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

You can see a Democratic Party political ad on this development. Or several ads. It’ll fit right into the narrative the Democrats are starting to weave about likely 2012 Republican Presidential candidate former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney: Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney, whose wealth has become a central issue in the 2012 campaign, has taken advantage of an obscure exception in federal ethics laws to avoid disclosing the nature and extent of his holdings. By offering a...

In a sign of how the general election campaign is now well underway, the big debate yesterday was over…caterpillars. Or, rather, “the War on Women.” And whether it’s real or not. And whether a key Republican official was somehow likening women to caterpillars. Welcome to American politics 21st century style where now more than ever the act of mouthing words is supposed to somehow create a new reality even if it’s at variance with the facts. At issue were the comments...

Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

WASHINGTON — Playing second fiddle to Mitt Romney won’t be easy, but somebody has to be his running mate. Let’s handicap the field: Florida Sen. Marco Rubio: The choice who offers the biggest potential reward — for the biggest risk. The telegenic young Cuban-American could potentially shore up three of the Romney campaign’s weaknesses: He is an unambiguous conservative, elected with tea party backing, who would temper Romney’s “Massachusetts moderate”...

Rick Santorum’s campaign is claiming his delegate count is higher and Romney’s lower than the media have reported, and that his campaign is working with Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich in various capacities to deny Romney the nomination. I don’t know how much of this is realistic versus wishful thinking, but it’s interesting. Information here. (This item cross-posted to Dean’s World.)

Stand Your Ground laws, which extend the “Castle doctrine” to areas outside the home, are under fresh scrutiny due to George Zimmerman’s shooting and killing Trayvon Martin in February. Martin, a teen, was killed in a suburb of Orlando, FL. Florida Sen. Chris Smith (D-Fort Lauderdale) opposed Florida’s 2005 legislation and is leading an investigation into the statute. Florida’s was the first such law; 23 other states followed suit. Philosophically, it’s a variation...

While campaigning in vain in Wisconsin last week, Rick Santorum claimed: I was just reading something last night from the state of California. And that the California universities – I think it’s seven or eight of the California system of universities don’t even teach an American history course. It’s not even available to be taught. Of course he was soon called on the carpet for such an outlandish “inaccuracy” — we are trying to be gracious here. Think Progress was the first one...

My wife and I finally found enough free time to see the new musical First Date, a co-production of ACT-A Contemporary Theatre and The 5th Avenue Theatre. As we settled into our seats and perused the program, my wife whispered, “I wonder if anyone on a first date is seeing this show? That sounds like something you would have done.” I whispered back, “Well, if anyone is, it’ll either be a great story to tell their kids someday or a really terrible idea.” About an...

Has the threat posed by North Korea become so great, that Beijing will fully join the rest of the world in bringing the maximum pressure to bear against Pyongyang? Expressing friendly skepticism about geopolitical naivete on the part of President Obama and issuing a plea to China to get off the stick, this editorial from Japan’s Nishi Nippon Shimbun laments that the signs aren’t promising for preventing this month’s planned North Korean missile test. The Nishi Nippon Shimbun editorial...

by WALTER BRASCH There’s nothing to suggest that in his 51 years Kevin June should be a leader. Not from his high school where he dropped out after his freshman year. Not from his job, where he worked as an auto body technician for more than 35 years. Both of his marriages ended in divorce, but did produce two children, a 31-year-old son and a 28-year-old daughter. June readily admits that for most of his life, beginning about 14 when he began drinking heavily, he was a drunk. Always beer. Almost...

The time has come to ask it: 1. Who is ADVISING former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney? Is it a mole from John Stewart’s company or SNL? 2. If this is the indicative of the Romney Presidential campaign to come the Republicans have a huge political problem. The reason: Romney has mocked Barack Obama for his Harvard ties — despite his own and his sons. NO JOKE: Mitt Romney again bashed President Obama for his connections to Harvard on Thursday, despite holding multiple degrees from the university...

Google’s public corporate philosophy is famously “don’t be evil.” But the Internet giant doesn’t seem to care much about that in its actual actions, as demonstrated by Google’s pointless campaign to screw a tiny app developer out of its advertising revenue. After trying for more than a year to get Google to just return their phone calls, the app developers have gone public in the hopes that market pressure can force Google to at least reveal its reasons for seizing...

To many people in the outside world, the killing of Trayvon Martin seems to be stretching the fabric of American society to the breaking point. For France’s Le Monde, U.S. correspondent Corine Lesnes writes with surprise of how the events of the past month could have occurred three years after the election of America’s first Black president. For Le Monde, Corine Lesnes writes in part: Thousands of young people throughout the country have demonstrated with hooded sweatshirts like the...

