Why is it that people in the United States, the land where ‘all men are created equal,’ the land where ‘constitutional patriotism’ was born, have been pulling their hair out over an issue that appears nowhere in the Constitution or the Federalist Papers? For Spain’s Diario Exterior, columnist Carlos Alberto Montaner examines one of the most vexing issues in the U.S. today, and...

Contrary to the narrative in the West, in Beijing’s alternate reality, Russia and China are the real heroes of the Syria story. According to this editorial from China’s state-controlled Global Times, only Russia and China stand in the way of an even more horrific conflict brought on by selfish Western determination to remake the Middle East in its own image. The Global Times editorial says in part: China...

At long last, the Syrian tragedy may make a credible start to moving away from the precipice. In an unexpected move Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Francois Holland decided today to work closely with Russia to end the bloody suppression of the Syrian people. This is significant because Syrian President Bashar Assad is a Russian protégé in the tussle for influence in the region...

If polls are correct, the recall election that opponents hoped would rid the State Of Wisconsin from its present governor, Scott Walker, will end leaving Walker in office. Many analysts attribute Walker’s apparent success in overcoming this recall effort to the Big M — money. Millions of dollars have poured into Wisconsin from right-wing billionaires, money Walker has used to gain an advantage. He outspent...

Back in September 2009, when the Navy was seriously considering allowing women to serve aboard its nuclear submarines, I posted an article titled, “Should Women Serve on Submarines?” and, at the end, asked, “What do you think?” With a couple of exceptions, most of the readers saw no problem with this change in policy or had some reasonable, practical reasons for opposing women serving on our submarines. One...

The New York Times has an interesting and, I am sure, controversial opinion piece, which from the beginning (Title: “G.O.P. Nightmare Charts”) to its conclusion (see below) suggests that present trends “do not bode well for Republicans.” All sarcasm aside and keeping in mind that the Times is called a “liberal newspaper” and worse, that it is written in “a place for opinionated...

Are Arab states weak because they lack the spirit to fight against enemies other than themselves? For Iraq’s Kitabat, Nashwan al-Jurayssi writes that the ‘Arab nation’ have been knocked off balance by the West, and in order to revive itself, Arab attentions should be turned toward building a martial spirit focused not on one another, but on those who seek to contain them. Fir Iraq’s...

A North Carolina pastor has suggested that gays and lesbians should be placed in concentration camps. Details from Newsy.com: And here’s a link to Google News that gives you more stories on this subject.

[NOTE: Due to a system hiccup the wrong byline was on this post earlier. TMV regrets the error.] WASHINGTON — There is a healthy struggle brewing among the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops. A previously silent group, upset over conservative colleagues defining the church’s public posture and eagerly picking fights with President Obama, has had enough. The headlines this week were about...

Jessica Crispin writes: Okay, so this is what I want: I want, when someone changes their mind about something, for them not to go ideologically swinging to the far other side. I was reading some reviews of Mark Simpson’s Male Impersonators: Men Performing Masculinity, and there are some of former feminists writing about it. And when I say “former” I mean “anti.” We’re taking...

I collect and look at black and white photos, garage sale cast offs, collections of oddities of our world that someone chose to immortalize in what used to be called ‘film.’ This is a photo of two men piling spent howitzer shells at a sandbagged gun emplacement at Song Be. On the back of the photo is writ: Song Be, less than a hundred miles from Siagon, near the Cambodian border… US 1st infantry. What...

In all of the content we have posted since President Obama declared his support for same-sex marriage, it is the content from Africa that has proven the most disturbing. In this 3,000 word investigative report by Modern Ghana correspondent Stephanie J. Wearne, we are offered a glimpse at the bizarre and frightening reality for homosexuals in the nation of Uganda. For Modern Ghana, Stephanie J. Wearne writes...

President Obama recently announced he was in favor of “Gay Marriage” but added that it was up to the 50 states to decide. He simultaneously did not mention his position on the repeal of the 1996 Federal law called “The Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA – Codified in 1 USC Sec. 7 & 28 USC Sec. 1738C). DOMA permits each state to ignore the acts and laws of other states when it comes to recognizing...

Will gay marriage be just the first of a series of societal issues that the Obama campaign will use to win in November? In this interview with Le Journal du Dimanche au Quotidien, French author, historian and America watcher François Durpaire asserts that Obama’s embrace of the issue of gay marriage betrays a carefully-calculated strategy by a political master to take advantage of emerging changes in...

WASHINGTON — Recently, a group called the Freedom from Religion Foundation ran a full-page ad in The Washington Post cast as an “open letter to ‘liberal’ and ‘nominal’ Catholics.” Its headline commanded: “It’s Time to Quit the Catholic Church.” The ad included the usual criticism of Catholicism, but I was most struck by this paragraph: “If...

The moral high ground is getting a vigorous workout in the wake of President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage, but what exactly is the moral high ground? In ethical and political parlance, the moral high ground refers to having the status of being respected for being moral and adhering to and upholding universally recognized standards of justice and goodness. But alas, there are no commonly...

Almost immediately after President Obama finally “concluded” what millions of Americans have already concluded for years — the right of a man or a woman to marry the person he or she loves — Republican lawmakers “concluded” that, after all, the military they so fiercely support do not deserve the same rights all Americans have. Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee,...

It is hard to believe, but according to this news roundup from around the Western Hemisphere from Spanish-language U.S.-based news aggregator La Informacion, just one Latin American head of state – Argentina President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner – has come out in support of gay marriage. According to the article, thanks largely to the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, the few that have...

Americans are too fat, experts say. The debate on gay marriage suggests we may be growing fat-headed as well. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics predict 42 percent of the population will be obese by 2030, with 11 percent severely obese, at health care costs of $550 billion. How do we set the price of moral obesity, as reflected in the uproar over the President’s conversion into a supporter...

When Obama fought for the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy from the time he assumed the Presidency until its repeal in September 2011, he took many political risks. It took courage and he did the right thing. When Obama made the decision one year ago to go after Osama bin Laden, he took tremendous risks. If anything had gone wrong, if the daring mission had failed, he could...