Another Congressional “Perils of Pauline” episode unreels with the Supercommittee jalopy dangling over the edge of a cliff as members try to freeze the frame beyond next week’s deadline while ideologues left and right gabble about bad Grand Bargains, sequesters and the like. From the cheap seats in New Hampshire, Mitt Romney accuses Democrats of a “Faustian bargain.” Meanwhile, Sarah Palin...

Occupy LA protesters march on November 17, 2011. Credit: shalunts / Shutterstock.com It’s been a week of escalation in the Occupy Wall Street movement, with police actions being coordinated across the country, allegedly with assistance from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. No aid in sniffing out that story from the MSM, by the way. But two pepper spray incidents, one in California and one in...

As powers-that-be sweep away the Occupy movement, where does the animating spirit go now? With apologies to generations who have lodged “99 percent” into the American vocabulary, this will come as unwanted advice for those whose have made visible hidden rage against a financial system that brought the economy to its knees and still keeps profiting while the rest of us suffer. Even so, as a retiree, I can...

Aliaa Magda Elmahdy isn’t new to controversy. She and her boyfriend Kareem Amir were thrown out of a public park for engaging in public displays of affection earlier this year. Elmahdy responded to the incident by posting a video of the two of them arguing with the park managers who expelled them. That seems mild now. To protest limitations on free expression in Egypt, Elmahdy recently stripped down to...

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My partners at Newshoggers John and BJ have covered the latest developments in the OWS movement.  I’m going to give a slightly different take.  We learned today that public support for the OWS movement is falling.  It’s easy to blame the media for this but I think that’s simplistic. I am 65 years old and remember the the protests against the war in Vietnam.  The protests of the flower children/hippies...

When the Tea Party was at its heyday during the 2010 elections, when the Palins and the Bachmanns ruled the day, we were treated to some soaring oratory by real, “take-our-country-back” Americans: You know, those real Americans, real patriots, real believers who belong to the party of core values, of family values — the good party, the party of God. Feeling quite dejected, feeling like a...

The California Supreme Court has announced that they will issue a ruling/advisory opinion tomorrow regarding Proposition 8. But this will not be a ruling on the validity of Proposition 8 nor will it be a binding ruling. To briefly explain. The 9th Circuit Court Of Appeals (or more directly a 3 judge panel from the court) asked the California Supreme Court to offer its opinion on the issue of standing with regard...

With the Supreme Court having ruled that corporations like ConAgra, Coca-Cola and Del Monte have the same rights of people, it makes sense in a bass-ackwards sort of way that Congress has blocked proposed rule changes by the Agriculture Department that would have overhauled the nation’s school lunch program in an effort to add more fruits and greens to menus in the service of reducing childhood obesity. And...

The Paterno home near the Penn State campus. Eleven days after the arrest of former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, the hydra-headed scandal shows no sign of abating. In the last 48 hours, there have been these development: * Mike McQueary, the assistant football coach under fire for his reported lack of action in an alleged 2002 anal rape of a boy by Sandusky in the team’s locker room...

For a long-time Democrat who loves his country much more than his party, it may seem like an agonizing choice: a sane Republican to oppose Barack Obama or one of the revolving front-runners who would be easier to beat next November. The question is brought on by the serial implosions of Bachmann, Perry, Cain et al with Newt being teed up for next 15 minutes of fame on the dog-and-pony debate circuit. The answer...

Department of Homeland Security officers roust Occupy Wall Street protesters in Portland. Have the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and other federal law enforcement agencies been helping the NYPD and other police forces to evict Occupy Wall Street protesters? That is very much the case according to a Justice Department official who spoke to a Minneapolis publication. The official said that the feds have...

If Barack Obama is as awful a president as the Republican presidential wannabes claim, then why is he leading all of them in the polls despite the fact that three out of every four voters believe that American is on the wrong track? That’s easy: People are starting to pay attention to what these candidates are saying and they don’t like what they’re hearing, which may account for the meteoric...

It’s February 2013. It’s 3 A.M. The phone rings in the President’s bedroom — it has an urgent ring. Finally the President picks up the phone. The voice of his National Security Advisor, John Bolton: “Mr. President, we have a serious situation developing in Asia.” The President: “Asia? Which Asia? Can’t you be more specific than that …” Bolton: “In China, Mr. President.” The...

Britain and Germany are headed for a major clash on Friday when Prime Minister David Cameron travels to Berlin to tell Germany’s Angela Merkel that his country will not pay to bailout countries that use the euro currency. Britain is not part of the Eurozone and does not see why it should be penalized for the fiscal follies of others. The spat is the latest in the crises of government debt in the US and Europe,...

ARCHBISHOP TIMOTHY DOLAN The tone deafness of the Roman Catholic Church in American is in full regalia as the church’s bishops this week rejoined the culture wars by recasting their opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage as a struggle for “religious liberty” against a government and culture that are infringing on the church’s rights. Yes, as with the pedophile priest scandal,...

The time for euphemisms is running out. What we are seeing is more like a social meltdown. A Pulitzer Prize-winning economic journalist writes about “The epic global leadership fail,” but the symptoms he cites, along with so many others, add up to a loss of the moral responsibility that used to be taken for granted as common decency: “The global financial system teeters on the edge of collapse because...

The healing at Penn State in the wake of the firing of legendary football coach Joe Paterno and the university president is on hold. As 10 more alleged victims came forward with allegations that Jerry Sandusky molested them, the former defensive coordinator and accused pedophile went on the offensive and maintained he was innocent of the charges. In a phone interview with NBC‘s Bob Costas last night,...

Don’t Be a Paterno: When a Child is Abused, Here’s What to Do by Michael Reagan Penn State football coach Joe Paterno released a statement on Wednesday in which he said, “With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.” How lame is that, Coach? Would you have accepted that excuse from one of your players? “With the benefit of hindsight, Coach, I wish I had run the route...

This originally appeared on May 24, 2010, months BEFORE the “Tea Party” election. Let’s all see how prophetic* it was, or wasn’t, shall we? [* Certainly it was for NPR, which started a three part series on the Renaissance of Medievalist Ayn today. I had already reprinted this on MY blog Sunday. ] No. He wasn’t named after Ayn Rand, although he ought to have been. Suddenly, the...

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Anyone hoping that the election of the first African-American president in 2008 would usher in a post-racial era, putting our sordid racial past behind us once and for all, is bound to be bitterly disappointed. I happen to have known better, but it still is jarring when you consider how race is playing such a large role in the comical, ugly and tragic scrum known as the sprint to the 2012 Republican presidential...

Tenured Radical Claire Potter: As you absorb the news about the key people at Penn State who ought to have reported what they knew of coach Jerry Sandusky’s alleged assaults on little boys, please keep one thing in mind. Penn State’s cover-up is embedded in the interest it, and all universities, have in keeping many forms of sexual violence and sexual harassment a private, internal matter. The mistake Penn...

The Penn State Scandal has many losers—-not the only the legendary coach who lost his job, his reputation and a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the university that fed on football and is now disgraced by it, a student body in shock and, beyond the campus, millions who have lost some of their innocence about an “amateur” game that, as years of covering up the crimes of a pedophile coach show, has more in...

Several news sources are reporting a huge blast occurring inside an Iranian military base near the capital, Tehran. BBC News: There has been at least one explosion inside a military base west of Iran’s capital, Tehran, officials say. Windows in buildings in the nearby village of Bidganeh have been shattered. Some deaths have been reported, according to the semi-official Fars news agency, but this has not...