The Iron Lady just opened in London where, let's hope, it generates some serious critique. The critical silence in the U.S. has been astounding, only made worse by the praise not just for the film but for its subject, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, played in the movie by...

So that's what they mean by from welfare to work. First you force the poorest Americans into the workforce, then you go after their bargaining power. Wisconsin has long been the eye of this storm.

"We have an environment in Wisconsin in which any poor family can climb out of...

"This freeze would cut the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, bringing this kind of spending -- domestic discretionary spending -- to its lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was President. Let me repeat that...."

That was our president announcing his 2012...

The U.S. media seems to have found a new language for the economy. There's been talk of "solidarity" and even "class war," and a focus on corruption and inequality like we haven't seen in who knows how long.

The only problem? They're talking about Egypt.

"It's quite clear that entire...

One of the biggest stories of the past few weeks has been the story of Americans discovering Al Jazeera English. It shouldn't have been so hard.

As the protest movement in Egypt grew, Americans found that Al Jazeera had what no US network has any more: fully staffed reporting teams...

New York is once again buried in snow, but this time more Brooklyn streets are plowed and trains are running, if delayed, to the outer boroughs. While everything slows down for the weather, it's worth noting that the city's managed to be prepared for the last couple of snowstorms.

It's...

In the State of the Union speech, Barack Obama did get applause for saying that the US stands with the people of Tunisia. Now, he didn't mention the two decades of support the US had given the dictatorship.

The president did not have anything to say about Egypt -- where...

Obama will deliver his take on the State of the Union tonight, and while Congress has bickered about bipartisan seating, it doesn't matter where anyone sits because the profiteers who define what's possible in our politics have already barred any serious solution to what ails us.

We know what the...

With a new Republican Congress falling all over itself to hand corporations whatever they want, it was only a matter of time before some politician turned up in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, breathlessly describing the “dazzling” and “path-breaking” nature of the free market, and vowing to get...

A lot of people have talked this week about violent political rhetoric bringing the U.S. to a fever pitch, but there's something else keeping people on edge: that's economic catastrophe and despair.

As reporters spread out to talk to accused shooter Jared Loughner's friends and neighbors, a picture has begun...

It's Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. day on Monday, the holiday that celebrates the Nobel Peace Prize winner's birth and life. The Rev. King wasn't assassinated, as Rep. Gabrielle Giffords almost was, at a Congress on Your Corner. Or on a civil rights march.

He was assassinated in Memphis, where...

The New York Times this weekend told the story of Dr. Hawa Abdi, a Somali physician who runs a clinic, school, and food program that supports tens of thousands of Somali people who live without a functioning government.

Dr. Abdi's compound was attacked by a militia, made up mostly of...

"Occasionally you see pictures and they're standing in some long line or applying for jobs, but they're not thought of," said GRITtv guest Edrie Irvine recently, speaking of unemployed people like her.

It's not just the unemployed we don't tend to see on U.S. TV. Take public workers. They're in...

Republican lawmakers who read the Constitution out loud as their very first act in the new Congress better bask in their Tea Party glow -- because they're certainly not going to be feeling the love from Constitutional scholars.

It's true, this nation's founders were like most of those Congresspeople --...

The snow is mostly melted after a near-record storm immobilized much of New York for nearly four days last week. But before non-New Yorkers gloat, beware -- the Big Apple's storm offers just a taste of a crop of problems that are likely to be coming your way.

Nationally, billionaire...

Seventeen years after Bill Clinton's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" compromise, the institutionalized closet in the military should soon be gone. With the Senate vote to repeal, lesbian, gay and bisexual Americans have won the right to serve openly without fear of losing their jobs. Next it should be all workers....

Julian Assange of WikiLeaks is out on bail -- apparently headed for the 10-bedroom home of British former army officer Vaughan Smith, described by the Guardian as a right-wing libertarian. Assange's lawyer joked that it would not be so much "house arrest as manor arrest" while he fights extradition...

There's a new blockbuster out just in time for the holidays: Harry Potter and the Bailed-Out Banks. Here's a synopsis:

While students in London spend hours in the cold protesting tuition fees that may soon triple, RBS, a bank that took a huge government bailout, throws a party commemorating one...

"The question of whether we want a real 'net is really the question of whether we want a real democracy."

That's what Douglas Rushkoff said on Saturday at the Personal Democracy Forum's conference on WikiLeaks. Real democracy comes with messy things we sometimes don't like -- and one of those...

Republican activist Grover Norquist once famously declared that he'd like to shrink the federal government to the point where he could drown it in a bathtub -- but a little-noticed provision in the "tax cut compromise" we discussed today with Bernie Sanders might well drain the states' sinks first.