It's not hype to say that this is the most important American election in history. I'm saying that because FDR was already in office when the Second World War started. And Lincoln was established before before the Civil War began.

Not only is there no incumbent President or Vice President...

"I'm going to strip the bark off that little bastard and make Willie Horton his running mate!" So said Lee Atwater about Governor Michael Dukakis during the 1988 presidential campaign. Atwater, was Bush Sr.'s manager, and is legendary among the loathsome bottom-feeders of right-wing attack politics. On his deathbed, however,...

Still reverberating from the stunning loss of the beloved Tim Russert along comes Mr. Death to twist the knife of unanticipated loss and drown us once again in grief.

George Carlin is in the rarefied pantheon of the few, too few, truly great stand-up comedians. Along with Mort Sahl,...

As an actor I have had the good fortune to work with many stars. But when I heard that Tim Russert was booked to do a cameo on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1996 I was thrilled. Tim was gracious, nice to everyone and obviously thrilled to be on...

Stalin once said it's not the votes that count but who counts the votes.

So here we are in a presidential election year and there is genuine concern about "who counts the votes." Can there be a more compelling question in a democracy?

One person, one vote sounds so reasonable...

"Look at me, I'm as misty as"...well, anyway it seems this moment has turned the tear into a Rorschach test for just about every person imaginable!

How fascinating to watch the reactions and unending analysis over what essentially was a slight show of emotion and vulnerability: Was it real? Was...

There is a weekly wrap-up of the war on a certain cable news network where the host talks and acts like a game show host.

His fake earnestness and total lack of humanity sterilizes the war and trivializes the reality of what our government has wrought in Iraq and...

If ever a salutation was more ironic: Happy New Year in this of all years is it.

There is no way on God's earth that 2008 will be a good year. The events set into place over the last seven tortuous years have unfortunately made prospects for a Happy New...

It's an epithet that has been used -- and certainly misused -- but what is fascism exactly? Simply put: it's government that favors the corporation and not the individual. Mussolini defined and installed the "corporate state." Hitler had his version and of course there were others.

This political philosophy sought...

Let's all face it (once and for all!): We Americans have been bamboozled; deceived; denied; defaulted; robbed; repossessed; dispossessed and all the rest!

Once upon a time -- 1910 to be exact -- Rockefeller and Morgan banking representatives, along with government officials, boarded a luxurious railcar owned by Nelson Aldrich,...

This Thanksgiving some of us have more to be thankful for than others. The millions -- yes, millions -- of Americans who go hungry everyday (most being children) must be overwhelmed with gratitude towards our beloved government. Why? Because the geniuses whose job it is to pervert and redefine reality...

What do almost 100 million Americans have in common? They are at -- or perilously close to -- the official poverty line! Yet government officials and most of the so-called punditocracy declare rather impatiently that the economy is just fine and only the misguided masses don't think so. The universally...

An object in the sky just happens to be called unidentified, therefore if anyone sees such an object it does not necessarily follow that it is from outer space. There are those, however, who do believe in extraterrestrials, and famously among them was President Ronald Reagan who mused at the...

Have you noticed that the meanest, shrillest, least compassionate and most heartless people who are well off and have all the medical coverage they'll ever need are seemingly sickened beyond cure by the notion that someone who literally cannot afford health care is somehow beneath contempt and must be vilified...

Who needs terrorists? We can scare the shit out of ourselves, thank you very much.

We have Bush's wet dream of an End Times scenario where he would like to usher in World War III before, according to him, the Persians, start some trouble in a few years.

We...

If ever there was a misnomer in the political lexicon, surely "values voters" is the all-time champ. The use of this term to describe the so-called base of the Republicans' so-called party mainly refers to an extremist, ultra-conservative, strain of so-called Christian conservatives. And what are their so-called "values"? Mostly...

Robert Fantina, author of Desertion and the American Soldier: 1776-2007, recently wrote a letter to the New York Times. His heartfelt eloquence and outrage bears repeating: "It is incomprehensible that President Bush and his neo-con cohorts have somehow convinced congress that 'supporting the troops' means sending them into an...

The first World War was sold as -- and thought to be -- a noble, necessary endeavor that was to end all wars. Soon it became evident that this first-mechanized war was a heartbreakingly horrific slaughter house of epic proportions.

The senseless decimation of virtually all the young men who...

To understand why conservatism is dying, it is instructive to see how it came full bloom in the Gilded Age. This era is indelibly depicted in Age of Betrayal, a brilliant book by Atlantic Monthly senior editor Jack Beatty. Here is how the book's jacket captures the time:

The Republicans always declare to the world what they are going to do in the future: they announced that gay marriage was going to be one of the main targets of the 2004 campaign; that they would accuse the Democrats of being weak on national defense; that so-called family values...