The new year brings news of a 16-year-old girl named Heaven Chamberlain, arrested with Occupy the Caucus protesters in Des Moines along with her mother. Heaven, detained once before at an Occupy rally in October, says her rap sheet is like lines on a résumé (“It shows that I’m active with the community and that I care about people’s opinions”) and that she plans to run for president in 2036 after a...

When Texas Governor Rick Perry couldn’t remember the third government agency he would eliminate should he become president, one could chalk that up to “well, everybody has a mental freeze once-in-a-while.” When Perry couldn’t remember the name of a Supreme Court Justice or made a mistake in the number of judges on that Court, one could say “well, we all make mistakes.” But what does one...

How sorry is the present state of Iraq – and how bitter do some Iraqis feel about the consequences of the U.S. invasion and withdrawal? For Iraq’s Azzaman, columnist Fateh Abdulsalam accuses President Obama of brazenly using the Iraq withdrawal to his political advantage and leaving the country ‘with a government reveling in the joys of its own corruption and the opportunistic use of the symbols...

Reading bloggers’ own favorite posts of 2011 is a reminder of how much political and social sanity has been lost in this Tea Party world. Satire and rage abound. Yet it’s cathartic to read these notes in a bottle from survivors and realize we are not alone in this shipwrecked world. Such comfort is provided by keeping alive a tradition started by the late Al Weigel, who wrote brilliantly under the nom...

Now that we have pulled out of Iraq — on a schedule negotiated by the Bush administration — and as instability and violence are on the increase there — as we feared they would — the very same chickenhawks who got us into this mess are now rearing their heads to blame Obama — as we knew they would. They are now saying the same they would have said if we had pulled out of Iraq six...

Despite recent unrest over the rule of Vladimir Putin and the perception that the recent Duma elections were rigged in favor of his party, many Russians regard him as a hero that has protected the nation from Western interests seeking to undermine Russian influence. For the Komsomolskaya Pravda, columnist Dmitry Voskoboinikov writes that whatever warts Putin and Russia may have, at least they aren’t being...

In the residue of Christmas spirit, an attempt to understand what’s behind a toxic cloud that the Tea Party has cast over American government all year: Yes, the economy has been bad, and many of us have been hurting—-from young people without jobs to the retired with no increases in Social Security and no place to earn interest on their life savings. Yes, bailouts and stimulus have been very costly yet still...

Is America’s fear of terrorism putting a chill on essential scientific research? For Italy’s La Stampa, columnist Piero Bianucci warns that the White House, in an unprecedented move to prevent terrorists from getting their hands on an even more deadly form of bird flu, has persuaded science journals Science and Nature to censor themselves, undermining the free flow of information that scientific...

A mutual grandparent at holiday dinner confronts me with the accusation that I fired a cinema icon in the 1960s. Guilty. So I may as well share my confession with the whole world. I brought out the worst in Pauline Kael. She started irritating me the minute we met and never stopped. Looking for a movie reviewer with intelligence and style when I became editor of McCalls, I had read and admired Kael’s work...

Cell Phones Don’t Kill People by David Goodloe I was listening to the radio yesterday morning, and, for awhile, the topic of the discussion was banning cell phone use while driving. Should we or shouldn’t we? I missed the beginning of the conversation, but I assume it was in response to the National Transportation Safety Board’s proposal this week for a ban on cell phone use and text messaging...

One of the most fascinating spectacles of 2011 has been watching Republicans’ love affair with Donald Trump, which blossomed as grandly as the flowers in Spring when he suddenly became the nation’s most famous birther. Suddenly, some conservative talkers who had dissed The Donald seemingly worshiped him. Suddenly, he had another network home besides NBC: Fox News, which loves anyone who does the...

As I wrote here: One of the most interesting and exciting assignments during my U.S. Air Force career was my tour of duty at the North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD) complex some 1,400 feet beneath granite Cheyenne Mountain, south of Colorado Springs, Colorado, at the height of the Cold War. The assignment was interesting and exciting not only because we were working to “protect North America from a space,...

