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The Lesson of Mitt Romney’s 47-Percent Video: Be Nice to the Wait Staff?

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

ABC News - Mar. 13 (Opinion) -

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Tax the revolving door: Column

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

USA Today - By Glenn Harlan Reynolds - Jan. 30 (Advocacy) - The problem with ethics rules for this sort of thing is that they tend to be ignored, or distorted. So I say, let's involve the most effective behavior-control machinery in America: The Internal Revenue Code.

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Jihadists’ Surge in North Africa Reveals Grim Side of Arab Spring

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By By ROBERT F. WORTH - Jan. 19 (News Report) - As the uprising closed in around him, the Libyan dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi warned that if he fell, chaos and holy war would overtake North Africa. “Bin Laden’s people would come to impose ransoms by land and sea,” he told reporters. “

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Damascus: Old City blast kills at least 10 in Syria

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0700

GlobalPost - By Kristin Deasy - Oct. 21 (News Report) - An explosion rocked Damascus' Old City today, killing at least 10 people as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad meets with international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi, reported Al Jazeera, citing Syrian state media.

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Social values: Culture wars, again

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Oct. 15 (News Analysis) - LATE in the primary season Mitt Romney recorded an interview with a television station in Colorado. The reporter, having asked a series of questions about gay marriage, began to quiz the candidate on the pros and cons of legalising marijuana for medical purposes. Mr Romney, increasingly exasperated, finally interjected, “Aren’t there issues of significance that you’d like to talk about? The economy, the economy, the economy? The growth of jobs? The need to put people back to work?”

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Three Views on Same Sex Marriage

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Town Hall - By Mike Adams - Oct. 15 (Opinion) - Posted for Hoai Cao

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Referendums on Nov. 6 give gay-marriage backers 4 chances to end 32-state losing streak

Sun, 14 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Minneapolis Star Tribune - Oct. 14 (News Report) - This is a story posted for Karlin Anderson.

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New Hampshire Jury Nullifies Major Felony Marijuana Case

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0700

thenewamerican.com - By Alex Newman - Sep. 19 (News Report) - Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay informed a jury in 1794 that jurors have “a right to take upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy.”

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Mormon Demystified

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0700

onbeing.org - By Krista Tippett - Aug. 15 (Interview) - Ask Mormon Girl blogger Joanna Brooks talks about "white-knuckling it through the campaign" of the first Mormon presidential candidate.

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The Global War on Journalists

Sun, 01 Jul 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By David Rohde - Jul. 01 (News Analysis) - Reporters, particularly women, are coming under fire around the world.

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Why the Truth Still Matters

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0700

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson - Jun. 15 (Opinion) - Let’s face it, voters love to hear falsehoods. Mitt Romney proclaims that President Obama’s health care law is a “federal takeover of the U.S. health care system,” and his supporters approve. Obama’s people nodded in agreement when the president said “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” But both claims are false. The truth about Romney’s claim is that the federal government accounted for 43.6 percent of all U.S. health care spending in 2009, before the law was signed, and government actuaries predict that in 2015, when the law is fully effective, that will rise to 47.4 percent. What’s more, much or most of that 3.8 percentage point increase would have happened anyway as the postwar baby boom generation reaches age 65 and goes on Medicare. So the law is no “takeover.” Rather, it’s a modest, incremental change in the existing system.

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Cities Crack Down on Homelessness With New Laws - Philanthropy Today - The Chronicle of Philanthropy- Connecting the nonprofit world with news, jobs, and ideas

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Chronicle of Philanthropy - By Chronicle Staff - Jun. 12 (News Report) - Dozens of U.S. cities are cracking down on camping and providing food for people in public in what antipoverty activists characterize as an attempt by urban officials to criminalize homelessness, writes USA Today.

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Partisan Polarization Surges in Bush, Obama Years

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Pew Research Center - Jun. 10 (Special Report) - As Americans head to the polls this November, their values and basic beliefs are more polarized along partisan lines than at any point in the past 25 years. Unlike in 1987, when this series of surveys began, the values gap between Republicans and Democrats is now greater than gender, age, race or class divides. Overall, there has been much more stability than change across the 48 political values measures that the Pew Research Center has tracked since 1987. But the average partisan gap has nearly doubled over this 25-year period – from 10 percentage points in 1987 to 18 percentage points in the new study.

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Did Republicans deliberately crash the US economy?

Sat, 09 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Michael Cohen - Jun. 09 (Opinion) - Be it ideology or strategem, the GOP has blocked pro-growth policy and backed job-killing austerity – all while blaming Obama So why does the US economy stink? Why has job creation in America slowed to a crawl? Why, after several months of economic hope, are things suddenly turning sour? The culprits might seem obvious – uncertainty in Europe, an uneven economic recovery, fiscal and monetary policymakers immobilized and incapable of acting. But increasingly, Democrats are making the argument that the real culprit for the country's economic woes lies in a more discrete location: with the Republican Party. In recent days, Democrats have started coming out and saying publicly what many have been mumbling privately for years – Republicans are so intent on defeating President Obama for re-election that they are purposely sabotaging the country's economic recovery. These charges are now being levied by Democrats such as Senate majority leader Harry Reid and Obama's key political adviser, David Axelrod.

