ernst Maman Kaghoma is the president of the Association of Women Living Alone, which consists of 6,000 sex workers in Butembo, Congo.

Their beauty comes in all sizes. Maman Kaghoma is the heavy-set President of the Association of Women Living Alone, which consists of 6,000 Butembo sex workers. Something about all of the women was comforting and I found it easy to communicate with them. They’ve seen everything, and were slightly wary of our presence but also seemed open and kind. It was refreshing; I immediately felt like we are among friends and began asking questions.

“How did you get into this line of work?”

Maman Kaghoma answered first.

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My Sunday column notes that there is a fair amount of anxiety about what a democratic revolution will mean in the Arab world, and specifically about whether the Arab world (and other less developed parts of the world) are ready for democracy. I find this entire debate patronizing, especially after witnessing the incredible courage of democracy activists in recent weeks. Sure, there are plenty of rough spots ahead –but if people are dying for democracy, who are we to say that they’re not ready for it? Read the column and post your thoughts.