By Chris Hedges —The true power of the Christian gospel is its unambiguous call for liberation from forces of oppression and for a fierce condemnation of all who oppress.
Jack Lew is a liberal who worked for Speaker Tip O'Neill and studied under beloved progressive Sen. Paul Wellstone, but he was also the chief operating officer of a Citigroup unit and doesn't fault deregulation for the shoddy economy.
Ian Masters asks Dahlia Lithwick, a contributing editor at Newsweek and a senior editor and legal correspondent at Slate, to dig into the NDAA and report on whether our civil liberties are as threatened as they seem to be by the defense bill President Obama signed on New Year’s Eve.
Snoop Dogg would like to speak to President Obama on behalf of a friend of his, and her name is Mary Jane. The pot-friendly rapper, né Calvin Broadus, also has visualized how this meeting would ideally take place at the White House.
Sorry about this—a 10-best list dragging along in the wake of all the others, which began appearing around Halloween. And it isn’t even a nice round 10 in number. I could come up with only six movies this year. I have my excuses. [Pictured above, Werner Herzog, director of “Into the Abyss.”]
Lauren B. Davis’ thrilling, polyphonic new novel, “Our Daily Bread,” takes us into a backwoods clan rife with child abuse and incest, and asks the question: “When does another person’s suffering become my responsibility?”
The true power of the Christian gospel is its unambiguous call for liberation from forces of oppression and for a fierce and uncompromising condemnation of all who oppress.
So far, the impact of this year’s Republican contest has been more negative than positive for the GOP. Unless Romney closes the nomination struggle quickly, he could suffer further damage.
Dear Tea Party Movement: You should get behind Mitt Romney, the charging Massachusetts RINO, because—in a certain paradoxical way—he may turn out to be the truest of all the candidates to the spirit of your movement.
For our first Truthdigger installment of 2012, we salute Daniel Ellsberg, who has taken a page from his experience with the Pentagon Papers and is still busy serving up a bracing dose of truth to power, most recently with his support of accused WikiLeaker Bradley Manning.
The usual recipe for political effectiveness is to be cynical, calculating, an insider. But if you think that we need deep change in this country, then cynicism is a sucker’s bet.
Better to let Iraq blow itself apart than inflict the kind of policies that have, as most commentators refuse to acknowledge, plagued the country’s entire, sorry history.
It would seem that the United States has a five-party system right now. What was done in Iowa last Tuesday could unravel in New Hampshire, but whatever happens next, the United States is more politically fractured than it has been in decades.
Here are 10 current words and phrases that my kid may never know because they might end up as relics of a lost vernacular, starting with “civil liberties.”
Arab League, shmarab league. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is evidently still unwilling to make room for the possibility that he is in anything resembling a precarious position, as he made a defiant speech on Tuesday in Damascus, blaming foreign media for making him look bad and dissing the Arab League.
You may recall Dixville Notch, N.H., from past elections or perhaps that “West Wing” episode that highlighted the mini-village’s unusually prescient midnight voting. This year nine people who used to live there, but don’t really, showed up to pick candidates. Mitt Romney and Jon Hunstman each got two votes. Obama got three.
Jack Lew is a liberal who worked for Speaker Tip O’Neill and studied under beloved progressive Sen. Paul Wellstone, but he was also the chief operating officer of a Citigroup unit and doesn’t fault deregulation for the shoddy economy. (more)
According to journalism prof Ted Gup, the prevalence of the word “like” in youth-speak is evidence that teachers have “condemned children to a common cluster of mediocrity.” But as linguist Geoffrey Nunberg pointed out a decade ago, “like” isn’t a tic or filler, it’s “a word with a point of view.” (more)
Just how g-a-y is SLC? Well, it’s actually The Advocate’s surprise winner atop this year’s “Gayest Cities in America” list. Clearly, the GLBTQ-targeted mag’s editors were looking to depart a bit from usual suspects such as San Francisco and New York and declared that Utah’s capital “has earned its queer cred.”
Another story has emerged to further make the headline-ready case that tensions are ratcheting up between Tehran and Washington, this time from the espionage department. On Monday, news hit the wires that an Iranian court had sentenced 28-year-old Amir Mirzaei Hekmati to death for allegedly spying for the CIA.
Now that the holiday season is over, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are back in crisis management mode, huddling in Berlin on Monday before emerging to hold a joint news conference on the future of the eurozone.
‘Colbert Report’: Rick Santorum on Gays and Bla People
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