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Why you vote the way you do

Fri, 25 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Week - By Jonathan Haidt - May. 25 (Opinion) - Here's a simple definition of ideology: "a set of beliefs about the proper order of society and how it can be achieved." And here's the most basic of all ideological questions: Should we preserve the present order or change it? Political theorists long assumed that people chose ideologies to further their self-interest. The rich and powerful want to preserve and conserve; the workers want to change things. But that link has been largely broken in modern times, when the rich go both ways (industrialists mostly right, tech billionaires mostly left), and so do the poor (rural poor mostly right, urban poor mostly left). So for most of the late 20th century, political scientists embraced blank-slate theories in which people soaked up the ideology of their parents.

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Top GOP Pollster to GOP: Reverse On Gay Issues

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Andrew Sullivan - May. 12 (News Report) - Below is a remarkable document. It's a memo circulated by Jan van Lohuizen, a highly respected Republican pollster, (he polled for George W. Bush in 2004), to various leading Republican operatives, candidates and insiders. It's on the fast-shifting poll data...

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Obama Says Same-Sex Marriage Should Be Legal

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Jackie Calmes, Peter Baker - May. 10 (News Report) - President Obama on Wednesday ended nearly two years of “evolving” on the issue of same-sex marriage by publicly endorsing it in a television interview, taking a definitive stand on one of the most contentious and politically charged social issues of the day.

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Obama: Gay couples should be able to marry

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

ABC News - By Rick Klein - May. 10 (News Report) - President Obama today announced that he now supports same-sex marriage, reversing his longstanding opposition amid growing pressure from the Democratic base and even his own vice president.

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Murdoch’s Pride Is America’s Poison

Sun, 06 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Bill Keller - May. 06 (Opinion) - Roger Ailes is (a) the genius who midwifed the astoundingly successful Fox News; (b) the sharpest thorn in the side of Barack Obama; and (c) the most important surviving officer in Rupert Murdoch’s global media army. ou can see why he would be a great subject for a biography. He is also (d) a political operator of the first order, which is why there are now three Ailes books in the works, two of which look to me like pre-emptive strikes by Ailes himself.

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Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Thomas E. Mann, Norman J. Ornstein - Apr. 29 (Opinion) - Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates. It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.

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Occupy the regulatory system!

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Suzy Khimm - Apr. 28 (News Report) - Occupy Wall Street has moved. Its new address: 60 Wall Street. There, inside a soaring public atrium, dreadlocked teens trade shoulder massages near the evening meditation circle. A young man holds up a sign: “You’re a Federal Reserve $lave.” The dinnertime crowd buzzes over free plates of rice and beans while listening to an improvised, profanity-laden operetta about the evils of agro-giant Monsanto. But amid the din, there’s a small group holding a quieter, and far wonkier, conversation.

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Ted Nugent: Threat to Obama, or harmless loudmouth?

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - Apr. 18 (News Report) - Ted Nugent can expect a call from the Secret Service after saying at the NRA convention over the weekend that he'd be either 'dead or in jail' a year from now if Obama is reelected. ...

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Even in an age of fact-check journalism, the political whopper lives

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Cleveland Plain Dealer - By Henry J. Gomez - Mar. 24 (News Analysis) - Josh Mandel's already casual relationship with the truth took a turn toward outright estrangement this month. The Republican state treasurer and aspiring U.S. senator blamed incumbent rival Sherrod Brown for Ohio jobs relocating to China, a transparent attempt to turn Brown's strong position on foreign trade into a weakness. Mixing audacity with absurdity, the claim earned a Pants on Fire rating from PolitiFact Ohio.

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After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Julie Bosman - Mar. 14 (News Report) - Bowing to the competition online, the encyclopedia's publisher said the 2010 edition, a 32-volume set that weighs in at 129 pounds, would be the last.

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Arizona Debate: Conservative Chickens Come Home to Roost

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Rolling Stone - By Matt Taibbi - Feb. 25 (Opinion) - What we have here are chickens coming home to roost. It's as if all of the American public's bad habits and perverse obsessions are all coming back to haunt Republican voters in this race: The lack of attention span, the constant demand for instant gratification, the abject hunger for negativity, the utter lack of backbone or constancy (we change our loyalties at the drop of a hat, all it takes is a clever TV ad): these things are all major factors in the spiraling Republican disaster. Most importantly, though, the conservative passion for divisive, partisan, bomb-tossing politics is threatening to permanently cripple the Republican party. They long ago became more about pointing fingers than about ideology, and it's finally ruining them.

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