As a blogger — not a journalist — a “debate” in the New York Times caught my interest. The lead article asks the question, “Are All Bloggers Journalists?” The question and the ensuing debate are prompted by an Oregon federal judge’s ruling that “Crystal Cox, a blogger who was sued for defamation after she accused the founder of an investment group of acting illegally and unethically,...

The least passionate segment of Saturday night’s debate was a brief round on personal family values. Without glancing at Gingrich, his adversaries gave toneless answers, citing their own long marriages and “character” as an issue, with only Rick Perry, suave as always, expanding on the subject: “Not only did I make a vow to my wife, but I made a vow to God. That’s pretty heavy lifting. That’s even...

In all the debate over the payroll tax cut the gorilla in the room has been Social Security (and Medicare) and the fact that both face future problems with solvency. Some would argue that since they are currently secure we don’t need to worry about things but to me that is like arguing that the cliff is still a half mile away so I can continue to race towards it at 70 miles an hour. While I can still...

Has the very foundation of modern democracy been superseded without anyone noticing? Columnist Nicolas Demorand of France’s Liberation warns that democratic politicians have a new master – and it isn’t the constitution or the voter. For Liberation, Nicolas Demorand starts out this way: Executive, legislative, judiciary: political philosophy teaches that a democratic state is based on the...

Mitt Romney with Capital founder William W. Bain Jr. in 1990 As economic flapdoodle goes, the notion that trickle down economics creates jobs and otherwise helps the middle class has been so thoroughly debunked that Republicans have rebranded it as “wealth redistribution.” Still, the Republican message is pretty much the same less than a month before the all-important Iowa Republican caucuses and New Hampshire...

Newton’s First Law tells us objects stay at rest or continue in motion if nothing changes, an apt description of this year in American politics: an inert Congress and a careening GOP presidential race that keeps dropping former frontrunners off the turnip truck. This was not the kind of Change Barack Obama had in mind when he was elected, but he has now gone through three years of pushing legislation against...

The coin minted by Brutus (et tu, Brute?) to celebrate the assassination of Caesar and restoration of  Roman “freedom” – with unintended irony I will finish “Selling the New Nixon” presently. Meantime, I am too busy unwrapping cakes and eating presents (or is that the other way ’round?) to fully give attention to a blog today. HOWEVER, I would like to ask you, Gentle Reader,...

Merry Christmas: No More Insider Trading on Capitol Hill? by Michael Winship The other day, a couple of kids up in Kingston, NY, called 911 looking for Santa Claus. Law enforcement arrived to tell them that what they had done was naughty, not nice, but in deference to the holiday, no pepper spray was involved. Meanwhile, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a guy dressed up like Frosty the Snowman — that jolly,...

Will the newly-launched Community of Latin American and Caribbean States end up displacing the Washington-based Organization of American States, as Venezuela President Hugo Chavez hopes, or will it fizzle out as so many previous attempts at Latin American unification have done? Columnist Nelson Ortega from Venezuela’s Aporrea is certain that the formation of CELAC is the culmination of Simon Bolivar’s...

UPDATE, Dec. 13: Bloomberg News reports that MVRDV, the Dutch architecture company that designed the much criticized “pixelated cloud” buildings may modify the design in the wake of the negative reactions. Bloomberg: “It may be difficult for the developer to go on with the current design after getting negative attention in the mass media,” Lee Sang Yun, a professor at Yonsei University’s department...

Yet another sports child abuse sex scandal is breaking and whether it turns out to be valid or not, it’s clear sports officials will face very hesistant parents in the future and that organizations will start to put a bunch of safeguards in place. This time the allegations are coming via ESPN from Memphis. CNN reports: The Memphis police and the Amateur Athletic Union have launched an investigation after...

The next two Republican debates, tonight and Thursday, “are shaping up to be the most important–and nasty–yet.” Both come only weeks before Iowa caucuses on January 3rd, with primaries soon after in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. These debates, predicts the Caucus, “are likely to be slugfests as desperate candidates search for a magic bullet to improve their political fortunes...

