As has been apparent from previous posts (here and here), I support the Obama administration’s decision to take out American-born, terrorist-turned, traitor Anwar al-Awlaki before he could do any more harm to America and Americans. My opinion was reinforced when I read that al-Qaeda—the same gang of terrorists that massacred more than 3,000 innocent American men, women and children; the same organization...

The killing of American-born, al-Qaeda-affiliated, terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki has sparked anger among civil liberties groups and has set-off a lively and legitimate debate in our country. In response to an article decrying the killing of American born al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist Al-Awlaki, I disputed the contention that the killing of the terrorist was Unconstitutional, illegal or amoral, or that it represented...

It’s hard to find a company that seems in as muchlf-inflicted chaos as Netflix — one of my own personal favorite companies. In recent months it seemingly has not just shot itself in the foot but bit itself in the lower proximities. Is that an exaggeration? No. Just look at this story about a massive corporate about face: Netflix Inc. is abandoning its widely panned decision to separate its DVD-by-mail...

In this political climate of loud no’s and yesses, good journalism is vital to disentangle all the maybes and what if’s. As Republicans brand the 2009 stimulus of $787 billion a total failure and Democrats defend it as keeping the recession from getting worse, Ezra Klein of the Washington Post reports what economists and politicians were actually thinking and doing back then. He cites the 2008 book of Carmen...

This weekend, GOP presidential candidates are groveling at the “Values Voters Summit” in Washington, a noisy minority with frontrunner Mitt Romney defending his faith from attacks as “a cult.” All this is reported with a straight face by media large and small, who a generation ago would have dismissed such fringe doings as a crackpot sideshow. Today, the Tea Party and the Religious Right hold America...

Is the way America administers the death penalty about exacting justice, or just winning the next election? And does it live up to the ideals Americans say they hold dear? For France’s Le Nouvel Observateur, Sandrine Ageorges-Skinner, one of the world’s most tireless anti-death penalty campaigners, outlines the mind-numbing injustice of how execution is imposed in the United States. And she knows...

Way too many times have I cringed when the religious right uses the Bible to justify evil and prejudice in our lives. Way too many times have I been infuriated when the political right has used the Constitution to support and justify acts of war, torture and rampant violations of civil rights. Way too many times have I been incensed when the Bush administration used Office of Legal Council (OLC) memoranda,...

Is the American left and center-left finally feeling its oats? As the protests on Wall Street spread across the country, the world is taking notice . For Germany’s Die Welt, columnist Ansgar Graw writes that Americans who hardly know the meaning of thw word ‘demonstration’ have taken to the streets, and no one, least of all the protesters, knows where it will all lead. For Die Welt, Ansgar...

by WALTER BRASCH The most important media story this past week is that the Kardashians were guest co-hosts on the fourth hour of NBC’s “Today” show. One Kardashian sister per day, plus mother Kris and stepdad Bruce Jenner. It isn’t bad enough that talk shows, which have descended into a morass of being publicity mills for celebrity hucksters, adore them. It isn’t bad enough that the E! cable network,...

Republicans in the House of Representatives today blocked consideration of a resolution “calling on Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) to apologize for not immediately ‘doing away’ with a rock bearing the controversial name of his family’s West Texas hunting camp, ‘Niggerhead.’” According to the Washington Post, The [Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.)] resolution calls the name of the hunting...

During his press conference this morning—one that focused on the economy and the American Jobs Act, the so-called Jobs Bill—president Obama showed some frustration with an obstructionist, just-say-no, do-noting Congress. In what became a recurring theme, he posed a number of rhetorical questions, preceded by the admonition: So as we look towards next week, any senator out there who’s thinking...

With Chris Christie and Sarah Palin folding, it looks like Mitt Romney has won the Republican tontine—-a survivor not a savior. As he celebrates on the campaign trail in Florida, he may be within shouting distance of his logical running mate, freshman Sen. Marco Rubio, the Tea Party favorite who would bring youth, Latino-ness and a few months of legislative experience to the ticket. Rubio has been busy polishing...

WASHINGTON — American politics reached a pivot point this week. A new story line will now define how voters and the media see what’s going on. Since Election Day in 2010, the prevailing narrative has been about a resurgent conservatism, a president on the defensive, big government under attack, the deficit as the dominant issue, and the tea party as the political system’s prime mover....

