There’s no question that the federal budget is bloated, but lawmakers have become so desperate to reduce it that one influential former U.S. senator is floating the idea that looking into reducing benefits to disabled veterans is an idea whose time may have come.

Alan Simpson, a Wyoming Republican who served with the Army in Germany in 1955-56, is gunning (uh, poor choice of words) for the disability benefits the Department of Veterans Affairs pays Vietnam v…

WITH THE midterm elections roughly nine weeks away, conventional wisdom would suggest gains for the Republican Party.

History is certainly on their side. Since 1870, only four times did the incumbent president’s party not lose seats in Congress during midterm elections.

Moreover, it has been well-documented the country is in an angry, “throw the bums out” disposition. According to the most recent Reuters poll, 62 percent of the people feel the country is head…

Believe it or not, there was a time when the Republican Party enjoyed strong African-American support. It was not for nothing that it was known as the Party of Lincoln.

While that support was effectively frittered away because of Richard Nixon’s so-called Southern Strategy, the GOP has attracted substantial Hispanic and Asian American support in recent years, the former because Hispanics tend to be pro-life religious conservatives and Asian Americans, predominately …

It’s not just the official Republican Party we need to worry about in November. A broad network of GOP-aligned groups has pledged to spend upward of $300 million to defeat our candidates – and that doesn’t even include corporate spending coming to an election near you, thanks to the Citizens United decision. Because we are counting on our grassroots supporters to fight back and win, you need to know who these groups are, what their agenda is and how much they’re planning on spendin…

Until the finger-pointing stops, offshore moratorium must remain
THERE IS no way the moratorium on deepwater oil drilling should be lifted this year — not after this week’s federal inquiry into the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster brought to light the incompetence and unaccountability among major players in the industry. Back in May, after an explosion had killed 11 workers and caused a vast oil spill, President Obama chastised the “ridiculous spectacle’’ of BP, Transocean and…

In order to clearly delineate the difference between greatness (MLK) and deceit (Beck), here’s a contrast the achievements of these two men (courtesy of The Other 98%).
…

Nate Silver, whose poll-based political prognostications usually are scary accurate, predicts a loss of six or seven Senate seats to Republicans in November, which given the gyrations of contemporary politics means that the Democrats could lose their majority.

But as good as Silver is, he and polls don’t take into account the Batshit Crazy Factor — that is how as Election Day approaches some voters become increasingly chary of casting ballots for people with…

An image popped up on the Web portraying Sarah Louise Heath (Sarah Palin) with an IQ the resembles a borderline mental disability – dullness to some.

It’s not real. However, I thought it was interesting because she is dull-headed no matter what.

…

I’m glad that Ken Mehlman finally worked up the courage to acknowledge what had been pretty much an open secret for years — that he is gay. But as hypocrisy goes, Mehlman hit a grand slam considering that he tacitly backed anti-gay legislation when he was chairman of the Republican National Committee….

IN WELCOMING the world to the World Cup in June, South African President Jacob Zuma boasted that the tournament exemplified his country’s leading role for all of Africa. Sixteen years after a multiracial democracy emerged from the oppressive apartheid system, South Africa has a constitution that, as Zuma put it, “enshrines human rights to ensure that this nation never returns to that painful past.’’ The nation, he said, “would never be the same again.’’

Yet now, just…

Minnesota is a ‘fly-over’ state, one which is active in producing the food supplies for the entire nation and beyond. 
In this context, I contacted the office of one of our Minnesota senators, junior Senator Al Franken.  My response to that contact was extraordinarily prompt, and as has been my experience when contacting his office on other matters, his response was also substantive and to the point – not some ‘blow-off’ generic / one-size-fits-…

In researching our Iraq editorial for tomorrow, I came across this quote in the New York Times from Marine Colonel Alan Baldwin, whom the Times identifies as being the chief Marine intelligence officer in Iraq during the invasion. He privately told reporters before the war that we were headed for a “rolling civil war,” and now says this:

“We’ve won by not losing and we continue to win by continuing to engage, continuing to support. We lose in some ways, too, by not doing so…

www.thedailyshow.com/…august-19 2010/extremist-makeover—homeland-edition
www.thedailyshow.com/watch/…august-23-2010/the-parent-company-trap
www.thedailyshow.com/…august-23-2010/moment-of-zen—prince-alwaleed-bin-talal-on-fox-news

Saudi Prince Al’ Waleed bin Talal,
owner of approx. 7% of Fox News Parent Company,
with majority shareholder Rupert Murdoch

In a wry twist, the Daily Show…

David Blain presides over a Dallas middle school that, by all appearances, should not be succeeding. His campus has a high percentage of low-income students, many who face pressures from drugs and gangs. And it educates numerous students for whom English is a second language.

Each is a recipe for falling behind – or suffering from what education wonks call “the achievement gap.”

But W.E. Greiner Exploratory Arts Academy in nor…

The First Amendment – do we really believe in it?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
- 1st Amendment, Bill of Rights, United States Constitution

The Supreme Court of the United States held in Gitlow v. New York that the 14th …

With his finger firmly pointed at his predecessor, it may be time that Barack Obama invites David McCullough to the White House for a chat. The historian could remind the president that one of the greatest Democratic leaders, Harry Truman, prided himself in letting the public know where the buck stopped – with him.