Newt is Right by Michael Reagan Tom Brokaw has written a book about the Greatest Generation, a generation that grew up with fathers in the home who saw it as their duty to instill in their sons a work ethic. The Greatest Generation went on to win World War II. Newt Gingrich is right when he warns that the newest generation does not understand or appreciate the value of good, hard work. Tragically, 40 million...

This is the week Barack Obama declared political war on an obstructionist GOP, invoking Theodore Roosevelt. In Osawatomie, Kansas, the President cited TR who came there in 1910 and “was called a radical…a socialist—-even a communist. But today, we are a richer nation and a stronger democracy because of what he fought for in his last campaign: an eight-hour work day and a minimum wage for women—-insurance...

The gunshot-riddled body of a Virginia Tech police officer making a traffic stop was not even cold yesterday afternoon before the gun nut lobby rushed in to politicize the tragedy on the campus where a student shot and killed 32 people in 2007. A second person who may be the gunman was found dead in a parking lot about a quarter mile away. First up to the plate was Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, a...

As we have done for the past 16 years, my wife and I brave the unseasonably cold Austin, Texas weather to attend a ceremony that has now become a tradition, albeit a sad one, in our lives — the Tree of Angels ceremony at a local Church. Every year for the past 20 years, a wonderful organization, People Against Violent Crime, has provided a most reverent and appropriate forum for the families and friends...

Throughout the earlier years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — and before then — our government had the policy of not allowing the American people to see images of the flag-draped coffins, our fallen heroes, arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, the first contact with U.S. soil since leaving foreign battlefields. When Obama became president, there were numerous calls — including from...

Supporters of Herman Cain have tried to explain away the implosion of his campaign to a variety of factors, including him being an outsider whose campaign was understaffed, but it should be obvious to anyone with elementary math skills that Cain’s problems began with and his campaign ended over allegations of an extra-marital affair and incidents of sexual harassment that became more credible as his denials...

My profession is #1 on Forbes‘ list of the ten happiest jobs, among other things. [I blog regularly here.]

In Part i. we talked about the GOP’s cognitive dissonance and how they plan to invite everyone into the corner they’ve painted themselves into — since there’s no time to unpaint it. In Part ii. it was noted that we have moved “beyond freedom and dignity” into an utterly amoral world of Skinnerian rat conditioning and how Frank Luntz targets the message to the reptile brain,...

Could it be that part of America’s plan for the Iraqi invasion was to undermine the Iraqi family by luring women and girls to work for the occupation? For Oman’s Al Watan in an article reminiscent of the type of content we published at the height of the war, columnist Walid Al Zubaydi writes that the way U.S. immigration officers insult Iraqis granted asylum in the U.S. is a consequence of the...

I don’t remember why I had stayed after my 1 a.m. quitting time as night city editor of the Philadelphia Daily News early on the morning of December 9, 1981, but I do remember that I was talking to Tom Schmidt, the overnight editor, when a message crackled over one of the police radio scanners: “Officer down at 13th and Arch. Send back-up and assistance.” Police Office Daniel Faulkner (photo,...

It should come as no surprise that racial animus was a factor in the historic 2008 presidential election, but until recently it was unclear how many votes Barack Obama lost because he was an African-American. The answer, according to a new study that analyzed data from nearly 200 media markets which included over 99 percent of voters, is dramatic: Racial prejudice cost Obama between 3 and 5 percent of the vote,...

I’m not the President, but I do want to respond to your letter to him and, perhaps more importantly, to your interview with the New York Times. I was struck by this comment: “I came from nothing,” he said, explaining how he grew up in the Bronx and went to P.S. 75. “I have lived the American Dream.” First, you’re 68 years old. That means you were probably born in 1943. You went to a public...

We lived in a different America then. News of the Japanese attack came from bulletins that broke into radio programs and was spread by word of mouth over the phone, on streets of cities and house to house in small towns. That Sunday, I was a 17-year-old college student with a part-time job in a New York hospital, standing next to a young man with a dazed grin, staring through a picture window at a nurse in a...