A little music before some head out for Memorial Day Weekend. The singer is one Robert Merrill, perhaps the finest baritone ever to perform on stage. He is joined by the the US Air Force Band and the Singing Sergeants Here is an earlier version where he was in his prime

TMV readers and commenters: We are now seeing certain cable and DSL IPs get flagged as spam thus not causing certain comments to post. The issue has been found but is going to take a bit to work through. For the time being, if you submit a comment and it doesn’t appear, please don’t submit a new one. It makes things more difficult to find the original comment and un-flag it as spam. Thank you...

[Editor's Note: Due to a technical glitch part of this post was missing today. So we're reposting it and putting in on top.] How can a sitting Democratic President in 2012, who came to office with a huge electoral mandate four years earlier in the wake of a Republican-generated economic disaster, actually look like he might lose this coming November to a Republican who politically, economically and even personally...

Colin Powell has come out in support of marriage equality. “In terms of the legal matter of creating a contract between two people that’s called marriage,” Powell said Tuesday, “and allowing them to live together with the protection of law, it seems to me is the way we should be moving in this country. And so I support the president’s decision.” This follows up a move earlier this week where the...

More from my files of refugees. Why do I collect these sad images? To not forget the Catholics, Jews, Roma, the halt, the elderly, the ill, the mentally challenged, the crippled, the mothers pregnant, the men and women who died protecting others who were killed anyway. To not ever forget. And to tell the stories, often by just showing the photo. And because my family is a family of refugees. These are Hungarian...

If you ever wonder why a blogger you were reading for a while disappeared or burned out, consider today’s story about conservative bloggers who have seen their jobs and families threatened.  Their crime? Posting political views that someone disagreed with. There is something diseased in our political culture when this is considered tolerable behavior.  The price of political opinion, even dissenting...

WASHINGTON – Forbes reports new evidence, found through discovery, that sounds troublesome for Arianna Huffington, in the lawsuit brought by Peter Daou and James Boyce. “Significant new evidence has come to light that demonstrates Arianna Huffington was passing along to third parties Boyce’s and Daou’s confidential ideas and plans about The Huffington Post without Boyce’s and Daou’s knowledge...

Hello TMV readers and commenters. Comment editing has been temporarily disabled due to some bugs which caused: 1. Comments being auto-moderated for no reason 2. Comments being marked as SPAM for no reason 3. Comments not appearing at all We are working to get this fixed as quickly as possible. Until then, proof-read before posting. Thank you!

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, has always been a very strong, vocal opponent of illegal immigration and amnesty. He believes that we only encourage illegal immigration by discussing amnesty for the 12-20 million illegal immigrants living in the United States today and adamantly opposes such. He believes in tightening and strengthening our border control efforts, including using his own design of a concrete border...

While neither state was ever considered in play for November, the fact that over 40% of *Democratic* primary voters rejected President Obama tonight is not exactly a love letter to the incumbent President. It won’t have a major impact in those states but could signal that his implied decision to write off states like North Carolina and Virginia was probably a good one.

Good, lord, Mr. B. You’re white as a sheet. What’s the matter, sir? They did it again, Selig. They spray painted those nine horrible words on our front entrance. You must have seen them when you came to work this morning. No, sir. Don’t you remember? Only top earners can use the front entrance these days. You made that a rule a few years back to give the rest of us something to aspire to. Right....

NBC’s Political Director Chuck Todd has just perfectly summarized the two key arguments that will be made in the 2012 campaign election: Barack Obama will argue that Mitt Romney doesn’t have the values to be President. Mitt Romney will argue that Obama doesn’t have the skills to be President. And, yes, there will assuredly be plenty of big issues popping up, manufactured partisan issues, tiresome...

The sentence came down today, 30 days for the Rutgers webcam spying case defendant Dharun Ravi. He will also perform 300 hours of community service. Personally I have mixed views on the sentence. On the one hand Ravi is, in my opinion, a rotten human being who helped drive Tyler Clementi to suicide. On the other hand I have problems with punishing someone for what they think, even when those thoughts are offensive...

Sadly, the Democrat leaders we have today are decidedly anti free market and capitalism. Most regular folk Democrats I know are not. So, there is a disconnect there. But, every once in awhile, you can find a Democrat leader willing to break from the pack, and show disgust over those that demonize what made this country the most prosperous nation on earth, the free market. Newark (N.J.) Mayor Cory Booker did...

Congressional earmarks keep popping up no matter how much good government groups and sympathetic members of Congress try to suppress them. And many of the politicians who rail against earmarks are the ones who find ways to use them, keeping the earmarks hidden by labeling them differently or burying them within legislation. But an earmark by any other name… The majority of House members and Senators decry...

WASHINGTON – Don’t tell me Republicans are going to make Elizabeth Cheney, former “Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs,” go through the Senate farm system. Don’t tell me Sen. Marco Rubio is a better vice presidential choice than Dick Cheney’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth. She beats him on experience alone, though we all know that doesn’t matter to...

Save for some Republicans who remain blindered to larger realities, most people concluded long ago that the Iraq war was a fool’s mission that wasted thousands of American and many tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, bled resources from the war in Afghanistan, bankrupted the federal treasury, lowered the U.S.’s standing in the world, and accomplished none of its goals save for taking out Saddam Hussein,...

President Obama in the ICU at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan, May 1, 2012, where he presented three Purple Hearts. The Purple Heart is the oldest U.S. military decoration, one that has not only changed in name, but also in purpose and award eligibility criteria. During its 220-year existence, the Purple Heart, perhaps more than other military decorations, has reflected and continues to reflect the changing nature...

Mr.Reince Priebus of the RNC: there are many ways to lose your credibility with independent voters when you open your mouth in the future and this is one of them. It is beyond transparent, patently false partisan, CYA spin. (So Sean Hannity is a mole? Wait: Rush Limbaugh has the answer: it was all the Clinton’s doing.)

For those who read my earlier post about the USS Iowa heading out of San Francisco Bay today, word just coming in that the tow is delayed due to weather conditions at sea. It looks like they will be having heavy seas and gale force winds for most of the rest of the week so that could push things into June (assuming that Memorial Day weekend would be too complicated to do the tow) For now it is a day to day situation,...