Jon Wiener

In a striking act of interfaith solidarity, 30 Jewish studies faculty from seven campuses of the University of California have called on the Orange County district attorney to drop criminal charges against 11 Muslim students.

The students have been charged with disrupting of a speech by the Israeli...

100 faculty members at UCI, including five deans and 14 chancellor's professors and distinguished professors, have signed a letter to the Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas calling on him to drop criminal charges against 11 students who disrupted a speech on the UCI campus by the Israeli ambassador to...

In honor of what would have been John Lennon's 70th birthday Oct. 9, my top five Lennon solo songs:

5. "God": "I was the Walrus, but now I'm John" -- Lennon takes the chord changes of the classic rock n roll slow dance, plays them more slowly than they've...

It's not often that Supreme Court justices face the pubic and invite questions about their decisions. Stephen Breyer, a Clinton appointee, did just that at a couple of events recently in Los Angeles.

The first questions Breyer was asked dealt with Bush v. Gore, and with the...

What guidelines should govern Bill Clinton's future activities if Hillary becomes Secretary of State? Recent events suggest that at least two are necessary: no more favors for human rights violators in exchange for big contributions to the Clinton Foundation; and no more lying to the news media about such deals.

John McCain's favorite TV show, 24 -- the one that glorifies torture - is returning to Fox TV this Sunday night with a two-hour special.

McCain named 24 as his favorite show on his Facebook page. The show has done more to advance the Bush White House defense...

Undecided voters--"or, as I call them, morons," Bill Maher says--remained a stubborn five or six percent of the electorate as the polls reported final results yesterday. Obama and McCain each have spent tens of millions on TV ads to persuade them, and thousands of hours of door-to-door canvassing to talk...

Why didn't Obama end up farther ahead in the polling? The objective factors that favor the Democrats this year are overwhelming: the worst economy since the Great Depression, the most unpopular incumbent president in the history of polling, and a money advantage in the campaign that is unprecedented for a...

Life After Election Day:
No more Todd, no more Track, no more Bristol.

No more Jon Stewart.
No more Colbert Report.
No more Rachel Maddow.
No more Bill Maher.

No more Politico.
No more Pollster.
No more RealClearPolitics, no more Talking Points Memo.
...

Six ways McCain could still win:

6. Thirty million young, first-time voters oversleep, forget to go to polls on Nov. 4.

5. Sarah Palin reveals secret past as Rhodes Scholar; admits "hockey mom" thing was just a ruse -- to avoid being called an "elitist."

4. Economic collapse ends, Dow...

The latest New York Times-CBS News poll identifies the demographic group with the highest level of support for John McCain: rich old white men. Coincidentally, they are also the people who control Wall Street, Congress, and the White House.

The poll defined "old" as "45 or older." Many will...

"Wall Street wives are finding that they must defer dreams and fancy things," the L.A. Times reported in a page one story on Saturday. One wife, who had been looking forward to her husband's retiring with "$10 to $12 million," told the Times she was "so angry" with...

The man John McCain appointed to head his transition team, William E. Timmons, played a central role in the Nixon Administration's campaign to deport John Lennon in 1972.

Timmons is known today mostly as a lobbyist for the oil companies, but in 1972 he worked in the Nixon White House...

My name is Jon, and I'm addicted to Sarah Palin.

I read everything I can about her. I watch TV, hoping Wolf Blitzer will say something about her. I get irritable waiting for the next Maureen Dowd column about her.

I've come to understand that this is not a...

Sarah Palin took the biblical Queen Esther as her role model when she became governor, according to her former pastor--a report that suggests her ties to Jewish history are stronger than you might have expected.

When Palin took office as governor in 2006, according to the New York Times,...

Those disparaging Palin's lack of achievements have forgotten that it was Palin who wrote the famous "Lumberjack Song," which of course is about life in Alaska: "I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK/I sleep all night and I work all day."

The song generated controversy because of the next lines, "I...

"We have presidential elections as a substitute for serious democratic politics" -- that's what Andrew Bacevich says. He's been writing and teaching history and international relations at Boston University, after spending 23 years in the army and retiring as a colonel.

What would serious democratic politics look like? First...

John Hagee, the controversial pastor who has endorsed John McCain, argued in a late 1990s sermon that God sent Hitler to help the Jews get to the promised land (Israel, not Auschwitz).

Why did God allow the Holocaust to happen? According to a report in the Huffington Post by...

The mainstream media ask Obama why he doesn't wear a flag pin, but they aren't asking McCain why he doesn't release his medical records. McCain, who would be the oldest man ever elected president, had surgery for melanoma, a potentially fatal skin cancer, eight years ago -- the scar is...

Ten years ago, Barack Obama went to a lecture by Edward Said, the prominent Palestinian intellectual. Should that be page one news now? The LA Times thinks so -- they ran a story on their front page on Thursday on the event, headlined "Campaign '08: Allies of Palestinians see...