At a recent dinner, a group of us began talking about the huge chasm between the record profits of Wall Street banks and America's struggling Main Street banks and started discussing what concrete steps individuals could take to help create a better financial system. Eventually, an idea took hold: why don't we take our money out of these big banks and put them into community banks? And what, we asked ourselves, would happen if lots of people around America decided to do the same thing? To help this idea go viral, filmmaker Eugene Jarecki has created a powerful, and inspiring video playing off the classic film It's a Wonderful Life in which community banker George Bailey is nearly destroyed by the rapacious and predatory banker Mr. Potter. Check it out, and see why we think you should make it your New Year's resolution to move your money. Too-big-to-fail banks are profiting from bailout dollars and government guarantees, and growing bigger. Tell us which community bank you use, and why. For more info, go to moveyourmoney.info.
No one at the airport will tell us how she made the list. They won't even confirm that she's on it. Though I have a pretty good idea why: she has the same name as an IRA terrorist.
Obama has scored the kind of counter-terrorism victories that, if they'd come a couple of years ago, would have led the White House to release photos of Dick Cheney and Bill Kristol chest-bumping each other on the South Lawn.
Cheney uses the case of underpants bomb attempt to accuse Obama of "pretending that the United States is not at war". However, pretending we're at war is what weakens us.
I think of this bill as a starter home. It is not the mansion of our dreams, but it has a solid foundation, giving every American access to quality, affordable coverage.
Since Secretary Clinton's wildly publicized and celebrated visit to Congo in August, the war has raged on and taken its toll.
Our recent poll found that 96% of progressives consider environmental science to be legitimate, but just 59% of those who self-identify as "very conservative" believe that it is a real science.
The median holiday bonus this year will only amount to about $250. Here's a list of some of the best-publicized bonuses that were given out in 2009.
The decade began with Y2K and ended with WTF.
Dennis Brutus organized entire blocks of the world around a simple question: how can the Olympics say they stand for "brotherhood" and fair play if apartheid nations could join the festivities?
Ranging from relatively detached wide shots of bombings taken by onboard cameras to startlingly graphic close-ups, "drone porn" has become a smash hit, tallying over 10 million views.
The past decade has presented an explosion of clinical research to show specifically what health benefits individual foods can offer, identifying the various nutrients associated with these benefits.
I went to Mrs. Mubarak's offices at the Women's International Peace Movement to ask for her help again in opening the border of Gaza for our delegation.
Women are leading the charge on financial reform. In the spirit of celebrating their contributions, I've put together a list of the top five heroes of 2009, in the hopes that their work will inspire us in the coming year.
After 2010, the Obama presidency, if history is any guide, will change substantially. It will become reactive, initiate few, if any, major pieces of legislation, and focus more on foreign policy.
Terrorists are directly responsible for violent acts, but only indirectly for the reaction that follows. With publicity, even failed terrorist acts succeed in terrorizing; without publicity, terrorism would fade away.
Where will "is the new" go from here? Secretly, I hope straight to the catch-phrase cemetery. At this point, it's so clichéd, irritating to hear and haphazardly formulaic.
Yemen's fate, like Somalia's or Pakistan's, will help determine the future struggle against terrorism. The U.S. cannot afford to ignore Yemen's plight.
Health care reform suffered the torments of partisan obstruction. Now gird yourself for financial reform and the perils of bipartisan blight.
As this decade ticks to its close, I am left thinking about fear. Racism, heterosexism, misogyny and xenophobia are still fueling our lives and shaping our world, and the common denominator is fear.
A celebration of the men and women who didn't slump, but realised that the worse the world gets, the harder people of goodwill have to work to put it right.
Napolitano's characterization and subsequent spin that "the system worked" in the case of the Detroit terror scare proves that she isn't qualified to be the head of Homeland Security in a post-9/11 world.
