While I was reading commentary about Rep. Todd Akin's overshare regarding abortion, the female body and the dark night of the GOP's soul, it occurred to me that the same attitude that allowed him to say what he said (call it ignorance, anti-intellectualism, magical thinking) has been at...

Today, at five the doors of the Great Hall at Cooper Union will open, and there will be a memorial service for Barney Rosset, the legendary publisher of Evergreen Review and Grove Press.

The first time I heard the name Barney Rosset, I was an eighteen-year-old student at Bennington...

We have all heard the easy diss that the Occupy Movement lacks a message, or that it needs leaders. The captains of industry who tipped punk to fuse by their greedy power grabs say they don't get it, the media interviews telegenically-challenged participants, and the beats goes on.

Well, in...

I led a parade in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn last week at around the same time the police clashed with the Occupy Wall Street march in Lower Manhattan.

In Greenpoint, we were celebrating the 165th anniversary of our church. Occupy Wall Street was protesting against the 1% of...

Ever since I've worked in New York media, I've known a man who thinks he's been around since the 15th century. More specifically he thinks he's Niccolò Machiavelli -- I suppose somewhat like Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street, but with more realpolitik. Wait...

Anyway, Nick seems to do...

Originally posted on the Diocese of Long Island website

At about four on Shrove Tuesday, Father John called to ask an odd question. "Do you have a frying pan?" I was a few blocks from Ascension helping my older daughter with her homework. "Not on me; I'm at...

Earlier today I posted something on Huffington Post that was taken down by the staff there. I can accept and respect their reasons for doing that.

The post was called "$100,000 For Glenn Beck's Sex Tape." It was supposed to simply make the point that the right...

I just read Rabbi Shmuley Boteach's piece on Huffington Post about Helen Thomas the Jew Hater, and I felt compelled to write something in response.

Sure, Helen Thomas had to retire from her post at Hearst after saying that the Jews in Israel...

While America gets used to the idea of an Obama win and the various punditocracies out there spelunk the finer points of what it means to call Barney Frank a f@--ot and John Lewis a ni--er, rest assured that the messaging spooks at Fox News are preparing a...

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is on trial for his life in New York City. He is the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks that killed thousands and launched two wars that affected millions. If he is condemned to death, we all lose. Period.

I posted a survey on the Air America...

New media progressives were giddy this weekend after a segment about health care reform aired on The Ed Show this Friday. Air America joined the celebration, too. No new ground was covered. Yet here I am writing about it five days later. Why? Because while the dust-up may have made...

"It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil."

The president said that after the shooting at Fort Hood. It was the worst documented mass shooting at a stateside U.S. military base in the history of our nation. It was indeed horrifying. But...

Given the choice between solving a problem and watching things get nasty, the tendency in America is increasingly to opt for the train wreck. Last night's election results were no exception.

The GOP is racing to the bottom of its own depravity. They've stopped at nothing, floating racist memes and...

By now you know that "health care reform" is a misnomer. It should be called "health insurance reform." Chalk up the missed opportunity to the Democrat's pluralist mode, but a little message discipline might have gone a long way here.

What's the message? Insurance companies are corporatized casinos. It's still...

Do you remember Martti Ahtisaari? He won the Nobel Peace Prize last year. For more than thirty years Ahtisaari brokered peace between entities filled with no peace for each other. He deserved the prize. What about the latest laureate?

Yassar Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin proved that the committee...

You may have heard about the "Gore-backed" car company that got more than $500 million to make a sports car. What you may have missed: the government is backing green technology and a plan to make it popular.

The loan in question (reported by the Wall Street Journal) is...

Every time I see a new Michael Moore movie, America looks a little different to me. I feel an odd mixture of hopefulness, anger, and spiritual fatigue. I just saw Moore's latest documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, this week and it's deja vu all over again.

If you believe...

An unverified audio recording of Osama bin Laden has emerged on Islamist websites. The tape may provide proof that the shaggy figurehead is still alive. The audio message set to video, replete with 9-11 imagery, serves no other discernible purpose.

"To the American people, this...

As we remember the victims of the attacks eight years ago, we find ourselves reaping the strange fruit of its influence on American politics.

Representative Joe Wilson turned a joint session of Congress into a brainless town hall meeting, a Mission Accomplished photo-op, and a cynical 9-11-based justification...

In game theory, Nash equilibrium is a strategy that applies to two or more players, whereby each of the players knows the other's assets and deficits and no one can benefit by a unilateral change in strategy. Given the Republican strategy--destroy viable members of the opposition by any means necessary--Democrats...