One of the best short stories ever written – later made into a movie starring Danny Kaye – was The Secret Life of Walter Mitty which featured a mild mannered daydreamer who put himself into heroic situations in his fantasies. Thurber’s deft touch made the character into a tragic figure, but sympathetic as well, while revealing the fate of non-conformists in a conformist society. It appears...

“Yes We Can”? by Peter Gabel It’s now been two weeks since the midterm elections, and I’m noticing that many folks I know are depressed—not consciously about the elections, which have receded somewhat from view, but about various things in their lives. One is exhausted from all the pressures in her life, raising children, caring for parents, working too hard or too aimlessly; another is...

I am not generally given to positing conspiracies of any kind but the actions of the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) in their use of full body scanners and pat downs of airline passengers got me thinking. Sherlock Holmes said, “[W]hen all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Of course, in my youth, it was a neck and neck race for supremacy...

George W. Bush is asking the impossible of us: to consider his legacy without passion. In Decision Points, a plainly written tale of key moments during Bush’s presidency, we are offered an uncomplicated account of an uncomplicated man devoid of Oedipal issues with his father, a devout Christian who gave up alcohol when he realized it was starting to control his life, a loyal friend who hung on to advisers...

A Small Fraction of a Man Saturday 13 November 2010 by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed George W. Bush was all over my television this past week, all over the newspapers, and the feelings inspired by his sudden reappearance are almost beyond my capacity to describe. There was the story about his hearty approval of waterboarding. There was the story that had him contemplating dropping Dick Cheney...

Saving the Golden State Saving the Golden State by Michael Reagan The late psychic Edgar Cayce was famed for predicting that in the not-too-distant future the entire state of California would collapse into the Pacific Ocean and disappear beneath the sea. That may be a questionable forecast, but the collapse of the Golden State into a sea of debt is already upon us, and if we don’t act now to begin to reclaim...

There is no doubt that the Republican party is poised for a big night – some are even predicting an historic night – next Tuesday when America goes to the polls. But the seeds of GOP failure have already been sown during this campaign and it is extremely doubtful that Republicans can achieve any of their short term goals, much less change the culture of America to reflect their outdated views of...

Before the parade passes by Before it goes on, and only I’m left Before the parade passes by I’ve gotta get in step while there’s still time left I’m ready to move out in front Life without life has no reason or rhyme left With the rest of them With the best of them I wanna hold my head up high I need got a goal again I need got a drive again I wanna feel my heart coming alive again Before...

The Moderates’ Lament by Tina Dupuy The beginning of the end for the Tea Party faux revolution occurred this Sunday on ABC’s This Week. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell effectively tipped his hand when asked whether the Tea Party will help or hurt Republicans. “One thing we know about everybody who’s been active in this movement, we know none of them are going to go out and vote Democrat,”...

Wary of the Technology Aware by Tom Purcell My new cell phone calls people on its own. I know this because people I don’t know call me back, asking why I phoned. I tell them I didn’t phone them — my phone did. Which makes them sore. Unlike the first cell phone I had — it was big and heavy and all I could use it for was to phone other people, which I never did because it cost $400 a minute...

Guest post by Peter Henne Peter Henne is a Security Fellow with the Truman National Security Project and a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University. (This post originally appeared at The Huffington Post.) Observers and participants in the recent Park51 debate likely noticed some parallels to the 2005 Danish Muhammad cartoon controversy. Potent religious issues mixed with a clash between freedom of speech...

The Tea Party movement is a nebulous mass of citizenry, uncoordinated, not centrally directed, with no discernible “leadership,” and actually rejects the hierarchical organizational model for a fierce, unbridled independence. Your mama. If recent events in Delaware as well as the growing electoral involvement of the tea party movement tells us anything, it is that an identifiable tea party establishment...

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio. Tonight, I welcome Rich Baehr of the American Thinker, political pro Jazz Shaw, and IDB’s Monica Showalter for a discussion on tea party politics and other hot topics making news. The show will air from 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here....

I didn’t think it possible to cheer up those gloomy Gus Democrats about their election chances in November but by God, leave it to the the true conservatives out there to accomplish the damn near impossible; they may guarantee Democrats remain in control of the senate next year. If Sharon Angle, Rand Paul, Christine O’Donnell (who may upset Mike Castle in Delaware and win the GOP senate primary),...

I have been writing for nearly two years about how conservatives have to be more pragmatic in deciding whom to support for office if they expect to bring conservative governance to Washington. A couple of weeks after the 2008 election, I wrote this: Republicans are about ready to fall into a couple of traps that losing parties apparently can’t avoid when the dust settles following a debacle such as they have...

What is the president of the United States, the Attorney General, our top military commander, and an icon of the right doing giving their opinion on the threat to burn a Koran by a storefront preacher with 50 followers that no one had ever heard of and who will likely be forgotten once the brouhaha has passed? As far as straight news value, this story ranks somewhere between an item on the pimply-faced high...

Tea party folk become outraged at just about anything that President Obama and the Democrats try to accomplish these days. I do too. Now it’s time to step up and defend America and our Constitution against a different foe; the preacher who is planning to burn Korans on September 11 of this year. As bad as Obama has been, there is nothing more destructive of the Constitution’s spirit and letter than...

This seems to be the topic du jour at TMV today so allow me to throw in my two bits. Stephen Hawking was known as something of a mischievous youth, which makes me think his latest proncunciamento on the universe was deliberately calculated to raise the ire of believers of all stripes: God did not create the universe, world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book that aims to banish a divine creator...

You don’t have to be able to read tea leaves, examine entrails, or count the warts on a horny toad to know that conservatism is headed for a smashing victory in November. Or is it? Will the coming electoral tidal wave hide deficiencies that have yet to be addressed following a long decade of decline and exhaustion? What has changed in the intervening months? Certainly, the rising fortunes of the GOP has...

To those predisposed because of ideological animus to dismiss the notion of the tea party movement being the true inheritors of Martin Luther King’s dream, you might as well click away now. But if you want to engage on this issue in a reasonable manner, discussing the pros and cons rationally, you are invited to read on and ponder both the irony and the efficacy of these claims as they relate to history...