I love honey. I used to gift honey, especially from Germany, to my close relations on my return from my travels abroad. Now I have stopped gifting honey and even stopped eating it. My friend Sunita Narain, an indefatigable public-spirited person, tells us that even health-conscious companies, in this case from Australia and Switzerland, “do not check antibiotics in products they export to our world.” If...

That’s the headline from a story on the front page of the NYTimes this morning. So graphic it’s hard to read, we’re moving closer to calling hate what it is: HATE. He showed up last Sunday night as instructed, with plenty of cans of malt liquor. What he walked into was not a party at all, but a night of torture — he was sodomized, burned and whipped. All punishment, the police said Friday,...

A Google tribute in the UK on the occasion of what would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday. RELATED: The NYTimes Critic’s Notebook, Long After Death, Lennon Remains a Powerful Presence. Still controversial, The F.B.I. confiscated a 1976 John Lennon fingerprint card before it went up for auction in Manhattan. And if you’re following Joshua Wolf Shenk’s series on Creative Pairs, you might...

More on tolerance v. liberty and justice for all. From the ABA Journal: The American Civil Liberties Union has sued a school board in North Carolina over its suspension of a teenage student for having a peridot stud in a nose-piercing. Because Ariana Iacono belongs, along with her mother, to the Church of Body Modification, the suit contends the suspension violates her constitutional right to freedom of religion,...

The Economist pays a grand tribute to Bärbel Bohley, artist and toppler of the Berlin Wall, who died on September 11th, aged 65. “Born in the ruins of Berlin in 1945, her early life was shaped by the post-war division of her country into western (soon West) Germany, and a Soviet-occupied zone that claimed to be the ‘German Democratic Republic’. But in the end it was not the bullying communists...

Rick Sanchez apologizes to Jon Stewart. Lawrence O’Donnell apologies to Michael Steele. President Clinton apologizes to America. Jim Bunning tells everyone to go to hell. The art of the apology is becoming legendary in America. Mea culpa is indeed becoming a requisite art form in our country. It is a trend not only in politics but in the entertainment field and in business. Mel Gibson says he’s sorry. For...

Political Wire has two teases. The first highlights new poll results indicating that, “Sarah Palin is viewed unfavorably by 48% of Americans. She is viewed favorably by just 22% — including just 44% of Republicans, 21% of independents and 6% of Democrats.” The second reports on new Pew information: “Fully 46% say they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who supported government...

More than half a century ago the United States Supreme Court, in a landmark religious liberty case, recognized the right of American school children not to salute the flag or recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Something about the Constitution as I recall. Punishments like suspension and expulsion became a thing of the past. Word of the decision appears not yet to have reached Tupelo, Mississippi where local...

Today is an important day for Gypsies, also known as Romani (estimated population 6-11 million worldwide). A group of academics, government advisers and gypsy representatives are meeting in Strasbourg to discuss the next steps in a pan-European project entitled “The Decade of Roma Inclusion, 2005 to 2015″. The Independent describes Gypsies/Roma as “Europe’s most persecuted minority that...

Bill Schorr, Cagle Cartoons This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Daniel Pink points us to the Population Reference Bureau where they did some census number crunching and came up with a rather shocking statistical nugget: For the first time in U.S. history, the number of young adults (those between 25 and 34) who have never been married exceeds those who are married. Pink wonders if this is part of the weaker demand in the housing market, “It’s harder to buy a house...

Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder was laid to rest in March of 2006. Instead of the quiet, respectful burial his family and friends had planned, Fred Phelps and members of the Westboro Baptist Church arrived to protest the funeral. Carrying signs with messages like “Thank God for Dead soldiers” and “God Hates the USA”, the Phelps entourage made their message of hate known at Matthew Snyder’s funeral....

The Stir has waded through the muck to come up with a this Top 50 list of the most sexist quotes from the campaign trails of female political candidates over the years (though it really doesn’t go back very far except in a couple of cases). So sad that this is just from a short span of time – can’t imagine what they’d find if we’d had the Internet longer. For more, read the cross-post...

In a most powerful piece that should be read in its entirety by everyone who cares about artists and copyright, Cory Doctorow responds in the Guardian to a piece by Helienne Lindvall on the cost of free, in which she called it “ironic” that “advocates of free online content” (Doctorow included) “charge hefty fees to speak at events.” I understand perfectly well what you’re...

Recently there have been reports that thanks to the support of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr – and the tacit consent of Iran and even the U.S. – Nouri Al-Maliki is close to being named for a second term as Iraq’s prime minister. According to this article by columnist Tariq Hamid of the Iraqi News Agency, this electoral outcome, which insults Iraqi voters who elected Ayad Alawi, calls into...

Dateline: L’Isle-Jourdain, France No, not much has happened or is happening in this tiny, sleepy, French town—some might call it a village—nestled in the Vienne River valley in central France that would warrant a “dateline.” L’Isle-Jourdain just happens to be our first sojourn after a long trans-Atlantic flight that originated at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport,...

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates delivered a lecture at Duke University last week on the all-volunteer force. The separation between the “narrow sliver of our population” that serves and the rest of us is growing: We should not ignore the broader, long-term consequences of waging these protracted military campaigns employing – and re-employing – such a small portion of our society...

Judging from the blog reactions I’m on the wrong side according my peers on the left but I don’t have a problem with this. Tennessee County’s Subscription-Based Firefighters Watch As Family Home Burns Down As ThinkProgress has noted, there are currently two competing visions of governance in the United States. One, the conservative vision, believes in the on-your-own society, and informs a policy...

Earlier today I was asked to write a 300 word oped on Ohio, our voters, our economy and what the heck do we want done with it all as part of the New York Times’ Room For Debate platform. You can see my thoughts next to those of five others here. Question for my fellow co-bloggers here and the community that reads us: What do you think about the Room For Debate format? Interesting, I think. Reminds me...

It’s the battle of the titans – but one that neither side wants to win. Who has more poor people: the United States or China? And who’s poor are worse off? For the state-controlled Global Times, columnist Chiang Meng writes that despite recent statistics from the Chinese themselves, China’s poor are more numerous and far worse off than their American counterparts. For the Global Times,...