Although there will always be much talk of national polls, the only real way to understand the upcoming Presidential election is to look at the state-by-state electoral map. Real Clear Politics has just such a map. At the moment, the President looks to have a significant advantage there, although hardly an insurmountable one. We can also look for that map to change somewhat once the primaries are over and Obama’s challenger begins to focus all of his attention on swaying centrist voters and...

Are President Barack Obama and the Democrats political toast? There are signs that could be the case. Even signs that Democrats could lose the Senate, not win back the House and lose the Oval Office. But…WAIT! Welcome to our manic depressant election year where you can choose the poll or argument of your partisan liking and the only certainty will be: predictions are risky. But there is good data out there. For instance, the University of Virginia’s Larry Sabato and his ace “Crystal...

The Insidious Nature of Student Loan Debt by Scott Kirwin I have a BA degree in Political Science and in the decades since I got the degree it came in useful once: it allowed me to teach English in Japan, a university degree being the sole requirement at the time. Since then I’ve not used it during my career and I likely never will. I have no regrets getting the degree however, because I got it from a state school and graduated with debt I repaid in four years teaching, making $2,000 a month. After...

WASHINGTON — The Easter season is a celebration of deliverance and the liturgical calendar sets Easter Week up as a kind of catharsis. Holy Thursday and the Last Supper have an ominous feel because they are preparation for Good Friday and the dolorous story of Jesus’ crucifixion. Yet two days later, the tale ends in triumph and resurrection. Whatever questions Christians may have about the meaning of that empty tomb, most of us have experienced a sense of joy when the words “He...

Yes, there are bigots in both parties — and some fully deserve the “awards” they receive. P.S. There is NO excuse or justification for this kind of bigotry.

Hadn’t posted one yet today and assuming somebody out there finds the stories interesting, here goes. This story revolves around a last minute crew change on the Titanic. Wanting to make sure the maiden voyage went well the powers that be decided to transfer the Chief Officer (aka 2nd in command) from the Titanic’s sister ship Olympic to the Titanic for the first sailing. This meant that the Titanic’s chief officer became 1st officer and the 1st officer became 2nd officer. The 2nd...

UPDATE: A very nice video on the F-16 below. Original Post: I have written plenty about the sad demise of the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor fighter program and about the trials and tribulations of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, also by Lockheed Martin. However, I have not said much about the venerable F-16, “arguably the finest combat airplane of the jet age … the principal frontline warplane of the U.S. Air Force and of the armed forces of 25 other nations.” The Fighting Falcon has...

So. Today is the anniversary of a voice silenced by hatred. Martin Luther King was assassinated this day 44 years ago. Martin King, denounced hate. I love Martin. Mainly because he left in his Letter from Birmingham Jail the four points to overturn injustice time and again… and the foremost was “self-purify” ourselves before we go making demands. THis– self purification before demands– is left out of most every moviemiento that starts strong, falters, falls into factions,...

I thought I had seen all the self-promoting, self-obsessed, self-centered, self-aggrandizing, self-delusional, self-opinionated sides of egomaniac Donald Trump. (Did I mention self-aggrandizing, derived from the Latin/old French grand/ adj. “impressive in size, appearance, or general effect”?) But I had not — until now. You can read this little man’s inflated offer to attorney Gloria Allred here. And some of the GOP presidential candidates prized the endorsement, support and so-called...

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin is facing a recall fight for his job. A million voters in his state decided that after just a year or so in office, they’d had enough of the man and wanted him out. The main issue here, the main cause of anger toward the governor, involves his taking away collective bargaining rights from most state government workers. Sure, at a time when governments like Wisconsin’s are fiscally hard-pressed, state government workers have to take some hits. But they...

I’m out. I’m just all out. I can read more, talk more, opine more. But really — how much more is there to actually say, that hasn’t already been said, about the Republican candidates remaining in the primary battle to be the party’s nominee for the 2012 general election? Even his three wins last night, in Wisconsin, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, have failed to seal the deal for the delegate leader, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. For more background...

Today marks the murder of Martin Luther King in 1968, even as a racial uproar does violence to his memory. The gulf between reactions to his death then, universal public grief, and that of Trayvon Martin tells much about how America has changed in those years. Even when still alive, Dr. King’s preaching of peaceful protest was being challenged by angrier voices of Black Power and Black Panthers. Yet, in his 39 years on earth, he changed the face of America, culminating in a 1964 Civil Rights Act...

Yep. It has started. And for good reason: to win, candidates must move towards the center. The questions are whether the Republican base lets him, whether talk show hosts let him or give him a pass, and whether the issue really will matter if he changes positions and the Demos call him on it. But Romney’s (politically necessary) inching towards the center and away from GOP primary and Tea Party voters has now begun.

