Bob Ostertag

Remember those videos of campus police pepper spraying seated students in the face at UC Davis last November? Old news, right? Well, it has taken all this time for the task force appointed by the UC president to make its report public (thanks in part to a lawsuit...

Why is it that every time an administrator from the University of California opens their mouth about social protest they immediately insert their feet?

First it was UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau claiming that student protestors who linked arms were "not non-violent." Next it was

In the wake of campus police pepper spraying seated students on November 18, UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi has stated, in various forums, to faculty and students, that she tried to meet with the students who were sprayed but was rebuffed. This came as a surprise to Jerika Heinze, who...

The police brutality against students at UC Davis last week has triggered an international outpouring of disgust and anger toward the campus authorities.

Hopefully, what happened on the campus Saturday will be seen just as widely, as an inspiring example of the power of the most creative kind...

Yesterday, police at UC Davis attacked seated students with a chemical gas.

I teach at UC Davis and I personally know many of the students who were the victims of this brutal and unprovoked assault. They are top students. In fact, I can report that among the students I...

Sadly, the new outbreak of massive wildfires in Texas has forced Gov. Rick Perry to return home and temporarily suspend his efforts educating voters that global warming is really "all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight."

Perry cut short a visit to...

With a nuclear crisis ongoing it Japan, it may comfort you to know that our government has plans to keep America's nuclear waste safe for a million years.

What a relief! Good to know that, unlike in Japan, America's rulers have thought this stuff through.

Yes, the Energy...

I'll be brief and to the point: Russ Feingold launched a political action committee yesterday, and I am hoping that you will give him some money. I just did.

This is not the first time I have stumped for Mr. Feingold. Back during the last...

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, here it is, the main event you have all been waiting for,

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies yesterday published a new report aptly titled July 2010 -- What Global Warming Looks Like. And it...

And it unfolds:

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev declared a ban on grain exports for the rest of the year. Since Russia is the third largest grain exporter in the world, grain prices immediately shot up, and fears of the consequences circulated around the world. Particularly in Middle Eastern...

And so it unfolds:

• Record flooding in Pakistan displaces millions, kills 1200, and cholera is starting to spread.
• It is 106.3°F in the Ukraine. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev reports that in 14 regions of Russia "practically everything is burning." A drought accompanying the heat wave has ruined 25 million acres of...

Anyone else remember "We Are the People We Have Been Waiting For," the signature line of Obama's presidential campaign? People as diverse as Alice Walker and Andrew Sullivan cited it in their endorsements of upstart candidate. What gave it zing was the fact that...

Ancient Egypt had its Rosetta Stone, Ancient Greece had its Venus de Milo, Easter Island has its stunning moai, and now we have the perfect artifact of our time and place: a $100,000 American-flag belt buckle encrusted with rubies, sapphires and diamonds.

The historic piece of work is...

President Obama stood before the nation and world last week and, as oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico, announced that his administration was "moving quickly on steps to ensure that a catastrophe like this never happens again." OK. There is one, and only one, way to ensure...

The catastrophe unfolding now in the Gulf of Mexico highlights, in a tragic and irrevocable way, is the fatal flaw in President Obama's "Don't Make the Perfect the Enemy of the Good" politics.

By now we have heard Obama recite his favorite platitude (originally from Voltaire) on numerous occasions: when...

The New York Times published a major story today which bizarrely claims that the oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is not such a big deal after all. The Times quotes Quenton R. Dokken, the executive director of the Gulf of Mexico Foundation which the Times identifies...

Today's New York Times/CBS poll of Tea Party supporters found that Tea Party supporters are mostly white men who are wealthier and better educated than the general public, and they are convinced that the economic stimulus package and the health care reform helps the poor more than the...

If you are thinking of donating to earthquake relief in Haiti, and I hope you are, I urge you to consider donating through Partners in Health. This is an extraordinary organization with a stellar reputation for making maximum use of minimal resources for health work in impoverished parts of the...

Governor Schwarzenegger should wash his mouth out with soap. Seriously.

When I was a kid I was over at a friend's house when he said a bad word and his mother washed his mouth out with soap. It was impressive. I don't think my friend said that word again for...

"I've heard many in this room say that they will not recognize the elections in Honduras. I'm not trying to be a wiseguy, but what does that mean? What does that mean in the real world, not in the world of magical realism?" - W. Lewis Amselem, Obama administration's...