My thoughts on Robert Putnam’s new study, claiming that living in diverse locations exerts significant negative effects on people over the near- to mid-term (albeit harms that are reversed in the long-term).

Last Thursday, Stephen Colbert addressed the speech that Republican Senator Dick Lugar gave on the floor of the Senate criticizing the Iraq War:

After the London bombings two years ago, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan had some advice for Tony Blair: “They should have been doing what they have been demanding of us to do–to ban extremist groups like they asked us to do here in Pakistan and which I have done.” Musharraf was a little testy about the revelation that at least two of the 2005 bombers had been in his country a few months earlier. He will no doubt be giving similar advice to the new Prime Minister Gordon...

The third terrorist incident in the UK in three days: A burning car has been rammed into the terminal building of Glasgow Airport in Scotland, heightening terrorism fears with the UK already on alert over the discovery of two cars loaded with explosive materials in London. Police and witnesses described an SUV-style vehicle in flames being driven at full speed towards the building. Two people were arrested at the scene, police said in a statement. It was not immediately clear whether there were...

What message does the diversity rationale send to White people?

If there wasn’t sufficient reason for Republicans up for re-election to start to either distance themselves from the Bush administration or demand a change in Iraq war policy, this poll is it: A CBS News poll shows Americans are increasingly dissatisfied with the Iraq war, President Bush and the Congress, as well as the overall direction of the country. More Americans than ever before, 77 percent, say the war is going badly, up from 66 percent just two months ago. Nearly half, 47 percent, say...

Our linkfest offering readers a Hometown Buffet of links to blogposts from websites of many different viewpoints. Linked posts do NOT necessarily refect the opinion of TMV or its writers. Do Recent Supreme Court Rulings Mean Historical Rulings Are Danger? The Hill’s Brent Budowsky warns that Brown V Board of Education and Roe V Wade are in “mortal peril.” I hate to tell “I told you so” but to some friends: “I told you so.” In 2000 many Republicans clamored...

If you thought the era of bad feelings within the GOP was over with the defeat of White House supported bipartisan immigration bill by opponents that included a good chunk of the Republican party’s base, you may be wrong: The Chairman of the Republican Party on Friday lambasted Democrats and Republicans who helped kill an immigration bill in the Senate and challenged them to come up with a solution beyond “just build a fence along the border.” “The voices of negativity now...

Lots of young people who see Jerry Lewis’ films from many years ago note the similarity in styles between him and Jim Carrey. In this clip from “The Errand Boy,” Lewis does a classic and somewhat innovative lip sync routine. Watch what happens when The Errand Boy slips into the big boss’ office and indulges in a bit of fantasy:

There are reportedly stylistic fingerprints all over the operation involving the discovered bomb plot in London — and all signs (and a surveillance photo) point to an Al Qaeda operation, ABC News reports: Al Qaeda’s mantra, “If at first you don’t succeed, try again,” appears, according to officials, to be behind today’s foiled car bomb plot in London with the same kind of bombs aimed at the same kind of targets by, officials say, apparently some of the same kind...

It was never just about abortion. The struggle for America’s soul goes deeper, as the Supreme Court and Congress have been showing us this week. It was never as simple as faith vs. reason. Rational people can recognize a Higher Power, the religious can respect science and logic. What it has been about is the conflict between our hopes and fears, between the risks of freedom and the comfort of control, between our needs to feel decent and to feel safe. Before the trauma of 9/11, the tension...

I already mentioned this in the comments section of Holly’s post, but I think it bears repeating. During last night’s Democratic Presidential Debate at Howard University in Washington D.C., Mike Gravel gave a rather impassioned speech in which he denounced the War on Drugs and called for its immediate end: And one of the areas that touches me the most and enrages me the most is our War on Drugs that this country has been putting forth for the last generation. In 1972, we had 179,000...

Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant

I had the opportunity to review an article by Shadi Hamid, Project on Middle East Democracy‘s Director of Research, called “Parting the Veil.” It is well worth the read, I checked at the articles section at POMED, but they didn’t publish it online yet, I am sure they will later. I will keep an eye on it, and when they do, I will let you know. For now, some thoughts on this article. “Parting the Veil” is an interesting, thought provoking read. I cannot say that...

..at Re-Think Immigration. This is a brand, new weblog that is timelier than ever. Re-Think immigration should be REQUIRED READING by everyone on ANY side of the immigration issue. The reason: it is a non-partisan blog that promises to offer some useful links on the issue. It’s one of those sites that could become a useful resource to everyone, versus a refuge for people on one side or another. Take A Peek at Re-Think Immigration and we know you’ll be taking more than just a daily peek.

As some of you may know already, controversy is raging over a rather provocative image of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s breasts on the cover of a rather provocative Polish magazine, Wprost. Well, not just her breasts. Poland’s two leaders, the Kaczynski twins, are, well, feeding. Whatever the controversy, the image, like other cover images at Wprost, amounts in my view to rather effective political satire. For more, and for the images (which I hesitate to post here at TMV), see my...

Drawing on the collective hive-mind of the blogosphere, I have a favor to ask. For a summer fellowship project, I’m collecting editorials on the recent school desegregation cases. I’ve already got the Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times, Seattle Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and the Louisville Courier-Journal, as well as several commentary pieces in The National Review. If you have a moment, dropping a link in the comments to your home newspaper’s editorial on the decision...

There seems to be quite some outrage coming from the left (fake of course) about something that happened in… 1983. The NYT reports: An example of Mitt Romney’s crisis management skills has turned into something of a political problem for the Republican presidential contender. Romney placed his family dog, an Irish setter named Seamus, into a kennel lashed to the top of his station wagon for a 12-hour family trip from Boston to Ontario in 1983. Despite being shielded by a wind screen the...

The news today that the Supreme Court will review two Guantánamo Bay detainee-related appeals prompts me to make a statement that seems outrageous on its face considering the high court’s recent sprint to the right: It will side with the detainees in their assertion that they cannot be indefinitely confined without trial. Howcum? Because this is more or less a replay of last year’s Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision, which is possibly the Supreme’s most important of the young millennium,...

Well, Americans were disappointed when Tony’s family did not die in the final episode of the Sopranos, seemingly Hamas learned from that (and the criticism), and decided to give Farfour Mouse quite a different treatment. In the final episode of the show that featured Farfour (“Tomorrow’s Pioneers”), Farfour dies a violent death. An actor, pretending to be an Israeli official, tries to convince Farfour – who is every Palestinian’s child best friend – to sell...