Editor’s Note: This is the second installment of journalist Bob Laurence’s letters from Brooklyn which detail life there and in NYC. Bob left his longtime home in San Diego and moved to “the big city.” I learned the original meaning of ’stoop’ over the weekend. A stoop is the short staircase that leads up from the sidewalk to the front door of the brownstone homes in New...

Speaking Flattery to Power By Barry Rubin Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo is one of the most bizarre orations ever made by a U.S. president, not a foreign policy statement but rather something invented by Obama, an international campaign speech, as if his main goal was to obtain votes in the next Egyptian primary. That approach defined Obama’s basic themes: Islam’s great. America is good. We’re sorry....

Sonia from the Block by Will Durst The president revealed his nominee for the Supreme Court, selecting a 54-year-old daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants who had been nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H. W. Bush. And what a genius political move it was. Sonia Sotomayor: a woman AND a Hispanic. From the South Bronx. A Catholic with diabetes. Regrettably,...

Everyone Should See Torturing Democracy by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship In all the recent debate over torture, many of our Beltway pundits and politicians have twisted themselves into verbal contortions to avoid using the word at all. During his speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute last week – immediately on the heels of President Obama’s address at the National Archives –...

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of letters from Brooklyn, that are actually fascinating emails sent out by former San Diego Union Tribune TV columnist Bob Laurence. He sends these out by email but they are so fascinating that they are virtual newspaper columns and — with his full permission — we will start running them here. When I worked with him on the newspaper years ago (I...

Sonia Sotomayor The Future of Affirmative Action by Michael Reagan Yesterday’s nomination of Judge Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court was a historic moment that all Americans should appreciate. Her life story represents the great promise of the American dream — Sotomayor has lived in both a public housing project in the Bronx and in the dorm rooms of Princeton and Yale. Through hard work,...

Netanyahu’s Peace Plan by Barry Rubin In his successful meeting with President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented a superb, workable peace plan backed by a wide Israeli consensus Those obsessed with whether Netanyahu would say the “two-state solution” mantra missed it. In fact, though Netanyahu didn’t accept that framework precisely because he and his Labor party...

An Old Soldier Takes A Trip To The Past By George Stantis I am 83 years old, and I’ve taken lots of trips. But this one would take me back nearly 65 years. Like a child, my emotions were already asking: ”Are we there yet?” I was on my way to Washington, D.C., to see the national memorial dedicated to those who served in World War II. Already, it was bringing back those days, and emotions...

Editor’s Note: The following is the first post of an essay by Martin Rybicki, a student at the University of Texas-San Antonio. In this essay, Rybicki is making the case that moderate and liberal Republicans have had a place in the GOP since it’s creation and argues that they belong in the party. Here is the first installment of, The Real Republicans: The Case for Moderates, Liberals, and Pragmatic...

The Cheney Doctrine by Will Durst I’m sick of torture. And the fact that we’re one of the countries way up there on the J.D. Powers annual “torture reliability” list makes me unwell as well. As does talking AROUND torture. What this country needs is an up-front national referendum on whether we should or shouldn’t be torturing people. Oh wait. That’s right, we did have one. Last November 4th. These...

Editor’s Note: When Israel’s new conservative prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, meets President Barack Obama at the White House today the two leaders will press two different agendas. Barry Rubin of The Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center in Israel has some thoughts on this. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its writers. The Peace Process Industry’s...

What’s So Funny about Washington? by Michael Winship A joke is a sometime thing, as wide as a church door or as delicate as a rose. The right or wrong word, too many or too few, their placement or emphasis can determine whether it’s a total dud or fall down funny; the difference, as Mark Twain said, between the lightning bug and lightning. Too much explanation or thought can whip a...

GOP’s Get Out Of Jail Free Card: Charlie Crist by Dalitso Njolinjo Let me say from the start that Charlie Crist will be a problem for the Democratic Party. Team Obama and Governor/ Chairman Kaine have taken great steps to paint the face Republican Party to resemble individuals such as Rush Limbaugh, George Bush and Dick Chaney but Charlie Crist does not fit snugly into that mode. Don’t get it confused,...

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”...