Two of the most dramatic, and symbolic, incidents in the long life of Robert McNamara omitted from most of his obits this week were connected to citizen protest of wildly varying types. Yesterday I wrote here about a young artist's attempt to heave the former Defense chief over the side...

It didn't make The New York Times or Washington Post obituaries today, but one of the most dramatic, and in some ways revealing, incidents in the long life of former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara occurred in 1972 -- when a young man, reputedly angry about Vietnam, attempted to...

It's been amusing to observe, in the past few days, Sarah Palin hit the media (from blogs to the New York Times) for causing all of her troubles, even threatening to sue some of them for "defaming" her. She's even tweeted the charges, repeatedly. It's been equally fun to read...

For its new Question of the Day feature over at Editor & Publisher's main blog, we asked: Is the press overplaying the death of Michael Jackson? The question produced a good number of responses, even as the coverage -- right or wrong -- continued with little let up. Nearly all...

It was a happy surprise on Saturday morning to see the New York Times reveal that one of its top reporters, David Rohde, had escaped from his Taliban kidnappers, after seven months, and was now safe and unharmed. I can't imagine how shocking this was for nearly everyone else, who...

As reported here, and elsewhere, earlier today, the actress Mia Farrow's brother, Patrick Farrow, 66, was found dead in his sculptor studio in Vermont. It has now been declared a suicide by local authorities (due to a single gunshot to the head). His connection to a famous sister naturally drew...

On Wednesday, as the fatal shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. unfolded, I couldn't help recalling that my daughter, Jeni Mitchell, just out of college, worked at the museum during its start-up, in 1992, through its 1993 opening, and two years after that. I also remembered that she...

To find out the answer to that question, I visited, for the first time (trust me) the site of Stormfront, the major white nationalist/white supremacist --some say, neo-Nazi -- hate site. You can do the same, if you wish. It may take awhile, as traffic overload is an issue today,...

It was all-too-familiar for those who recall the run-up to the Iraq war when scary front-page New York Times stories would be cited by Dick Cheney as proof that we needed to oust Saddam Hussein ASAP. The reminder: A May 21 piece by Elisabeth Bumiller revealing that a not-yet-released...

It wasn't the biggest scoop -- or even the biggest HuffPost scoop -- of the 2008 campaign, but it produced some rather barbed and unusual commentary. Which news outlets, in this day and age, would quote an ex-president, even on the Web, using the word "scumbag"?

In its account...

Many of the headlines greeting North Korea's nuclear blast yesterday carried the phrase "as big as the Hiroshima bomb" or words to that effect. But that's not the only reference point that Hiroshima should evoke.

Simply stated: The fact that the U.S. first developed, and then...

It was good to see an editorial in the New York Times this morning blasting KBR for trying to give its people bonuses, in light of the recent revelations about its shoddy electrical work in Iraq.

Namely, it was found that 90% of its work there was faulty.

I...

Sarah Palin has picked her writer, or co-writer, or ghostwriter (or what have you) for her upcoming and pricey HarperCollins memoir. It's Lynn Vincent, whose bio highlights being a features editor of World magazine, for conservative evangelicals. Seems to be the right fit.

But Vincent is also the author or...

As the usual rationalizations for U.S. torture (it works, it's not so bad, we didn't do it anyway) have come under increasing attack in recent days, a relatively new defense has emerged, from GOP members of congress, columnist Charles Krauthammer, Fox News' Jim Angle, and many others: Waterboarding can't be...

Following the presser via Twitter today, and The Donald's backing of Sister Carrie as beauty pageant queen, despite semi-nude shots and rightwing chat, was no doubt more fun than on TV. Here is a selection of favorite tweets as it was going down. BTW, I am @GregMitch.

Garry Trudeau @Roland_Hedley:...

The slaughter of five comrades by a "stressed out" U.S. soldier today in Baghdad is a true tragedy -- but should not come as a shock.

Some of us have warned about this kind of thing happening for years, with many in the media ignoring the effects of the...

Sometimes, pieces that may not really fit come together in revealing ways, especially nowadays, thanks to immediate distribution and then saturation via the Web. It happened again recently. Several leading newspapers announced new layoffs, furloughs and/or pay cuts. A few hours later, a new Rasmussen poll revealed that one in...

On May 1, 2003, Richard Perle advised, in a USA Today Op-Ed, "Relax, Celebrate Victory." The same day, exactly six years ago, President Bush, dressed in a flight suit, landed on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln and declared an end to major military operations in Iraq -- with...

The new op-ed columnist for the New York Times made his debut today, but it seems that Ross Douthat was falsely billed as the new "conservative columnist" -- another "thinking man's" righty like David Brooks, and an upgrade on Bill Kristol.

It actually seems more like he is trying to...

Yesterday, I posted a piece here that drew wide attention around the Web perhaps because of its tragic relevance to the current torture debate: The story of Spc. Alyssa Peterson, who committed suicide in September 2003 a few days after refusing to take part in interrogations that likely involved...