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

Forty four years ago today the Reverend Martin Luther King was murdered in Memphis by a man of hate. His dream however has endured to a day where a man who looks much more like King than his killer is the President of the United States. Take some time to remember one of his greatest speeches.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi has caught Hillary mania, which is sweeping the media and political class during the Republican circus lull, while everyone nods off until Mitt Romney can squeeze 1144 out of wingnut primary voters. I’d heard about this exchange, with Buzzfeed posting the video. “I would love to see Secretary Clinton become the nominee for President in 2016,” Pelosi said during an appearance in the 92nd Street Y in New York City Sunday night. “I do think the Secretary should...

The 2012 Three Stooges Double good news for fans of The Three Stooges, the vaudeville comedy team that hit the movies in 1934 and performed in various incarnations until the 1970s. 1. The new Three Stooges movie painstakingly cast and loving crafted by the Farrelly brothers is soon to be released. By most accounts it tries to recreate the look and feel of the originals and is NOT a parody or take off 2. The movie is likely to spark new interest in the huge backlog of original Three Stooges material....

Time for your daily (or semi-daily) dose of Titanic history, the story of Isidor and Ida Straus. The Straus’ were in many ways a perfect symbol of the American dream. Born in Bavaria they emigrated to the United States in the 1850′s. Starting out with a small general store they (along with Isidor’s brother Nathan) eventually went to work at Macy’s department store, running the glassware department. In time they became partners in the store and eventually bought control from...

President Obama has tonight officially won the Democratic nomination for President according to media reports. Not a surprise of course but interesting tidbit.

Mitt Romney has swept all 3 GOP primaries tonight with huge wins in DC and Maryland plus a closer win in Wisconsin. Ensign Ricky has said he will remain in the race.

Rick McKee, The Augusta Chronicle This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

I mean, really.. Question: are these folks moles put in place by the Democratic Party to cause a stampede of independent voters to vote Democrat in 2012? What is certain: this is proof that all the nuts around aren’t on your supermarket shelf. P.S. Most serious news organizations would say “adios” to someone like this. But there are serious news organizations and then — apparently — there is Fox.

This is a political controversy no matter how you slice it: When GOP front-runner Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., gathered at a sandwich shop in Waukesha today to drum up support for Romney in the Badger State primary, they might have been engaging in “subs-for-votes” election bribery, according to the state’s Democratic Party. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin issued a complaint of bribery hours after the event, holding a news conference in downtown Milwaukee to air its grievances. “It...

In the eyes of the world at large, the killing of a young Black man in Florida named Trayvon Martin has done nothing to diminish the image of America as a gun-totting, shoot first, ask questions later country. For Germany’s Frankfurter Rundschau, correspondent Olivia Schoeller explains to her readers that on gun violence and racism, his death should be a wake-up call to Americans: ‘It’s time for a change.’ For the Frankfurter Rundschau, Olivia Schoeller writes in part: When...

GOP presidential candidate Santorum made the wrong kind of headlines a few weeks ago when he spouted the wrong kind of information on euthanasia in the Netherlands. Among the claims he made were these: That 10 percent of all deaths in the Netherlands are due to euthanasia. That half of those deaths — or five percent of all deaths in the Netherlands — are people who are euthanized involuntarily. Santorum also said that people are euthanized involuntarily because they are old or sick and...

Today I would like to suggest movies for your enjoyment. Most of us have seen the James Cameron epic and I am certainly not going to deny the special effects wizardry of the film, and it does make an effort to tell the history. But in my humble opinion it is more of an romance/drama that happens to involve the Titanic rather than the story of the Titanic with some romance or drama as a vehicle. If you want drama and some history of the Titanic check out the 1953 film Titanic, starring Clifton Webb,...

“Mad Men” makes news with a passing dig at Mitt Romney’s dad (calling the elder “a clown”) but, for serious fans, the growing question is what’s happening to the show’s core character, the creative but mercurial, lusty but haunted, sexually greedy but sensitive Don Draper? We could be in “Answered Prayers” territory here, Truman Capote’s never-finished novel of that era based on the wisdom of St. Teresa of Ávila: “Answered prayers cause more tears than those that...

First, Rick Santorum displayed his ignorance and managed to insult an entire country when falsely claiming that in the Netherlands euthanasia makes up ten percent of all deaths, and that forced euthanasia accounts for five percent of all deaths there. Santorum also said that people are euthanized involuntarily because they are old or sick and further claimed that elderly people in the Netherlands don’t go into hospitals out of fear that they will not come out if they go in there sick —...

