Astonishingly, more than 30,000 foreign born detainees currently face deportation at some 350 facilities nationwide. Nearly half are legal residents who committed crimes that range from homicide to misdemeanor drug possession, and were turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement after serving their prison terms.

Reportedly, about 10% of...

There are lots of places to start looking if we want clues as to what happened at an Army base at Fort Hood, Texas. One obvious clue is Virginia Tech. We know that Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hassan, among the perpetrators of the largest shooting at a military base in...

Text and drive? If you live in England, and someone dies because you rear end them while texting, you will face jail time. In 2008, Great Britain issued a directive which clearly states that "prolonged texting" may be prosecuted as inflicting "death by dangerous driving."

Consider the wrenching, horrific case...

Hoping for a 3rd party to come along, and do away with the two party paradigm? Well, stay tuned because something is happening in a New York congressional race which may portend that change is en route, if not the change you had in mind.

While she may have left...

On September 30th, Peter Galbraith, the highest ranking American, and deputy to U.N. ambassador, Kai Eide, was fired for disclosing Eide's efforts to understate voter fraud in the recent Afghan election. It was not the Norwegian diplomat, Eide, but U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who dismissed Galbraith.

Now, nearly two...

Okay, am I the only one who thinks the biggest enemy we face now isn't the Taliban, or Al Qaeda, but bad taste?

Just when it looks like we've heard enough about Roman Polanski's capers, and after we finally laid Michael Jackson to rest, David Letterman has to go...

Much has been said about the moral, and legal imperatives in the Roman Polanski case, and about how important it is that justice be served in the matter. Much has been said about the need for Mr. Polanski to pay his dues to society, but what does society owe us?...

If the president isn't careful, he's going to get the nickname Dr. Feelgood. And, while some may think of Obama as more like Faust than Dr. Feelgood, he's certainly working hard to pacify, and appease those special interest groups he was elected to vigorously oppose.

With the announcement today of...

When I was maybe five or six, I had a dear friend named Theresa whose parents were from Italy. We hung out for most of the third and much of the fourth grade.

Often, after school, she'd invite me to her house for milk and cookies, and before indulging I'd...

With apologies, in advance, to Naomi Klein, I think what we're looking at now is not just shock, shock and awe, but a level of toxicity unparalleled in what we like to think of as the civilized world.

Stay tuned as 2010 may prove to be a wake-up call for...

Earlier this week, the president appears to have been presented with a state of the war report from his new commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal.

Not unlike his predecessor, George W. Bush, Barack Obama seems to have taken to the notion of secrecy as the contents of the...

Sarah Palin is planning to make her first trip to Asia in September.

The former governor of Alaska, and Republican vice presidential candidate, says she is going there to learn how to use chopsticks. A reliable source reports that McCain's former running mate confides "You go to Vegas to learn...

There are giants who walk among ordinary men. Edward (Teddy) Kennedy was one such giant. And, he would be the first to remind us of something his brother Jack once said: "A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on."

The senator from Massachusetts might...

Dear President Obama,

Thank you for taking on the hugely important issue of health care reform in the first term of your presidency, demonstrating that this issue is a top priority for you.

You're quite right that the spiraling cost of medical treatment is affecting every American. You're also quite...

In 1942, somewhere around 110,000 Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans were either coerced to relocate, or underwent internment in the United States.

As you know, it was by executive order issued by then President Franklin D. Roosevelt that anyone of Japanese ancestry could be excluded from the entire West...

If given the chance, there are few things in life I'd change. Signing that petition, and boycotting what was to be most historic rock concert of all times, is one of them.

Back in the summer of 1968, locals circulated a petition to keep a big music festival out of...

It looks like Attorney General Eric Holder is on the verge of appointing a criminal prosecutor to investigate waterboarding, and other illegal acts that were part of the interrogation policies put in place under the Bush administration. We've heard this for awhile now, but Holder appears to have decided on...

There has been no shortage of news stories about how detainees have been treated at Guantanamo Bay, and Abu Ghraib before it. Likewise, there has been a lot of talk about so-called enhanced alternative interrogation techniques like waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and how even dogs have been used as a means...

Having become quite proficient at making up tests lately, and in light of the reports that July was the deadliest month for U.S. and allied forces, in Afghanistan, I've come up with a multiple choice exam for the State Department:

On a separate sheet of paper, please answer the following...

On my usual walk for exercise, I stopped off at the 7-11 about a mile from my house. After picking up a few packs of Lifesavers, something I can't bear to be without since quiting smoking nine years ago this month, I meandered over to the cash register to pay...