Is the way America administers the death penalty about exacting justice, or just winning the next election? And does it live up to the ideals Americans say they hold dear? For France’s Le Nouvel Observateur, Sandrine Ageorges-Skinner, one of the world’s most tireless anti-death penalty campaigners, outlines the mind-numbing injustice of how execution is imposed in the United States. And she knows...

How Do You Say “You’re Supposed to Stop at the Border” in Spanish? by John T. Johnson, III With 60,000 illegal immigrants giving birth to children in Texas each year; with thousands of illegal immigrants being sent to our prisons each year; with thousands receiving free medical care at our county hospitals each year; with the cost to educate each child in Texas public schools...

Way too many times have I cringed when the religious right uses the Bible to justify evil and prejudice in our lives. Way too many times have I been infuriated when the political right has used the Constitution to support and justify acts of war, torture and rampant violations of civil rights. Way too many times have I been incensed when the Bush administration used Office of Legal Council (OLC) memoranda,...

WASHINGTON – It’s another nod to the Hillary Effect. Congratulations to Liberia’s Pres. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female president of Africa, Leymah Gbowee, and Tawakul Karman of Yemen. The importance of women’s role around the world elevated, with the Nobel committee making a statement and headline news, offers another change in the status quo. This is truly something to celebrate. Nobel...

The killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, in the way it was done, cannot be allowed to stand. The president who ordered it has not acknowledged its terrifying implications, not made any attempt to redraw the judicial and moral line that he appears to have blurred or even erased, not admitted the problem raised by the obvious prima facie violation of the Constitution that his actions represent, and not thought the implications...

Is the American left and center-left finally feeling its oats? As the protests on Wall Street spread across the country, the world is taking notice . For Germany’s Die Welt, columnist Ansgar Graw writes that Americans who hardly know the meaning of thw word ‘demonstration’ have taken to the streets, and no one, least of all the protesters, knows where it will all lead. For Die Welt, Ansgar...

by WALTER BRASCH The most important media story this past week is that the Kardashians were guest co-hosts on the fourth hour of NBC’s “Today” show. One Kardashian sister per day, plus mother Kris and stepdad Bruce Jenner. It isn’t bad enough that talk shows, which have descended into a morass of being publicity mills for celebrity hucksters, adore them. It isn’t bad enough that the E! cable network,...

Save Our Books! by Peter Funt DENVER — A protest by students at the University of Denver is eye-opening because of how it is being conducted, what it has so far achieved and, most of all, what it concerns. Students here are demanding more books. Activism at DU has a rich history, including the anti-war protest in 1970 known as Woodstock West, and the earlier Coffee Break Riot of 1965. In the ’65 incident,...

Republicans in the House of Representatives today blocked consideration of a resolution “calling on Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) to apologize for not immediately ‘doing away’ with a rock bearing the controversial name of his family’s West Texas hunting camp, ‘Niggerhead.’” According to the Washington Post, The [Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.)] resolution calls the name of the hunting...

During his press conference this morning—one that focused on the economy and the American Jobs Act, the so-called Jobs Bill—president Obama showed some frustration with an obstructionist, just-say-no, do-noting Congress. In what became a recurring theme, he posed a number of rhetorical questions, preceded by the admonition: So as we look towards next week, any senator out there who’s thinking...

As uncomfortable is it may make people in the United States – and especially in Mexico – this editorial from Spain’s La Vanguardia warns that with 30 percent of Mexico already in the hands of drug cartels, there may be no way other to take a President Perry up on his offer if Mexico is to avoid becoming a failed state. The La Vanguardia editorial says in part: Mexico City Mayor Marcelino...

Almost a thousand people marched through the San Francisco financial district on Wednesday, in solidarity with 2,000 or more in Manhattan. New York police have arrested at least 700 since the movement began on September 17, with many of those arrests occurring over the weekend, an action that is being challenged in court. Media reports mention, usually in passing, other protests around the country, but I don’t...