Updated below. Oh My Gosh! There’s been a HOSTILE TAKEOVER of the GOP. So imagine the shock when conservative justices repeatedly spouted views closely resembling the tweets and talking points issued by organizations of the sort funded by the Koch brothers. Don’t take it from me. Charles Fried, solicitor general for Ronald Reagan, told The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein that it was absurd for conservatives to pretend that the mandate created a market in health care. “The whole thing is...

Your daughter is arrested for walking the family dog off its leash at a county park. She is taken into custody and before being jailed is strip searched. A guard instructs your daughter to disrobe. Her mouth, vagina and anus are then inspected for contraband while other guards leer at her and make jokes about how she trims her pubic hair. Your son is arrested while driving on a county highway for having an unpaid littering ticket. A guard instructs your son to disrobe. His mouth and anus...

Watch Wisconsin. That’s the gist of a Christian Science Monitor report which notes that if Mitt Romney does as well as expected in the Wisconsin primary this could finally, decisively, definitively wrap up the 2012 Republican nomination for the former Massachusetts Governor. The reasons why: While Rick Santorum’s campaign isn’t a goner, even if he loses, Wisconsin stands out as a potential turning point in the national election for two reasons. First, the Badger State primary marks...

Our political Quote of the Day comes from The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz who notes the continued, deeply felt skepticism towards and lack of enthusiasm over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney among conservatives. Kurtz outlines conservative bigwigs who aren’t really sold on Romney’s conservative credentials, conservative bloggers, conservative talk show hosts — a collection of quotes giving further proof that Romney hasn’t sealed the deal. It’s just that conservatives...

WASHINGTON — The problem for Mitt Romney, assuming he eventually wins the GOP nomination, is that a general election campaign isn’t really like an Etch a Sketch. Alas, traces from the primaries linger. The ghost image that remains will be of a strikingly uninspiring standard-bearer who deadened the Republican Party’s great passion into a sense of duty. Voters will discern the outlines of a candidate who spent the better part of a decade running for president without giving...

A sign held up by a young woman during protests in the contraception kerfuffle last month over Rush Limbaugh’s remarks is reflected now in a swing states poll showing the President roaring ahead of Mitt Romney, almost entirely on a surge of support by women under 50. In February, fewer than half supported Obama. Now more than six in 10 do while Romney’s number is down by 14 points, to 30 percent. The president leads 2-1 in this demographic and, in the poll overall, 51 to 42 only a month after...

Entire forests have been denuded in recent weeks as pundits speculate whether Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has been bluffing about launching air strikes against Iran’s nascent nuclear program. If ever an important issue needed a time out this is it, and talks between Iran and the U.S. and five other major powers scheduled to begin next week could provide just that opportunity. Let’s get some stuff out of the way before we dive into the deep end of this superheated situation. ...

Is ‘universal suffrage’ as it is practiced today a sham? For France’s Le Monde, philosopher Jean Salem asserts that the popular vote, rather than being a kind of panacea for rule by the people, gives the dynastic transfer of power a patina of legitimacy in the world’s old and new democracies. For Le Monde, philosopher at the University of Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne Jean Salem starts out this way: When considering our faltering civilization, I think it beneficial to paint...

WASHINGTON – The 2010 midterm elections brought gains for Republicans they hadn’t seen in decades. In fact, they evened the score with women. So, what did Republicans do? They breathed new energy into their war on women that’s been waging since the Supreme Court settled Griswold. With a lot of inspiration from the Stupak Amendment, Republicans began forcing unwanted procedures on women from state to state, hoping their war on women could do locally what they couldn’t accomplish...

John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

I post this poem every year at tax season time. This year I’m dedicating it to Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the Tea Party’s tax man in Congress, who actually seems to take the silly, satirical notions in this verse seriously. This one’s for you, Paul. Keep making the shade of Ayn Rand proud… A Tax Season Poem Dedicated To Representative Paul Ryan Ollie Wendell Holmes once said Bout taxes in this nation, They are the price we gotta pay To have civilization. But recently I’m...

Last month we ran this post on TMV joining the chorus of critics dismayed over Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera’s comment that 17 year old Trayvon Martin’s killing by George Zimmerman could be partly blamed by the fact the teen with the Skittles and iced tea was wearing a hoodied. Rivera took a lot of heat on that (one of his sons said he was ashamed of his Dad) and apologized — and now he has apologized to Martin’s parents in an interview with them on Fox. Here’s the...

If the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is overturned by the Supreme Court, which now seems probable, how can health care costs be controlled and care provided to the one sixth of Americans who have no insurance? A bipartisan solution to the problem appears to be impossible. Evidence for this is reinforced by the fact that the individual mandate provision of the ACA, which originally had been a conservative Republican concept, became an anathema to Republicans once it had been adopted by Obama and the Democrats,...