His video was supposed to be just for his friends, shot shortly after receiving devastating news. But, instead, it went viral. By the time he died yesterday, his final days would also serve as a role models for how to appreciate the the present and how to leave it for eternity. And due to You Tube which carried his words, emotions and wise perspective to millions, Australia teenager Shaun Wilson-Miller passed away having won millions of friends all over the world due to what they saw when they...

Campaign watchers get a double-header of metaphors with reports that Barack Obama is eschewing a Rose Garden strategy and going head to head with Mitt Romney by name, along with a reminder of the President’s fondness for a three-year-old photo showing an African-American boy touching his hair in the Oval Office to compare it to his own. As they were no doubt intended to be by White House aides, symbolism lovers may be wrenched by the distance between that early image of the breakthrough significance...

Frank Bruni writes in this morning’s New York Times, that race is still at the center of the American presidential contest: Although race represents a less central dynamic for Obama now than it did in 2008, it’s a factor in his political fortunes nonetheless. It poisons some of his opponents, pumping them full of a toxic zeal beyond the partisan norm. How else to explain their obsession with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright or the lunatic persistence of the “birthers,” including the Arizona...

It’s Time for a National World War I Memorial by Julian Saltman History News Service On Monday Americans will gather to celebrate Memorial Day, a holiday on which we honor those who have served, and fallen, in our country’s armed forces. Veterans and their descendants will participate in ceremonies and parades across the country, and many will be in Washington, D.C., to visit the national memorials dedicated to the wars in which they fought. But there is one glaring exception: the...

Trust Me: You Believe in Gun Control by Tina Dupuy If you ask the typical hyper-political gun owner (and I have … at Thanksgiving dinner), why it’s important to own a gun, they’ll bark about the Constitution. Yes, the Second Amendment: “The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed!” This of course is the slogan the National Rifle Association adopted in the 1970′s. It was then that owning a gun became an absolute right endowed by God and...

While America is a young country not as prone as some others to preserving ‘relics’ of the dead, we do appear to have a thing for blood, which, if modern science progresses as some think it might, could result in some interesting historical clones. This article on the subject by El Pais columnist Marcos Balfagon reflects on this odd historical preoccupation, and on the wisdom of someday restoring another Ronald Reagan to the world. For El Pais, columnist Marcos Balfagon starts off...

TMV has been experiencing some duendes (goblins, in Spanish) who have been stealing slippers and making the Chicago River green when it isnt St Patty’s, and messing with the hoists and levers in our posts and commenting sections. Our IT guy Tyrone says as we get closer to elections too, the hacking attempts have increased. And as of just a few minutes ago, he thinks it is all reset now onsite, so hopefully you wont experience any more glitches. My Ed. in Chief and I are ‘freeing’...

Friday, something unprecedented happened. The Right/Red blogs banded together to destroy ONE person (a blogger claims he feels “threatened”). The entire front page of Memeorandum is dominated by this coordinated attack and smear. That OUGHT to scare hell out of everybody else, but I see virtually no commentary whatsoever. The entire blogosphere has been coopted into the narrow agenda of a few individuals and the nation’s issues are thrust to the side as less important than their...

John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Back in September 2009, when the Navy was seriously considering allowing women to serve aboard its nuclear submarines, I posted an article titled, “Should Women Serve on Submarines?” and, at the end, asked, “What do you think?” With a couple of exceptions, most of the readers saw no problem with this change in policy or had some reasonable, practical reasons for opposing women serving on our submarines. One woman gave several reasons for her opposition. In addition to bringing up the cost...

Does Mitt Romney have a clue? By the way, who are his campaign advisers? Does he have campaign advisers? Is he generally underinformed and living in a blur when it comes to education? … About school reform. Three big ideas: First, Romney is going to make the states provide “ample school choice.” Unless we’re talking, mushily, about vouchers, this one sounded exactly like the Bush law that allows parents whose children are in failing schools to move them elsewhere. It hasn’t...

Lowest Content Denominator by Peter Funt Recent Time and Newsweek covers constitute last gasps in the dying newsweekly business. Of greater concern, however, is that while these magazines are already in media’s rearview mirror, their turn toward tabloid-style sensationalism reflects what is happening all along the information highway. You saw or heard about the covers that caused the fuss: Time with a 26-year-old mother breast feeding her unusually mature 3-year-old son; Newsweek with a rainbow...

Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

White House Website Gone Wild by Michael Reagan We’ll never know what Ronald Reagan would have done with WhiteHouse.gov, the official website of the White House But I know my father wouldn’t be abusing it the way Barack Obama is. WhiteHouse.gov is owned and operated by the federal government, but the incumbent gets to run it and design it to his own political tastes. Like nearly anything the federal government touches, the White House website is a decent idea gone bad. It should be a...

Back in September 2009, when the Navy was seriously considering allowing women to serve aboard its nuclear submarines, I posted an article titled, “Should Women Serve on Submarines?” and, at the end, asked, “What do you think?” With a couple of exceptions, most of the readers saw no problem with this change in policy or had some reasonable, practical reasons for opposing women serving on our submarines. One woman gave several reasons for her opposition. In addition to bringing up the cost...

Soon we won’t need hypodermic needles. This device delivers a high-velocity jet of liquid that breaches the skin at the speed of sound: [T]he MIT team, led by Ian Hunter, the George N. Hatsopoulos Professor of Mechanical Engineering, has engineered a jet-injection system that delivers a range of doses to variable depths in a highly controlled manner. The design is built around a mechanism called a Lorentz-force actuator — a small, powerful magnet surrounded by a coil of wire that’s attached...

David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Who would have guessed: Since too much inequality can foment revolt and instability, the CIA regularly updates statistics on income distribution for countries around the world, including the U.S. Between 1997 and 2007, inequality in the U.S. grew by almost 10 percent, making it more unequal than Russia, infamous for its powerful oligarchs. The U.S. is not faring well historically, either. Even the Roman Empire, a society built on conquest and slave labor, had a more equitable income distribution. To...

As we once again observe Memorial Day we remember and honor the more than one million American men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice in all our wars, including more than 6,400 from our two most recent wars — and counting. We remember and pay tribute to the patriots who died long ago on battlefields near to home with familiar, sacred names such as Valley Forge and Gettysburg. We remember the troops who gave their lives on foreign battlefields and shores thousands of miles away...

The delayed departure of the USS Iowa has been set for Saturday. This is a moment of history folks, never again will a battleship sail under the Golden Gate Bridge. The Iowa has been a part of US history, from taking FDR to Yalta all the way to Ronald Reagan and the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. The fact that this voyage occurs on both Memorial Day weekend and during the 75th anniversary celebrations for the bridge seems quite fitting. I would hope that CNN/MSNBC/Fox/etc will be covering...