Is the Internal Revenue Service suborning European Banks to keep tabs on their American customers? According to this editorial from Germany’s Financial Times Deutschland, a number of German Banks have ‘understandably’ decided to drop their U.S. customers due to the expense of complying with IRS data provisions and for fear of being on the wrong side of the American tax collector. The Financial...

Here’s a video animation take from Taiwan’s Next Media Animation on the House GOP refusing to pass the payroll tax extension:

CNN’s Gloria Borger asked Rep. Ron Paul some tough questions about some old newsletters that had some extremist and racist assertions — newsletters that were under his name but he says he did not write. Paul cut the interview short (not quite walking out since he said good bye and had his body mike taken off him. She was pressing him as to whether he read the disavowed newsletters under his name: On...

Is Newt Gingrich suited to be president of the United States? Trending negative on this question along with much of the rest of the world is columnist Patrik Eschemeyer of Switerland’s News. Eschemeyer labels the entire Republican field with the exception of John Huntsman as ‘madcap’ – and he regards Newt Gingrich as a ‘pig.’ For the News, Patrik Eschemeyer starts out this...

With my best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a joyous holiday season to our readers, especially our veterans and active duty military. Two Christmases ago, in a “Christmas wish for our troops serving in harm’s way,” I expressed my empathy and admiration for the tens of thousands of our brave men and women who were serving in hostile territory , away from their loved ones, attempting to, in some fashion,...

The Daily Beast’s Andrew Sullivan has long been a must-read as not just a blogger but in particular for any of his long-form magazine or newspaper pieces. One reason he’s a must read is that he marches to his own independent drummer and doesn’t always follow the journalistic or Republican Party pack. And now he’s doing it again on two fronts. He has written a post formally endorsing...

Lately, I have been watching hours of scratchy black-and-white film about my childhood years, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and seeing through very old eyes a different America, peopled in turmoil by those who don’t resemble their descendants today. Instead of fighting for bargains on Black Friday, they stand patiently in breadlines with gaunt faces and hopeless eyes, waiting for food. Instead of blaming...

For me, I’d vote to cause all persons who were polled to also make a youtube video of their phone conversation with the pollster so I can see who they are, where they are, and their tones of voice, and judge for myself how in depth the poll was, whether anything was answered in depth, whether anyone had humor, or a sick baby, or a car broken down, or a mortgage they couldnt pay, or ten classic cars outside...

This morning, I — probably along with millions of other Americans — received this short e-mail from President Obama: Early this morning, the last of our troops left Iraq. As we honor and reflect on the sacrifices that millions of men and women made for this war, I wanted to make sure you heard the news. Bringing this war to a responsible end was a cause that sparked many Americans to get involved...

Newspaper endorsements don’t have the impact they used to — and some never had the impact that journalists and editorial writers claimed — but the Des Moines Register remains a highly respected newspaper both in terms of its reporting, thoughtfulness, and editorial writing. It’s endorsement does carry some weight — and it has just endorsed Mitt Romney for the GOP caucus. What is...

Now that U.S. forces are either out or about to leave, there is significant Iraqi hand-wringing over whether it was wise to force them to go now. For Sotal Iraq, columnist Amran Al-Obaidi writes that the decision-making process that has led to the American withdrawal was flawed, and that Iraqis who have demanded a complete U.S. pullout were more interested in scoring political points than the security and...

Christopher Hitchens seemed to some to have been born in a bad mood or under a bad moon on the right. He was, I think, more so a man who despised –as in George Orwell’s book, 1984 too, that there would ever be “The Party” run by the Big Brothers of the world, that would tell men and women what to think, when to think it and when to unthink it, or else. Christopher thereby took out after...

Newt Gingrich’s comment that Palestinians are an ‘invented people’ is proving to be one of the most globally devisive of the 2012 campaign season – particularly in the Muslim world and especially among Palestinians. For Samidoon in the Palestinian Territories, columnist Abd Al Bari Atwan expresses the frustration felt among Palestinians over the wider meaning of Gingrich’s comment,...