The longtime conservative icon magazine National Review has now gone back to its William F. Buckley roots: in a scathing editorial it has come out against former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s candidacy for the 2012 Republican nomination. This should temper some of Gingrich’s polling support. Here is a chunk of it. First, the magazine notes the opportunity at the GOP’s grasp in terms of the...

I dozed off last night watching one of those Liam Neeson action movies in which he wrecks cities for reasons too complicated to explain and switched channels to find more of the same in the Republican demolition derby. Ron Paul is surging in Iowa to bump the tailpipes of Gingrich and Romney while the first frontrunner Donald Trump has been waved off the track, canceling his debate and promising to “leave all...

Not surprisingly, Arabs aren’t taking too kindly to Newt Gingrich’s recent comment that the Palestinians are an ‘invented people’ seeking little more than the destruction of Israel. For Algeria’s Le Quotidien d’Oran, K. Selim writes that if Gingrich makes his way into the White House, at least Arabs will be able to stop pretending that there is any hope of Washington being a...

HILLSBORO, Missouri — What if a state held a non-binding Presidential primary and the current front-runner for the Republican Presidential nomination wasn’t on the ballot? That’ll happen in Missouri on March 17 and just weeks ago the always correct (except when it’s wrong) conventional wisdom insisted this illustrated how former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had no “ground game.” And so, it was implied,...

About a week ago, a “Get a Life” post by Joe Gandelman discussing a bovine question by a reporter on a defense authorization bill that included a provision which repeals the military law on sodomy and the military ban on sex with animals, or bestiality, quickly (de)generated some heated comments on the issue. One person insisted that sodomy and other bizarre deviant sex acts should be illegal and was appalled...

Let me say at the outset: I think Christiane Amanpour got a bum rap from many critics, partisans and bloggers. She was a highly informed, outward looking and thinking host of ABC’s “This Week” and it was refreshing to see someone on American television whose focus was not soley on our domestic political horse races. That being said, this does not surprise me one bit: Christiane Amanpour is...

Watching the President on 60 Minutes raises wonder at why more Americans aren’t rallying around this highly intelligent, energetic, fair-minded man. The answer may be in the question itself. Contrasting Barack Obama’s demeanor with the rage and unearned self-regard of his would-be successors, Congressional critics and Murdoch media attack dogs—-and his low-key response to that rabid criticism–may...

Are the American-based credit rating agencies in cahootz with the U.S. government? Columnist Anna Szabó of Hungary’s Magyar Nemzet Konyvek sees a war on Europe and specifically Hungary in the latest credit rating downgrades by Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s, and exorts Europeans to create their own credit rating agency that would be independent of U.S. influence and offer more accurate...

It is getting heated out there in the battle for the 2012 Republican nomination — with signs of if not a party split, then high passions. The latest instance: conservative talker Michael Savage has offered former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the party’s current front-runner, $1 million to drop out of the race. Savage writes this kind of the way he speaks on his show IN UPPER CASE. Here’s part...

As a blogger — not a journalist — a “debate” in the New York Times caught my interest. The lead article asks the question, “Are All Bloggers Journalists?” The question and the ensuing debate are prompted by an Oregon federal judge’s ruling that “Crystal Cox, a blogger who was sued for defamation after she accused the founder of an investment group of acting illegally and unethically,...

SNL had a satire of MSNBC’s Al Sharpton and his show. The video:

Has the very foundation of modern democracy been superseded without anyone noticing? Columnist Nicolas Demorand of France’s Liberation warns that democratic politicians have a new master – and it isn’t the constitution or the voter. For Liberation, Nicolas Demorand starts out this way: Executive, legislative, judiciary: political philosophy teaches that a democratic state is based on the...

Wolverton, Cagle Cartoons This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Newton’s First Law tells us objects stay at rest or continue in motion if nothing changes, an apt description of this year in American politics: an inert Congress and a careening GOP presidential race that keeps dropping former frontrunners off the turnip truck. This was not the kind of Change Barack Obama had in mind when he was elected, but he has now gone through three years of pushing legislation against...

Will the newly-launched Community of Latin American and Caribbean States end up displacing the Washington-based Organization of American States, as Venezuela President Hugo Chavez hopes, or will it fizzle out as so many previous attempts at Latin American unification have done? Columnist Nelson Ortega from Venezuela’s Aporrea is certain that the formation of CELAC is the culmination of Simon Bolivar’s...

UPDATE, Dec. 13: Bloomberg News reports that MVRDV, the Dutch architecture company that designed the much criticized “pixelated cloud” buildings may modify the design in the wake of the negative reactions. Bloomberg: “It may be difficult for the developer to go on with the current design after getting negative attention in the mass media,” Lee Sang Yun, a professor at Yonsei University’s department...

The Top-10 Comedic News Stories of 2011 Raging Moderate, by Will Durst Okay. You can stop vibrating like a shaved poodle duct-taped to the foul pole at Wrigley during a night game in April. It’s finally here. The eighth annual Top-10 Comedic News Stories of the Year. Veterans, please advise the newbies this list is NOT to be confused with the Top-10 Legitimate News Stories of the Year. They are as different...

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Why doesn’t he just have as his campaign slogan: “Duh…”: His recent anti-gay ad has also lead to some spoofs and has become an Internet sensation (we’ll just give you the LINK HERE since some of it is somewhat less family friendly than we embed on TMV).

Are the once all-powerful credit-rating agencies, the most important of which are American – becoming irrelevant to the markets and those who invest in them? According to this editorial from Germany’s Financial Times Deutschland, despite the fact that Standard and Poor’s threatened to downgrade eurozone debt last week, European markets have hardly moved. The editorial board of the Financial...

Politically you are what you watch. YES: Republicans and Democrats do have different TV viewing habits.

Mitt Romney has an uphill battle as he gets into the Fox cockpit to contest Newt Gingrich, whose cozy ties with proprietor Rupert Murdoch go back almost two decades. “I’ll be on Fox a lot because you guys matter when it comes to Republican primary voters,” Romney tells Neil Cavuto in an interview as polls show him far behind Gingrich among Fox-watching Iowa caucus-goers. Until he started running for President,...

Could it be that part of America’s plan for the Iraqi invasion was to undermine the Iraqi family by luring women and girls to work for the occupation? For Oman’s Al Watan in an article reminiscent of the type of content we published at the height of the war, columnist Walid Al Zubaydi writes that the way U.S. immigration officers insult Iraqis granted asylum in the U.S. is a consequence of the...

I don’t remember why I had stayed after my 1 a.m. quitting time as night city editor of the Philadelphia Daily News early on the morning of December 9, 1981, but I do remember that I was talking to Tom Schmidt, the overnight editor, when a message crackled over one of the police radio scanners: “Officer down at 13th and Arch. Send back-up and assistance.” Police Office Daniel Faulkner (photo,...

The Daily Beast’s Jon Avlon, who also is an independent voter commentator of CNN, lists 10 GOP Endorsements That Still Matter in 2012’s Presidential Election. One person who he didn’t include on the list is this guy who thinks the whole Republican race hangs on his endorsement (apparently some Republican candidates think so, too).