As America hurtles towards the November 2012 elections can you please stop comparing people with whom you disagree to Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin? If you consider my plea irrelevant, then just close our eyes and you might hear men, women, and innocent children butchered by the two regimes plead with you not to make light of those who caused their horrific deaths. The Hitler/Stalin comparison almost always plays out the same. Someone is likened to Hitler or Stalin by a partisan or politico, it becomes...

WASHINGTON — Maybe Rick Santorum is helping Mitt Romney after all: Santorum’s wacky statements about college and snobbery, along with his upset stomach over a 52-year-old John F. Kennedy speech, are distracting attention from Romney’s extremist economic ideas. Yes, Romney needs Santorum to keep doing his exotic fan dance on social issues because the stage act diverts everyone (especially journalists) from examining the reactionary and regressive ideas Romney is cooking up...

Rainer Hachfeld, Neues Deutschland, Germany This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Last night, in the Republican contest to be that party’s presidential nominee, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney looked relaxed as he addressed supporters in Michigan (one of his multiple home states; New Hampshire and Massachusetts most often cited as the others). He sounded it, too. Then again, on Tuesday evening, Romney was in the needed winning position, having fought off a strong challenge in the aforementioned home state, from the former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum,...

Despite President Obama’s call for a privacy bill of rights, attorneys general expressing their displeasure (pdf) and the fact that it doesn’t meet EU standards, Google’s consolidated privacy policy goes into effect Thursday, March 1. There are three things you need to do before midnight, if you haven’t done so already. Log into every one of your Google account dashboards – https://www.google.com/dashboard/. Prepare to be amazed, if you’ve not seen this before....

A parable for Leap Day, with apologies to Aesop or whomever. One momentous day, the Forest Congress assembled to debate the burning issue of the hour: a bill had been offered declaring every acorn a tree, and, thus, all criminal penalties should accrue to anyone disturbing an acorn just as they would to anyone cutting down a tree. The Animal Caucus The beaver delegation had boycotted the meeting in protest, but the deer and squirrels, especially targeted by this proposed ordinance had caucused...

India's Rajasthan Atomic Power station India’s Government Grudgingly Releases Report on Nuclear Power’s Effect on Human Health by John C.K. Daly India is betting heavily on nuclear power to meet its surging energy needs. While India currently has six nuclear power plants (NPPs) with 20 reactors generating 4,780 megawatts, seven other reactors are under construction and are expected to generate an additional 5,300 megawatts. This current rate of nuclear power generation pales into...

I’m Jewish and a Reform Jew, not as devout as someone who is a Conservative Jew or an Orthodox Jew. But when I read this story, it heats up my blood like a bubbling pot of chicken soup: Members of the Mormon Church last year posthumously baptized Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was captured and killed by terrorists in Pakistan shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to records uncovered by a researcher in Utah. Helen Radkey, an excommunicated Mormon who combs...

Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

The last train has left the station for singer/songwriter Davy Jones. By all accounts a real class act.

For the moment, anyway, it’s Santorum’s state. Romney trails Rick Santorum by 11 points in the latest Ohio Poll from the University of Cincinnati. The poll finds Santorum with support from 37 percent of likely GOP voters surveyed. Romney is in second with 26 percent support, followed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 16 percent and Rep. Ron Paul (Texas) at 11 percent. …The Hill Which, as we all know (we experienced audience members in the Republican stripshow) doesn’t...

Brian Fairrington, Cagle Cartoons This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

According to the MSM, and most people who blindly follow their reports, Mitt Romney won the Michigan primary last night by about 3 points, 41 to 38. However, like the Electoral College, the point of the contest is not to win the popular vote (Gore – 2000) but to win more delegates per state based on the apportionment of those delegates. Michigan’s primary delegate system allows for a set number of delegates to be won by state wide popular vote and the rest to be evenly distributed by...

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

I had a feeling I’d be called back to active duty today… the pull of a pivotal primary night has yanked me back to the blogosphere after a three-week respite from American politics. It was a pleasant three weeks, I have to tell you. I went on a sunset hike with my son, helped him build a World War II bomber out of imitation Lego blocks made in Poland (and consoled him when it kept falling apart), started a perfect fireplace fire and actually made s’mores, visited with old friends,...

Rick joins Newt, Herman, Governor Perry, Donald in ‘loose lips’ sink one’s own ship. As my dearest dear old Navy surrogate dad, aged 96 and with clear as gin mind used to say: “His battleship mouth sunk his rowboat ass.” And there lies the denouement of the would be contendahs, who over and over became utterly seduced by and their usually clear wits overwhelmed with the applause and cheering over a pretty turn of phrase… and thus began playing to limited steerage,...

Has President Barack Obama, through his election and policies, created almost irreversible dissaray within the Republican Party? For Mexico’s Excelsior, José Luis Valdés Ugalde writes that intentionally and by happenstance, Obama’s emergence was an ‘anomaly that destabilized the political environment for the better,’ and at the same time, it ‘served as a call to arms for the ultra-right, forcing out elements from the farthest depths of the U.S. psyche, producing...

Although media pundits keep saying that Republican voters are lukewarm towards Mitt Romney, he’s won more states and has far more delegates (soft and hard) than any of his remaining opponents. Iowa was a tie. Romney (136 soft delegates, 103 hard delegates) won New Hampshire, Florida, Maine, Nevada and Arizona; he appears to have also won Michigan, which could add as much as 15 soft and 15 hard delegates to that total. New Gingrich (43 soft delegates, 29 hard delegates) won South Carolina. Rick...

The New York Times: Mitt Romney has narrowly won the Republican presidential primary in Michigan, deflecting a powerful challenge from Rick Santorum and boosting his hopes of becoming the Republican nominee. Only weeks ago, Mr. Romney had viewed his home state of Michigan as a firewall against his rivals, an important battleground state where his background and his message would carry the day. That changed dramatically in the wake of victories by Mr. Santorum in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota earlier...

Michigan Republicans had a decision to make today that will resound in the party’s race for president. Romney defeated Santorum 42% to 37% as projected by MSNBC at 10:15 PM. On one hand, they had a candidate, Mitt Romney, who appeared out of touch with middle-class voters, constantly placing a “silver foot” in his mouth regarding his affluent life style. The most recent examples of his difficulty in connecting with ordinary citizens were his comments about loving American cars, with his wife...