Since William Howard Taft a century ago, no American president has come close to matching his portly presence at 300 pounds, but next year’s Republican field could change that. The subject comes up after a GOP split over Michelle Obama’s campaign against obesity, with conservatives mocking the First Lady as Mike Huckabee and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie applaud her efforts to slim down chubby children...

In eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation, the President blinks by telling governors he will let states opt out of the individual mandate for medical insurance in 2014, three years earlier than the reform law allows. After a waste of two months with a House dog-and-pony show of repeal and Senate failure to go along, the bipartisan mess that politicians have made of American health care is now a post-disaster triage...

When discussing federal “benefits” to individuals one of the arguments that is made by those opposing such benefits is that it leads to a nanny state, that it increases the size of government and the size of its spending, deficit, debt, etc. I use the word “benefits” circumspectly because many of these so-called benefits have—to some extent—already been paid for with our taxes and with the...

Both the left and right consider current events in Wisconsin as singularly defining to their respective causes. Our shallow 24/7 info-entertainment news media enjoys whipping up more excitement and exaggerated controversy. It is wholly uninterested in providing the public with most of the unbiased facts that surround the situation. Both Republicans and Democrats narrowly play their type-cast roles by demonizing...

Sometimes the outrage boileth over and cannot be contained in 140 characters.

South Dakota backed off from the proposed legislation to change the definition of justifiable homicide in a way that could have allowed abortion providers to be legally murdered. But now Nebraska is actively considering a similar law — only it’s even worse:

To all earthquake survivors of Christchurch and surrounds, hang in there… “we are sending in the linebacker angels”… Below this is the Letter to New Zealanders containing Post-Trauma Recovery Tenets… and here is this little prayer for your best possible health and strength from someone you know well… the kiwi. The Kiwi, which is a New Zealand bird of time-honored rank, is...

Justin Bieber IS inane. It’s hard to tell whether that’s a chronological rather than a congenital problem (most 16-year-olds, after all, don’t have it all figured out just yet), but you don’t have to employ selective quotation from an article you probably haven’t even read to make the point that reasonably intelligent and well-informed adults should not be looking to teen rock idols...

Fat chance.

Are Republicans and new Tea Party members of the U.S. Congress just caving in to the status quo? Will they shut down the U.S. Government by not approving an increase in the debt limit this March over a paltry $100 billion in spending cuts to the current year and the next fiscal year? President Obama presented a lame 2011-2012 Budget proposal – in keeping with his lame responses to most everything that has...

Sarah Palin should always think twice before mocking anyone, because she only ends up displaying her own stupidity (my bolds):

(EDITOR’s NOTE: This was posted last night. We are leaving it on top of TMV until 12 noon EST today.) This is the last column of my life. The ugly sapping of my physical and mental strengths have overwhelmed me in my ordeal of fighting 4th stage lung cancer and colon cancer. The ravages of 30 years of diabetes has not helped. And the colon surgery has not been scheduled yet. A ultra-high dosage of radiation...

John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

On that dreadful Saturday afternoon of January 8, I along with so many others started blogging on the tragedy in Tucson. My first “report” quoting the Washington Post was, in part: According to a local news report, Giffords was shot in the head at point-blank range. She was taken to University Medical Center in Tucson; her condition was not immediately known. As we all remember, early reports were that...

So says Raj Patel in a NYTimes Room for Debate on the question of is the world producing enough food? Over the centuries, societies developed the tools of grain stores, crop diversification and “moral economies” to guarantee the poor access to food in times of crisis. Global economic liberalization discarded these buffers in favor of lean lines of trade. Safety nets and storage became inefficient...

Imagine that you are a school administrator and it is brought to your attention that a young student (six or eight years old depending on the source) has drawn a disturbing violent picture and written a note indicating he wants to die. Obviously this is a disturbing situation and something you need to deal with. But what do you do ? Do you contact his parents ? Do you talk to the child ? Do you arrange for a...

Kate Sheppard writes in Mother Jones about a bill under consideration in the South Dakota legislature that would expand the definition of “justifiable homicide” to include actions taken to prevent the death of an “unborn child.”

Jodi Jacobson, editor-in-chief of RH Reality Check, finds a couple of bright spots in Pres. Obama’s proposed budget for FY 2012:

Don’t bother, they’re here (emphasis is Steve’s):

MSNBC says everything you know about beating stress is wrong. One of 6 of their counter-intuitive suggestions on how to relieve stress: Hanging out with loved ones has long been touted as an instant mood-booster, but according to new scientific evidence, when it comes to managing stress, the calming effects of spending time with a furry friend trump those obtained by hanging out with friends and family. “Having...

Regular readers know I fancy myself a foodie — part locavore, part organic. And I have been known to be a harsh critic of the industrial food system. (See, for example, here, here, here and here.) So when, over the weekend, I finally got ’round to listening to Part 2 of the Freakonomics podcasts on food, Waiter, There’s a Physicist in My Soup!, I was struck by the simple, obvious, bottom-line fact...

The Internet is abuzz with the clip below which is appearing on various websites: local CBS reporter Serene Branson having what appears to be an on-the-air-stroke or at least a mini-stroke. According to Mediaite, the latest reports indicate she was not hospitalized but checked out by a paramedic and allowed to go home with a friend. It’s a short but scary clip:

The Trust Women Political Action Committee reports on its website:

As Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords continues to undergo rehabilitation in Houston and to improve every day, the assumptions, rumors and predictions about her political future continue to swirl. Such speculation includes “Democrats in Arizona and Washington [are] looking to her as a potential candidate to replace retiring GOP Sen. Jon Kyl.“ According to Politico, Arizona and Washington strategists...

“In recent weeks,” writes a culinary columnist, “we’ve seen a big, powerful government agency, a big, powerful person and a big, powerful corporation telling us what to eat.” He is critiquing the efforts of the USDA, Oprah and Wal-Mart (partnering with Michelle Obama) to persuade Americans to “Eat Real Food”–more fruit and vegetables, less processed gunk. A noble goal,...