That’s one of the more famous lines from one of our most responsible presidents, whom McCullough profiled brilliantly in Truman. The feisty Democrat’s approach se…

Six years after the Justice Department started investigating Tom DeLay for his dealings with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the former Texas congressman’s case has been closed.

Good.

Not that I liked Tom DeLay’s leadership of the House under Speaker Denny Hastert. In fact, I really think he did his party a disservice.

But six years is way too long to investigate someone. Prosecutors either need to take someone to court, strike a deal or give u…

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the goo…

In listening to Bill White speak at an Irving education forum last night, it hit me that really what this governor’s race is about is what kind of leader Texas should have for the next four years.

While folks like me throw out the major issues that face us, such as closing the achievement gap between Latinos and other students, what matters most is whether we will have a leader who can get the state to solve — or at least address — those issues. That may sound basic, but i…

http://s3.moveon.org/pdfs/targetdropbyletter.pdf?id=22349-5833117-rKKBLxx&t=1

Putting money where their mouth is – according to the Pioneer Press, Target has lost $1.3 billion /3.5 percent in value in a six day decline on the stock market since their CEO attempted to defend this political donation to ultra-conservative GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer. In the same interim, its rivals’ stock value, at stores like Walmart and Costco, rose, as did the Dow overall.

Their Gradual Palestinianization and Stalinization
Excerpt:

Yale University’s Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism hosted a major conference in which I was privileged to be a participant. “Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity” was envisioned by Professor Charles Asher Small who founded the Initiative. The conference was also sponsored by the Issac and Jessie Kaplan Center for Jewish Studies and Research, University of Cape Town, in associa…

Missing the Symbolism of Cordoba

The battle continues to rage over the proposed Islamic Center a mere few hundred feet from the site of the worst attack by Muslim extremists ever perpetrated on U.S. soil., the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York. Nearly three thousand people perished that day at the hands of a dozen and a half radical Muslims, but the after effects propel the numbers of both perpetrators and victims into untold numbers.
…

As freedom and individuality are crushed throughout the Middle East under the weight of Sharia law, Barack Obama opts to bow and grovel at the feet of Islamic dictators with whom he seeks to “build bridges.” Comity with such people is paramount. In contrast, human rights abuses among the common people of those regions are inconsequential. Or worse, as was the case in Iran after thug leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad secured his electoral victory through highly dubious means, the concerns and compla…

Excerpt:

Four young civilians: human beings, fathers, mothers, one of whom was also pregnant, collectively the parents of seven children, were brutally gunned down by armed, masked terrorists. Their murders were openly celebrated in the streets by their attackers and by thousands of their supporters.

You would think that the world would recoil in horror—or that those who report the news, world-wide, would do so. Think again. These four precious souls were Is…

Upgrading the memory of a computer can improve its functioning. Upgrading the memory of a nation can have a similar effect. That is exactly what Glenn Beck’s rally in Washington was. And on a much smaller scale, that’s what I hope these columns are − an effort to remind us of what made us exceptional. You see, I’m old enough to remember when:

We didn’t need a rally to remind us of honor.

We didn’t need a rally to restore basic religious and moral values….

Mr. Jefferson, Tear Down This Wall

Political cartoon from 1800
Library of Congress

I learned something very interesting one day while watching the Glenn Beck program on Fox News, two things that most likely just sent any Liberal reader heading for the exits. Knowing this, I couldn’t write this piece using Glenn Beck as a source, so I decided to research on my own; something for which Beck…

Recently I upgraded the memory on my computer. It runs Windows Vista and was slow with only 1 gigabyte of memory. I had been told that 2 gigabytes were the minimum for optimum function, but I was lazy. Inertia is a property of matter, but regrettably it is also a property of people. Finally I upgraded the memory to 2 gigabytes. Everything is faster, including word processing and Web surfing.

Human beings are not computers − except for bureaucrats, that is. But if we stumble alon…

Memo to the State-Run Media

This guy will not give anyone a job. I fail to grasp why that is so difficult to understand, yet the New York Times on Saturday published an editorial piece that – on its face – seemed critical of Barack Hussein Obama. Well, it was, but for an entirely different reason than I initially thought when I saw the byline; the Times complains that Obama is not enoughof a Socialist.

Grudgingly admitting in the second para…

Excerpt:

On Thursday, August 26 in Bahrain, the country’s police stormed into the home where Yazmin Maribel Bautista was hiding her five-year-old daughter, Fatima, an American citizen. She was hiding her child to keep her from being handed over to her Bahraini father for weekend visitation as ordered by a local court. Yazmin, an American citizen from Arizona, was helpless to prevent this from happening.

Her lawyer, Majid Shehab, who nobly took on the case pro b…

It is rare in any age that a single book can so comprehensively document and analyze a historical movement as to be capable of defining it. In the aftermath of World War II, which shattered western civilization to a degree unprecedented in human history, it was William Shirer’s monumental “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” which cohesively linked the chain of events that led to the nightmare of Hitler’s Germany. Yet Shirer’s work came as a heartrending post-mortem of the European W…