Guest post by J.F. Murphy J.F. Murphy is a former Marine infantry officer and Iraq veteran who graduated from the US Navy’s SERE program. He is a fellow of the Truman National Security Project. Given the many stumbles we have experienced in our fight against global terrorism, it is crucial that we get the current debate on effective interrogation methods right. As a Marine who both served in Iraq and graduated...

By SHAUN MULLEN GUEST VOICE As a child of the 1960s, my view of Booker T. Washington was shaped by the contemporary belief that while the famous founder of Tuskegee Institute was a civil-rights trailblazer in some respects, he was an Uncle Tom for having acquiesced in the rampant racial discrimination that was now being challenged by the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. But he did find an amazing number of things...

Happy Mother’s Day By Martha Randolph Carr Today is a celebration of the smaller moments that only the Moms still remember and carry in their hearts. This holiday is about the Moms who showed up so often our kids assumed we were sitting in the car waiting, which gave them the confidence to get back to the task at hand. If we’ve done our job right they have often taken us for granted but in a moment of...

By SHAUN MULLEN GUEST VOICE Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who is said to have the inside track to replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter, is being flogged pretty hard on the intertubes for, among other things, saying that as a woman she brings certain sensitivities to the job. You know, like knowing what it’s like to be discriminated against on the basis of gender. I can’t quite put my finger on why...

Should the GOP move on from Ronald Reagan? In this Guest Voice post, talk show host Michael Reagan explains why he doesn’t think so and why talk radio is an important indicator of opinion. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its writers. Forget Bush, Not Reagan by Michael Reagan If some media reports are correct — a dangerous assumption nowadays when media skepticism...

Debunking Myths About Moderates: 1) Moderates Have No Principles by Rick Moran From long time commenter and center left Obama lover Michael Reynolds left on my post yesterday about Reagan’s toleration for moderates in the GOP: Rick, you’re an atheist living in sin. You’re a rational man. You believe in evolution and understand that gay rights are coming, like it or not. You don’t think torture is...

How The Republicans Can Learn From David Cameron’s British Conservative Party by Dalitso Njolinjo The world of Anglo-American politics can be a funny place indeed. In the space of 14 years we have seen the British Conservative Party struggle for it’s political life and social relevance while conservatism in the United States was gaining a second wind through the leadership of Newt Gingrich and his ‘Contract...

Mortgaging the White House by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship Finally, [on Friday we were at the end of the] week of a hundred days. As everyone in the western world probably knows by now, this benchmark for assessing presidencies goes back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who arrived at the White House in the depths of the Great Depression. In his first hundred days, FDR came out swinging. He shut down the banks,...

Not So Frequently Asked Questions About The Swine Flu by Will Durst Q. What is swine flu? A. A respiratory disease caused by a type-A influenza virus that has mutated into H1N1, and is currently terrorizing the globe. Don’t you read the papers? Q. What are these papers you speak of? Poor President Obama. Everything happens on his watch. Does he have the worst job in the world right now? A. Perhaps a close...

NOTE: We’ve run a variety of views here on TMV on Pennyslvania Sen. Arlen Specter and his switch from the Republican to the Democratic party. Some were favorable, others not so favorable. Talk show host Michael Reagan offers this unabashed thumbs down. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its writers. Once a Democrat, Always a Democrat by Michael Reagan Sen. Arlen Specter...

Moderates? Who Needs ‘Em? by Rick Moran What’s wrong with conservatism? Philosophically, absolutely nothing. There is a family argument going on at the moment where some question how conservative principles can be translated into a set of issues and policies that would lead to actual conservative governance but beyond that, everything is just peachy, right? Sarcasm aside, the question for the day...

Note: The Following Letter was developed by Travis Johnson, the founder of Progressive Republicans. We, the Undersigned, as long-time, loyal Republicans, supporters of the Party’s candidates and its core values of smaller, more efficient government, individual liberty and personal freedom condemn in the strongest possible fashion the circumstances and actions of so-called “conservatives”...