How worried are Japanese about the rise of China? Hiroshi Kawamoto form Japan’s Isen Shimbun, after closely examining what he considers the calamitous decade of U.S. behavior since 9-11, warns that closer ties to America is the only strategy that has any hope of preserving Japanese prosperity. For Japan’s Isen Shimbun, Hiroshi Kawamoto writes in part: Trying to return to the United States of the...

Love her or hate her, Maureen Dowd certainly knows how to put things into political/partisan perspective—take your pick. Her eagerly anticipated post-mortem of Chris Christie’s equally eagerly awaited “I have told you before, I am telling you now, ‘the answer was never anything but no’ announcement” will not disappoint fans or foes. From the opening paragraph of her “Man in the [Big] Mirror”...

Is the state of the world really as dire as world leaders who recently spoke at the U.N. General Assembly would lead us to believe? Have we all gotten carried away with gloom and doom? For Argentina’s Diario Decuyo, columnist Andrés Oppenheimer cites a recent report that asserts things are on the upswing almost everywhere, from life expectancy to education levels to the number of wars. For the Diario...

Astrophysicists Saul Perlmutter, Adam Riess, and Brian Schmidt were recently awarded the Nobel Prize for their work concerning the universe and everything in it. Their recent research has contributed greatly to the discovery that the universe is not only expanding, but actually speeding up. The reasons for the Universe’s expansion and increased acceleration are less certain. Astrophysicists believe the...

A majority now see Barack Obama as a one-term president and he calls himself the “underdog,” but social networks may be changing the political landscape for 2012 in a way that the new medium of television did during the “youthquake” of the 1960s. What started as a small disorganized rally on Wall Street three weeks ago is spreading to Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and elsewhere into a movement. “With...

With time running out for Sarah Palin to decide whether to enter the fray for the Republican presidential nomination, much has been made of her hold over a fanatical if diminishing fan base while very little has been made of her hold over a supplicant and unquestioning press. That, of course, is because the press isn’t about to put on a hair shirt and flail itself with birch bessoms over any of its manifold...

There are two seemingly unrelated issues here, but the timing and the pun are too good to pass up, so let’s travel these twin paths and see where they meet. Yesterday, Hank Williams, Jr. managed to either stick his foot in his mouth, his head up his ass, or pulled off the seemingly impossible feat of doing BOTH simultaneously. Which brings us to Albert Einstein and the Theory of Special Relativity. Last...

Now that Chris Christie—potential savior of the Republican primaries—is expected to announce in a couple of hours his decision not to seek the presidency, Republicans are left with a slate of candidates they still wish they could improve upon. Among them, Obamacare “prototypist” Mitt Romney; Rick Perry and his Pet Rock; Congressional witch hunt proponent Michele Bachmann; homophobe Rick...

Does the case of Amanda Knox, acquitted yesterday in connection with the rape and murder of her British roommate, confirm once again the barbarity and injustice of the American death penalty? Asserting that in the U.S., people are put to death on the basis of evidence at least as flimsy as that against Knox, La Repubblica columnist Vittorio Zucconi writes that the Knox case is yet one more reason for the U.S....

Media and Technology Did The NYTimes Change The Story's Lede To Implicate ProtestersOnce-upon-a-time, long before blogging software became synonymous with digital publishing, a core ethic of those who blogged was “show the reader when you change an article.” The resulting full disclosure was a boon to readers. Two recent incidents from the MSM illustrate why I think news organizations should...

Is America’s ‘No Tolerance’ approach to battling crime something for Europe and the rest of the world to emulate? According to Die Zeit columnist Dr. Eva Schweitzer, this may seem counter-intuitive and disturbing to European sensibilities, but cracking down on grand and petty crimes committed primarily by ethnic minorities is the very ‘glue’ that hold America’s multicultural...

The one-word-man deviated from his standard one-word script this morning on CNN’s State of the Union when discussing the recent drone strike that killed American-born terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki. But, first, credit where credit is due. Uncharacteristic as it is for him, Former Vice President Dick Cheney praised the U.S. drone strike that killed al-Awlaki and President Obama’s decision to carry it out: I...