Poverty is back! or at least it was supposed to be after Katrina, but five months on, even Democrats have dropped the subject. Here's how to revive it.(Hurricane Katrina)

IT WAS 1988, RONALD REAGAN'S FINAL STATE OF THE Union. The previous eight years had been good to the Gipper. The word "liberal" had been rendered radioactive, many items on the conservative wish list had been checked off, and Reagan himself had stomped two successive Democratic challengers. So you might think he would have been content to ride quietly into the sunset, a conservative legend retiring athwart a horse named History. But that night, Reagan stuck a final knife in the battered, bloodied carcass of liberalism. As was his wont, he did it with a grin: "My ...