Tributes are pouring in for Apple’s Steve Jobs. And cartoonists honor him the best way they know how — with memorable cartoons. Here are four of them: David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star Martin Sutovec, Slovakia Randall Enos, Cagle Cartoons These cartoons are copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

WASHINGTON — American politics reached a pivot point this week. A new story line will now define how voters and the media see what’s going on. Since Election Day in 2010, the prevailing narrative has been about a resurgent conservatism, a president on the defensive, big government under attack, the deficit as the dominant issue, and the tea party as the political system’s prime mover....

How worried are Japanese about the rise of China? Hiroshi Kawamoto form Japan’s Isen Shimbun, after closely examining what he considers the calamitous decade of U.S. behavior since 9-11, warns that closer ties to America is the only strategy that has any hope of preserving Japanese prosperity. For Japan’s Isen Shimbun, Hiroshi Kawamoto writes in part: Trying to return to the United States of the...

Love her or hate her, Maureen Dowd certainly knows how to put things into political/partisan perspective—take your pick. Her eagerly anticipated post-mortem of Chris Christie’s equally eagerly awaited “I have told you before, I am telling you now, ‘the answer was never anything but no’ announcement” will not disappoint fans or foes. From the opening paragraph of her “Man in the [Big] Mirror”...

Is the state of the world really as dire as world leaders who recently spoke at the U.N. General Assembly would lead us to believe? Have we all gotten carried away with gloom and doom? For Argentina’s Diario Decuyo, columnist Andrés Oppenheimer cites a recent report that asserts things are on the upswing almost everywhere, from life expectancy to education levels to the number of wars. For the Diario...

Why do public school teachers have such a bad reputation in the US and get little pay? That’s one of the things I don’t get. It’s quite different over here. The job is well paid and respected by most folks. As a country with little natural resources, Germany depends on innovation and a smart work force. Education is good for democracy, happiness etc. The children are our future, yade, yade. The...

Astrophysicists Saul Perlmutter, Adam Riess, and Brian Schmidt were recently awarded the Nobel Prize for their work concerning the universe and everything in it. Their recent research has contributed greatly to the discovery that the universe is not only expanding, but actually speeding up. The reasons for the Universe’s expansion and increased acceleration are less certain. Astrophysicists believe the...

A majority now see Barack Obama as a one-term president and he calls himself the “underdog,” but social networks may be changing the political landscape for 2012 in a way that the new medium of television did during the “youthquake” of the 1960s. What started as a small disorganized rally on Wall Street three weeks ago is spreading to Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and elsewhere into a movement. “With...

Amanda Knox: A Cautionary Tale Making Sense, by Michael Reagan From now on, parents who plan to send their children abroad to study in a foreign nation should sit them down in front of the TV set and watch replays of the Amanda Knox saga. It has all the elements of a true-to-life lesson in the dangers of turning young men and women barely out of their teens into innocents abroad. Youngsters — and many...

Washington National Cathedral officials announced today that they plan to reopen the cathedral on Nov. 12, but that short-term repairs and continuing cathedral operations through the end of 2012 would cost $25 million. Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi immediately called dueling press conferences. At her conference, Pelosi stated that repairs of...

Now that Chris Christie—potential savior of the Republican primaries—is expected to announce in a couple of hours his decision not to seek the presidency, Republicans are left with a slate of candidates they still wish they could improve upon. Among them, Obamacare “prototypist” Mitt Romney; Rick Perry and his Pet Rock; Congressional witch hunt proponent Michele Bachmann; homophobe Rick...

Does the case of Amanda Knox, acquitted yesterday in connection with the rape and murder of her British roommate, confirm once again the barbarity and injustice of the American death penalty? Asserting that in the U.S., people are put to death on the basis of evidence at least as flimsy as that against Knox, La Repubblica columnist Vittorio Zucconi writes that the Knox case is yet one more reason for the U.S....

The new millennium has spawned a sibling to the old adage that “You Can’t Fight City Hall” — “You Can’t Fight Wall Street” — a reflection of the hopelessness most of us feel about reforming let alone fighting back against the financial institutions that are a de facto shadow government that is responsible for the ongoing economic downturn. And so I have looked...