Jack Bauer Is Not Dead by Rick Moran Greg Gutfeld wonders (parenthetically) if Jack Bauer is dead because the Obama Administration released the memos concocted by Bush era lawyers to justify the use of torture. Earlier today President Obama said charges might be brought against those evil Bush lawyers behind the just-released memos justifying the harsh interrogation techniques used against folks who wanted...

Insurance Is The Problem by Jim Bell Many of us have this dream that we could have less government in our lives and a better quality of life at the same time. Seems silly doesn’t it? When you look at it objectively, we give the government a lot of money with our taxes. The only thing we need in life from government is a good, safe life and the ability to exercise our freedom. To have this we need a proper...

The Confrontation Con-Game by Barry Rubin There are many people eager to see President Barack Obama and his administration bash Israel, or predict that has already happened. But the administration has yet to make any significant direct anti-Israel actions or statements. I expect this widely predicted conflict isn’t going to take place. Let me repeat the word “direct.” Inasmuch as the U.S. government...

Life and Death in the Google Age — Interview With Jeff Jarvis b Bill Steigerwald Q: What does Google do and what’s so revolutionary about it? A: The idea behind the book was not so much to write a book about Google as about the changes in our world – and trying to figure them out by viewing them through the lens of Google’s success. I believe the changes in our world are huge and profound right...

Why Obama is right to draw a line under the Bush torture era by Dalitso Njolinjo As a follower of American politics I found this week to be a very strange one. The liberal news network MSNBC seemed to have morphed into what they mock almost on a daily basis, Fox News. I saw them revert to childish jokes to undermine what even I could see was a legitimate political protest at its core by the Libertarians which...

Resurrection of Intolerance by Walter Brasch The fanatic right-wing, after taking a few days off to catch their breath, is back again with vengeance. Name anything that President Obama is doing, and this broken wing will try to slap it down, unmindful that more than two-thirds of Americans support the President, with his popularity rising each week, according to several independent polls. ...

Pirates: The Shipping News by Michael Winship If you’re looking for signs of the Apocalypse – and who isn’t? – here’s a good one. There’s an uptick in ark building. You heard me. According to The Wall Street Journal, that Bible of the Financially Bilious, Hong Kong’s billionaire Kwok brothers are in the final stages of constructing the world’s first full-size replica...

Islamists of the World Unite; You Have Nothing to Lose Except Any Pretext of Being Moderate By Barry Rubin It’s a development of tremendous importance and you probably won’t be hearing about it from anywhere but here. Mahdi Akef, supreme guide of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, has defied his own country’s government to ally himself with Hizballah. What makes this such a remarkable and high-risk step?...

What Do Political Cartoons and McDonalds Have in Common? By Daryl Cagle Every time I open a newspaper I read another story about the decline of newspapers. Political cartoonists were the canaries in the newspaper-decline-coal-mine; our ranks have been shrinking for the past 30 years — but now the pace has quickened as only a few dozen editorial cartoonists are left, and they seem to be losing their jobs...

Reality Britain by Dalitso Njolinjo It is said that more people in Britain vote for their favorite participant of reality shows such as X-Factor (Britain’s version of American Idol) and Big Brother than they do for their local representative or party in the general elections. The usual piffle flows out of the mouths of most politicians to explain such disengagement (“People vote numerous times”, “We...

By SHAUN MULLEN GUEST VOICE The Nazis kept talking about a thousand-year Reich but they couldn’t think ahead for five minutes! — A TRANSLATOR FOR HITLER While thousands of books have been written about virtually every aspect of the Third Reich from anshluss to zionism, comparatively little ink has been spilled on how Adolph Hitler governed his empire of conquered European states. And so it comes...

The reviews are still coming on President Barack Obama’s trip to Europe. A lot of them are positive. Here’s a less positive one from radio talk show host Michael Reagan. Mr. Obama’s Traveling Circus by Michael Reagan While the United States writhes in the agony of seeking a way out of the current financial mess, President Obama, his wife and a cast of 500 aides and hangers-on took the show on the...