Aislin, The Montreal Gazette This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

This is one of the most beautiful songs I know, and certainly one of my favorite Sheryl Crow songs (lyrics below video).

The director of the transportation section at the famous RAND think tank thinks so. And why not? It’s an odd position for a fiscal conservative to take, so I’ll explain. Fact One: We can’t possibly cut enough spending to balance the federal budget at this point.  Even if it were politically possible to enact deep spending cuts on the major drivers of deficit spending (it isn’t), the consequences of cuts sufficient to balance the budget would be potentially devastating to...

The world’s cartoonist are weighing in on the New Year. Here’s a cross section of their work: Gary McCoy, Cagle Cartoons 2011 Sword of Damacles: Michael Kountouris, Greece Drowning New Year: Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune Michael Kountouris, Greece

Is he giving bow ties a bad name?

Uncle Sam: Hands off the Internet! by Michael Reagan The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wants to get its grasping hands around the throat of the Internet, the international town hall where Americans have been free to express their opinions without Big Brother’s permission or interference. That makes the FCC unhappy. It seems that this taxpayer-supported, intrusive federal agency simply can’t bring itself to allow anything having to do with Americans communicating with each other in...

Bill Schorr, Cagle Cartoons This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Advanced age has its privileges, one of them to fantasize publicly about asking out a married woman without fear of being beaten up for it. So with apologies to my loved ones (and Todd, of course), my dream date for New Year’s Eve is bubbly Sarah Palin. Imagine being greeted at the door, corsage in hand, with congratulations for dodging death panels and some snappy remark like “How’s that hopey changey thing working out for you?” We could start making the rounds of consolation...

Nicholas Kristof starts a very interesting column in today’s New York Times with the question: A quiz: If a person who speaks three languages is trilingual, and one who speaks four languages is quadrilingual, what is someone called who speaks no foreign languages at all? Before I give you the answer, an observation. I noticed that my spellchecker flagged “quadrilingual” in Kristof’s question and gave “No Spelling Suggestions,” so I tried “quintlingual,” “quintilingual” and “pentalingual”...

The four C’s are Karl Rove’s Courage and Consequence, and John Yoo’s Crisis and Command. The winner of the number one spot on that list does not have to share the spotlight: It’s George W. Bush, for Decision Points.

Kodachrome You give us those nice bright colors You give us the greens of summers Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah! I got a Nikon camera I love to take a photograph So Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away ~Paul Simon This was a historic day, Paul Simon lived to see the day when Mama Kodak would take his Kodachrome away for good.  A victim of the digital age. Last Kodachrome Developer Stops Developing Dwayne’s Photo, a lab in Parsons, Kansas, was the last...

Mike Keefe, The Denver Post This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

With the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell” looming, faculty senates on many elite college campuses are facing what may be their worst nightmare.  The U.S. government is calling their bluff. For many years, some on university faculties have justified their efforts to expel ROTC and to abuse pro-military students by pointing to DADT.  By calling the military discriminatory, they could continue to indulge in anti-military sentiments that have been continuously dominant on college...

Here’s an interesting question: would the release of internal White House documents before the Iraq War began have prevented the Bush Administration from going ahead with it? According to columnist Ulrich Ladurner of Germany’s Die Zeit, not only is it likely that the war would have been prevented – but Julian Assange may well have won the Nobel Peace Prize. For Die Zeit, Ulrich Ladurner writes in part: Julian Assange has been much reviled for his dogma that everything should be...

Colman McCarthy has an op-ed in the Washington Post today that is drawing the ire of military and right-wing bloggers. I write about it here.

Jennifer Rubin, in her new role as Fred Hiatt’s latest right-wing blogger hire for the Washington Post (you can read Dave Weigel’s classy write-up here), is apoplectic about the six recess appointments Pres. Obama just made. ‘Egregious’! ‘Imperious’! ‘So much for bipartisanship’!

As The Washington Post points out, her name was never Rosie and she wasn’t a riveter. But Geraldine Doyle and the original image of her that led to the iconic image of a working woman staring us into action are unlikely to fade from our political landscape any time soon. Thank you, Geraldine, and RIP.

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has had raised his public profile of late. After last week signing off on a partnership between WikiLeaks and Rossiyskaya Gazeta – the newspaper he partly owns – this week he is opining on the New START Treaty, which was passed by the U.S. Senate last week. Gorbachev wrote one op-ed piece for the English-speaking press, and a different version for the Russian. Below you will find the translated Russian version, which, unlike the English, discusses...

Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Jon Stewart. In a 30-paragraph “news analysis,” the New York Times puts the Daily Show host into the journalism pantheon, omitting only Woodward and Bernstein. Well, yes but… As a comedian, satirist and, not incidentally, media critic, Stewart is a gifted figure, but lines are being blurred here in a way that tells much about our times and which, if he were not on holiday hiatus, Stewart himself might be the first to mock. The Times and its professorial...

I’m not a big fan of Christine O’Donnell, the Tea Party favorite and unsuccessful candidate for the Senate from Delaware. Indeed, whenever one of her “I’m you” commercials appeared on my TV, I got up and shouted: “No you’re not.” But whatever the merits of recent reports that say she may be under investigation for inappropriately using campaign funds, I have to say that laws that make this illegal strike me as wrong. Why shouldn’t candidates...

2010 was a productive year for those of us who love to watch and hear political gaffes. CNN gives us the top five: h/T Political Wire

A sign that the economy may be finally on the mend? The latest news is that jobless claims are now the lowest in more than two years: New claims for unemployment benefits dropped more than expected last week to their lowest level in more than two years, suggesting the labor market recovery was gaining strength. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 34,000 to a seasonally adjusted 388,000, the lowest reading since early July 2008, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That was well...

This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

WASHINGTON — Was 2010 American liberalism’s Waterloo? How are we to square the achievement of so many goals that have long been on progressive wish lists with the resounding defeat suffered by supporters of these measures in November? Let’s begin with what is a most painful fact for liberals: Conservatism, a doctrine that seemed moribund on election night in 2008, enjoyed a far more rapid comeback than all liberals and even most conservatives anticipated. More than that,...

The quote of the day comes from Dave Cohen: As 2010 winds down, I am reminded that there is no Imperial policy more reprehensible and shameful than the war in Afghanistan. This war is constantly presented to Americans as an integral part of the War On Terrorism, but it is no such thing. The Afghan war is a pointless, expensive, destructive exercise in futility whereby American power is projected into southern Asia for God Only Knows what purpose at this point. Those who remember the Vietnam...