If you're mad about the Big Nothing that happened in Congress after the murders in Newtown -- no federal gun control measures passed -- well, get ready, because the next big fight over guns and public safety is already brewing. In Colorado.

The Colorado state legislature took a sane,...

2013 is the year that Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech turns 50.

A half-century ago, it was a radical notion that a black man in America could have any kind of big dream at all, outside the realms of sports, music and entertainment.

Yet...

NRA Press Conference Blames "Monsters," Calls for Guns in Schools

Wayne LaPierre of the NRA is beyond hard-right. This industry shill called for armed guards in all American schools. He's blaming "monsters" for the recent spate of mass murders, including the recent massacre of children in Newtown, Connecticut. It's the...

NRA SILENCE IN FACE OF SCHOOL MURDER MAYHEM

It's time to take another look at the NRA.

Hours after the unbelievable shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut, national and international news sites were predictably awash with breaking news about the murder of innocent children, the identity...

Cincinnati, Nov. 4, 2012: The election is so close it can be counted in hours, and at least in Cincinnati, it feels that the Obama campaign's work is largely done.

Time will tell whether the nation's first black president will be reelected for another term. But there's a knowing, celebratory...

As New York City struggles back to its feet after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, I can't help but feel I've drunk some sickening cocktail: a shot of Katrina mixed with a lethal twist of 9/11.

The Katrina shot of this cocktail has the bitter taste of Mother Nature's brutality,...

Politicians do have a way of showing their colors: Again and again, Nixon proved himself a schemer and sulker, and ultimately a paranoid personality; Clinton was brilliant, a schmoozer and a womanizer. Reagan, trained as an actor, was indeed a great communicator on the national stage.

And Mitt Romney,...

American college graduates are drifting back to the second oldest profession in the world: farming.

Liberal arts grads, including kids with pricey degrees from Princeton and Wesleyan, are choosing to work on small, green-minded farms, reports a recent New York Times article.

Punting on entry level jobs and office...

The full schedule isn't even out, but the buzz is building for the 2012 Brooklyn Book Festival. And with good reason: it's the largest book festival on the northeastern seaboard.

Scheduled for September 17 to 23, this year's book bash includes a full roster of literary lions, from Salman...

As the 2012 Olympic Games draw to a close, we caught up with a member of the House of Lords, 51-year-old Michael Bates, a quirky, individualistic Conservative Party politician who walked 3,000 miles, or, as his website enumerates, "6,490, 401 steps," from Olympia, Greece to London earlier this year in...

Talk about a lost opportunity.

With the 2012 London Olympics in full swing -- and the city of London itself nearly in a state of siege with extensive anti-terrorism security measures -- some of us are nostalgic for an idea that probably won't ever see the light of day:...

How to win hearts and minds in the international political arena? Use social media.

From Facebook to Twitter, social media extends the shelf life of government-funded appearances by U.S. artists deployed to such diplomatically sensitive areas as Libya, Iraq and Pakistan.

Generations of Europeans over age 50 remember tours...

When Mary McBride said, "The State Department is the best booking agent I've ever had," my taxpayer's antennae went up.

What are our tax dollars doing sending this pretty, articulate singer-songwriter to far-flung post conflict zones and conservative Muslim nations?

Musicians on a Mission

A newly-minted U.S. cultural...

I've got the GoogaMooga blues.

It's over a week since the so-called Great GoogaMooga Festival, a two-day extravaganza promoted as a "celebration" of food, capitalizing on Brooklyn's new-found identity as the locavore, artisanal, small-batch, food inventive epicenter of already epicurean New York.

But here's what's still stuck in...

I'd never heard of Samuel I. Schwartz before this morning's coffee and The New York Times.

But, Samuel I. Schwartz, I'm blowing a kiss your way.

Schwartz, a former traffic commissioner under New York City Mayor Koch, has weighed in for a green, practical alternative...

The sun has barely set on the final day of the 42nd annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, when a special after-party gears up, horns blaring, in the historic Treme section of town.

Jazz trumpeter, vocalist and bandleader Kermit Ruffins, a fixture on the New Orleans jazz...

What's important and topical on Martin Luther King Day 2012?

Education.

Education was the theme of the jam-packed, sold-out, sixth annual MLK Day celebration at the Brooklyn Museum on January 15th, 2012, In MLK's Footsteps: Education as a Civil Right, moderated by WNYC's Peabody Award-winning radio...

Is there anyone in New York who doesn't now know what 99% versus 1% means?

Two short months ago, 1% was more likely to be associated with skim milk than political protest.

These four words, WE ARE THE 99% -- a great populist tag line -- have defined an...

On Independence Day weekend, here's an open letter to the femmes of France about gender relations and sexual harassment in the French workplace, in light of the ongoing DSK saga playing out in New York:

It's been quite the season for public spectacle, thanks to the penile peccadilloes of powerful politicos. In fact, it's beginning to feel like there's an epidemic of politician's sex scandals.

This past week the public's been treated, if that's the word, to a series of often hilarious...