Obama On TSA Anger: I Get It
This week, Facebook unveiled its potential "email killer" -- a new messaging service that combines IM, SMS, and e-mail in a single inbox -- and Tony Parker found out that the misuse of his current messaging service was a "marriage killer." In politics, messages of a different kind were sent from George Soros to the White House ("You gotta man up!"), from the House Ethics Committee to Charlie Rangel ("You gotta pay your taxes, man!"), and from the new GOP majority to America's unemployed ("We don't care if it's almost Christmas, no benefits extension for you!"). But the week's buzziest story centered on a software engineer's showdown with TSA security screeners when he refused to submit to a full-body scan or enhanced pat-down search. As put upon travelers across America encounter the newest Thanksgiving tradition -- having your junk groped for the holidays -- in a cave far, far away, are bin Laden and al-Zawahiri exchanging high-fives?
Renewed war in Sudan is not inevitable. A complex but workable peace can be brokered if all interested parties become more deeply involved. The current moment requires robust diplomacy.
It's a miracle that once a year Americans sit down to exactly the same meal they grew up eating, and exactly the same meal they ate a year earlier. Just to stay fresh, our annual Thanksgiving contest: send in those recipes and we'll pick ten winners.
Maybe it has something to do with growing up in a California suburb, where the only way to tell the passing of seasons was when people broke out the holiday decorations.
America finds itself at a real turning point in the struggle for gay rights. And, as during all turning points, it's as if we are watching the struggle unfold on a split screen: progress on one side, setbacks on the other.
For four decades, I've been skeptical of a prevailing belief in Western medicine: that when a plant shows bioactivity in humans, we must attribute that effect to a single, predominant compound in the plant.
Sarah Palin has recently stated that she believes that she could beat Obama in 2012. I would have said that was ridiculous until I saw that her daughter Bristol is now heading to the finals in this coming Monday's Dancing With The Stars.
The special interests that profit from fossil fuels will not wither away and die without a fight. They have deep pockets, and they will stop at nothing to disrupt and delay this historic transition. So let's stand up to them.
We should not use our kids as guinea pigs by taking chances on a chemical that can seriously harm their immediate and long-term health. No chemical should be used in food products until it is proven to be safe.
Watch this clip from Sondheim's Assassins and tell me what you think of some of the Birther/Anti-Government/Tea Party rhetoric we've had to suck up these last several months.
My sister, Jessie, lives with bipolar disorder and I realized that she was in a life-and-death battle, fighting to survive not only the symptoms and treatment of the illness, but the terrible stigma that surrounds it.
Instead of our political leaders ending corporate communism and releasing our country's entrepreneurs to challenge our problems and fix our broken institutions they accept campaign cash to protect them.
We can no longer afford to naively assume that heart disease is only a man's disease -- it's now a woman's epidemic.
In passages leaked from her forthcoming book America by Heart, Sarah Palin has taken another cheap shot at First Lady Michelle Obama.
It occurs to me that being an athlete is a state of mind. It's setting a goal and measuring your performance against it. It means making the outcome and how you got there matter.
The very richest among us want more, and they are prepared to dismantle the existing political and social order to get it. The time is late. The stakes are extraordinary. Now is the time to roll back this orgy of greed.
At times I felt that I was making a gravestone rubbing of "The Street of Crocodiles," and at times that I was transcribing a dream that "The Street of Crocodiles" might have had.
Earlier today, the Senate failed to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. I am disappointed, but remain committed to the fight to ensure women are not treated as second-class citizens by employers who refuse to compensate them in a fair manner.
The full body scanners are an obvious and very creepy violation of privacy. But the opposition isn't making much of a dent in terms of rolling back this unconstitutional measure: a new CBS poll shows that 81% of Americans favor the use of the scanners. Sad.
Musically, Kid Rock has always been his own man. Who else would ask Lil Wayne to sit in with him at the CMA Awards, and make friends with Jon Stewart and Fox News too?
APCO, the health insurance industry's PR firm who said it wants to push me off a cliff, has now taken on its biggest challenge yet: leading a giant, multimillion dollar effort to help Wall Street "earn back the trust of the American people."
The vote against paycheck fairness for women this week is a sign of what's to come from the GOP: pathological politics and hostility all the way.
If NATO did not exist, it would have to be invented, because countries with shared values and a shared history of close cooperation can best address global problems like cyber-attacks and terrorism together.
If economically-challenged Michigan can create 89,000 clean energy manufacturing jobs in three years with the right energy policies, just think what could happen for the entire country if Congress committed to clean energy.
The smartest investment that Wall Street made during the roaring '90s wasn't in exotic bonds or derivatives. It was in the Democratic Party, and the return was bipartisan fervor for the financial deregulation.
Our media has a responsibility to educate the public on issues affecting the planet. Covering the climate crisis only as a political issue shields from public view the vital scientific and moral elements of the debate.
