Veteran reporter-commentator Daniel Schorr, the last of Edward R. Murrow's legendary CBS team still fully active in journalism, currently interprets national and international events as senior news analyst for NPR.
Recent Stories
From what is publicly known about Maj. Nidal Hasan, accused of killing 13 in a rampage at Fort Hood, he had no accomplice — unless you count the Internet in which he communed, exchanging sinister thoughts with an extremist cleric.
The Israeli-Palestinian standoff shows no sign of getting better, and it may soon be getting worse. NPR Senior News Analyst Dan Schorr says that if moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas follows through on his threat to step down, that could lead to the collapse of the Palestinian Authority.
Twenty years ago, when the Berlin Wall was breached, it marked the beginning of the end for the Soviet empire. But NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr says there are other physical walls today: the one between the Israelis and the Palestinians. A wall, he says, can mean not only closed borders, but also closed minds.
President Obama is wrestling with an agonizing decision on how to "Afghanize" the conflict, to borrow phrasing from the Vietnam days. As U.S. casualties mount, Obama faces the ultimate question: Get more involved at the risk of losing support from an increasingly disheartened American public, or get less involved and risk facing the blame for letting Afghanistan go down the drain?
As hoaxes go, the balloon boy episode was amazingly successful. The police were less than enchanted at having been made party to the hoax. NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr says these days there's a fine line between hoax and just plain lying.
When President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, it was because he came to symbolize for the Norwegian award committee a vision of a better world. Some Americans have not been willing to accept symbolism for accomplishment, but much of what passes for accomplishment in this world is symbolic.
President Obama's problem, as one observer put it, is that he has to commit money and manpower he doesn't have to prop up an Afghan leader he doesn't believe in, in pursuit of a goal he hasn't defined. Sooner or later, the White House will have to produce some objectives and some numbers. Then the public debate starts — a debate that may be the most daunting test of Obama's presidency so far.
NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr says the death of New York Times columnist William Safire makes for a bleak Yom Kippur. He says that though the conservative libertarian was known to be combative, he was less known for his deep loyalties.
The latter-day Deep Throat who furnished The Washington Post's Bob Woodward with a copy of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's devastating report on the growing threat in Afghanistan clearly wanted to force President Obama's hand. Whoever leaked the report was obviously hoping to create pressure for reinforcements.
Daniel Schorr says that U.S. lawmakers should stop worrying about the scattering of illegal immigrants who may get unauthorized health care treatment and think of the millions who can't afford to get authorized treatment.
NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr says President Obama's speech Wednesday may help dispel some misinformation about health care legislation. But, he says, the hard part comes later, when Obama must spend time on the phone or in person with legislators.
Conservative columnist George Will's call for a withdrawal from Afghanistan is an early voice in what soon may be many as U.S. public opinion turns against the war. For President Obama, it's getting to be quagmire time. Like President Johnson in Vietnam, he is faced with having to prosecute his predecessor's war.
NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr says he is baffled by Moammar Gadhafi's behavior in giving a hero's welcome to the one man convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Schorr says it looks like an endorsement of terrorism, even after Gadhafi spent a decade trying to shed that image.
NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr says Sen. Edward Kennedy's death marks the end of this generation of Kennedys in public life, and the end of America's 60-year romance with the closest thing it has known to a royal family.
The summer recess that was supposed to bring focus to the health care debate has so far brought mainly befuddlement and anger at government. On the defensive, President Obama oscillates between retreating and holding the line on a government health care plan.
