Edward Harrison at Naked Capitalism explains why Europe is destined for another recession in the near future. They are replicating the mistakes that led to the Great Depression being “Great:” everyone is going to cut government spending and try to increase exports in the context of a fixed currency regime. The analog between the EU now and the world in general during the Depression is as close as...

The Coffee Party has now exploded into existence. In only a few weeks the membership of the Coffee Party on facebook has reached over 100,000 about the same numbers that are reported to belong to the Tea Party. Formed in response to the Tea Party the Coffee Party (http://coffeepartyusa.com/) has a few basic purposes that may appeal to the readership of the Moderate Voice. If you attend an event please share...

Mark Benjamin has written an article at Salon about the details of how waterboarding was actually done (as opposed to how torture supporters like Dick and Liz Cheney and Marc Thiessen and Andy McCarthy have claimed it was done) by C.I.A. interrogators. Benjamin culled these details from the hundreds of pages of documents contained in several reports that the Department of Justice declassified and released to...

WASHINGTON — There is a pathetic quality to our discussion of deficits and fiscal responsibility because we never face up to how much we need government to do. Our debates are also characterized by a politically convenient amnesia. Just a decade ago, we were running surpluses so big that Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, worried about what would happen once our national debt was...

RJ Matson, Roll Call This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

California Dems (including the school employees union) are toying with the ballot language on Proposition 14, the “Top Two” open primary referendum that will be on the ballot for a vote in June. Prop 14 has broad support among California voters, especially independents (”decline to state”) who are allowed to vote in primaries at the whim of the party clubhouses. At issue is whether the...

This is not news in and of itself. Stupak claims the Senate bill directly subsidizes abortions. It does not. What is worth noting now is that MSNBC’s First Read blog has done a thorough fact-check and debunked Stupak’s claims:

Both the media and many high profile politicos still seem to be flailing around trying to find some way to label, quantify and pigeonhole the myriad tea party groups which are springing up all around the country. Even Karl Rove, during a stop to promote his new book, expressed concerns over whether or not they might spur some sort of third party movement which could hurt the Republican party. After some time...

In honor of Mitt Romney’s new book debuting at the top of the New York Times bestseller list, here’s a tribute to a man who’s not afraid to argue the world is not flat, culturally speaking.

As is public knowledge, the CIA has been involved with a good number of coups since it came into being after World War II. One of those coups took place in Guatemala in 1954. This article from Guatemala’s El Periodico is both highly critical of the U.S. due to the consequences of that coup, and extremely complimentary, praising the importance of the United States as an example of a system that works. For...

Yesterday, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts told a group of students at the University of Alabama Law School that he found it “very troubling” that Pres. Obama chose the State of the Union address, with the nine justices sitting in front of him, to express his displeasure with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United.

They’re out now and sweeping the Internet. And they’re so entertaining that the only questions that remain are: will some filmmaker make them into a flick one day like Frost-Nixon? Will they be turned into a Broadway musical? Videos of Fox’s powerhouse talk show host Glenn Beck’s (in)famous interview with former Democratic Rep. Eric Massa is whipping around cyberspace faster than the...

Those of us fortunate not to be lawyers at least have some perception that it is their duty to provide legal counsel to people we consider scumbags. With that thought in mind, I wonder what Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol were thinking when they produced an ad criticizing Attorney General Eric Holder for hiring at least nine attorneys who defended accused terrorists at Guantanamo Bay prison. Kristol, in his infamous...

Are Beijing’s concerns about the Dalai Lama’s visits to Washington merely about preserving face, as they say in Asia? Is it reasonable to suspect that the United States today is, or has plans to use the Tibetan Diaspora to destabilize Tibet and/or China? For Russia’s Novosti, columnist Dmitry Kosyrev writes that there is more than wounded pride at the heart of Beijing’s histrionics. Kosyrev...

Did Nevada Sen. Harry Reid put up a straw tea man to run as a Tea Party candidate in his Nevada re-election race — to siphon votes away from the GOP? It sounds possible. Details HERE.

First, just a couple of weeks ago, it was for voting with the Democrats to move a jobs bill forward, now it’s for announcing he’ll vote to end a Republican filibuster on an unemployment benefits and tax credits bill. It’s for coming out generally against the filibuster and for supporting simple majority rule even when it means he, and his party, will lose: I have very serious concerns about...

RJ Matson, The St. Louis Post Dispatch This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Fear not, America, we are not experiencing a constitutional crises as the three branches of government battle one another for political/ideology supremacy. It’s simply a family spat in an arena which has evolved to severe polarization. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts told Alabama law students Tuesday the president’s State of the Union address was a political pep rally. Big deal. In his Jan....

That great philosopher and political commentator Bugs Bunny once said: “Of course you know, that means war!” Now, doesn’t it seem as if Supreme Court Justice John Roberts and White House press spokesman Robert Gibbs have been staying up late watching Cartoon Network these days? The reason: if it doesn’t qualify as outright war, it can now be argued that Roberts and the White House have...

Yesterday, I called Eric Massa the Worst Democrat of the Day for a variety of reasons. Well, Massa went to Glennbeckistan last night and admitted to having “groped” and “tickled” a male staffer at his 50th birthday party: He also said he’d used rough language when he shouldn’t have and that he had jokingly told a male staffer at a wedding reception that he’d rather have...

Taylor Jones, Politicalcartoons.com This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Like a strong drink, North Korea’s shrill Stalinist rhetoric should be consumed in small sips. A good time of year to sample this brew is in March, when the U.S. and South Korea hold joint military exercises called Key Resolve/Foal Eagle. This statement by the Korean People’s Army Supreme Command warns the U.S. and South Korea about the consequences of these yearly maneuvers. The order by the Korean...

Almost eleven years ago, U.S. and other allied troops entered Kosovo following a nearly three-month-long air campaign—Operation Allied Force—by the U.S. and the Air Forces of its NATO allies and which included the first participation in combat by the German Air Force since World War II. The bombing campaign—which also included the use of Tomahawk cruise missiles—and the subsequent invasion...

How dangerous is Venezuela President Hugo Chavez? Some people consider him the greatest danger to the Western Hemisphere, while others see him as nothing more than an amusing baffoon with a wad of oil cash. According to columnist Juan Carlos Martinez of Colombia’s El Tiempo newspaper, Chavez is as dangerous as Libyan dictator Mohamar Qaddafi was before he mended his ways. Martinez writes that the recent...

You’ve heard the old Elvis song “A Hunka Hunka Burning Love?” Today was a messa messa political mess for former Democratic Rep. Eric Massa, Republican conservatives who had earlier come out strongly to support him, and for broadcaster Glenn Beck who promised an hour long interview with Massa that would bust this town wide open — which proved to be merely a bust. So much that Beck apologized...