I am a proponent of universal public health care. I have experienced universal public health overseas and it is remarkable. For that reason I opposed President Obama's health care "reform" bill, because it began life already a slave to the insurance company-spawned ideology of health care as a market commodity...

Last year, realizing that any of us could die anytime, I made the decision to apply early for Social Security, as the Social Security Administration says, before "DRA" -- Date of Retirement Age. For sixties people, DRA is 66. For those following, it's 67 -- and if the Super Committee...

Last autumn, just before the midterm elections, a group of Democratic Congress members -- call them the "Super Blues" -- petitioned President Obama not to eliminate the tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, the so-called "two percent" who own 40 percent of the nation's wealth. Led by New Jersey upstart John...

Exactly one week after the attempted assassination in Tucson of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Pima County, in which Tucson is located, is hosting a gun show. And not just any gun show: according to blogs on the right, Crossroads of the West is in Tucson having been "thrown out"...

On every front imaginable, the signs are clear that American democracy is a democracy in name only. It's now an oligarchy. The vote functions as a camouflage for policies and actions taken in the name of a ruling elite that openly plots the subversion of the election process while around...

Watching President Obama address the White House Press Corps apres le deluge is a dispiriting affair. His attitude and approach threatens to dispirit further not just his base but all Americans. The result could make demagogues on the right more attractive and not only doom efforts to win back the...

On his China Beat blog this week, Chinese culture scholar and my friend Jeffrey Wasserstrom strongly condemns California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's plans to host a World Expo in San Francisco's Bay Area in 2020. I agree with Jeff's particular gripes about Schwarzenegger's motives and his (lack of) experience...

The Honorable John Roberts
Chief Justice, The Supreme Court of the United States
1 First Street, NE
Washington, DC 20543

October 2, 2010

Dear Chief Justice Roberts:

It's unfortunate that your Supreme Court does not make it easier for citizens to make their positions on issues...

My eyes about popped outta my head yesterday morning when I read, in the Wall Street Journal, confirmed by the New York Times, that 47 Democrats had presented House Speaker Pelosi with a letter threatening to vote to keep tax cuts for the richest 2% of Americans. Pundits write that...

[UPDATES BELOW, OCT 7-8, 2010]

I've written before in The Huffington Post about the State Department's plan to privatize American public diplomacy and how it's prototyping the approach using the multi-multi-million dollar USA Pavilion project at the Shanghai World Expo as a stalking horse.

The privatization...

Today's Washington Post announces yet another assault on personal privacy being attempted by the Obama Administration. In "White House proposal would ease FBI access to records of Internet activity," Ellen Nakashima reports:

The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies...

An article that appeared Wired Danger Room yesterday reveals that the CIA and Google are now in cahoots to invest in a new company called Recorded Future -- a real-life version of Minority Report, one that's all fact and no fantasy, It's purpose is to know the...

In Our Nation of Abused Grown Children, Candor and Caring Hold the Key to Power

Like many Huffington Post readers, I've wondered why so many Americans put up with the growing number of wrongs they experience and the declining living standards forced on them.

These fellow citizens are aware...

In recent weeks I've written extensively about the nearly $100-million debacle that the US Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo has become. So much false propaganda has been flooding cyberspace, most of it produced by an enormous PR effort but much of it also emanating from the State Department, it's...

On her way to strategic talks with China, punctuated by a rogue North Korean torpedo that "accidentally" hit its target, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton breezed by the US Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo, "the House that Hillary built," as the New York Times' Mark Lander put...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives in Shanghai on Saturday, May 22, to keynote a dinner in the US Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo. She is there to honor the noble American and Chinese multinational corporations who fronted the entire bill for the pavilion and who now...

Crossposted with Planetizen.

The US Pavilion at the Shanghai 2010 World Expo is not the handsomest pavilion at the Expo nor will it be the most memorable. In fact, it is rather pedestrian, inside and out. For this it has rightly been criticized by architects,...