Get to know this name: Kenneth Foster, Jr. You are going to be hearing a lot of it the next 30 days because I have a personal stake in this matter.

You see, one night in August 1996 one of my best friends, Michael LaHood, was murdered...

The primary failure of the Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack Op-Ed piece, "A War We Might Just Win" in yesterday's New York Times is that, while the authors may be right that the more US troops we can pour into Iraq, the more control we can exercise over the...

Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company recently sent Lilly Ledbetter a bill for $3,165.20.

It wasn't because Ledbetter bought new tires for everyone in her neighborhood.

Ledbetter, who worked at a Goodyear facility in Alabama for 19 years, was the plaintiff in a pay discrimination lawsuit against...

Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani thinks his "plan for up to $15,000 in tax breaks to help families pay for coverage outside employer-based plans is the antidote."

I totally disagree.

How is a single mother of two with a monthly income of $1,500 or a family of four with an income...

The folks who used lies and distortions to get us into the Iraq war are now using the same techniques to convince members of Congress they shouldn't vote for expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Debate starts this week on the Senate floor. As I point out in...

I was delighted last month when I read that one of the lawyers in the trenches of the Combat Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) process decided to come forward and expose that severely flawed and brazenly manipulated process. Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham is the latest hero to blow the whistle on...

I almost jumped out of my subway seat yesterday morning while reading Mike O'Hanlon and Ken Pollack's NY Times op-ed entitled: "A War We Just Might Win." The pair just returned from a trip to Iraq and declare:

Here is the most important thing Americans need...

History will determine Bush's ultimate comeuppance. A man this unaware, an Alfred E.Neuman caricature, is impervious to self-reflection, embarrassment, or introspection. He will vacate the Oval Office with the GOP base in shambles, his reputation tarnished in every quarter save for the delusional salons at Fox News and Weekly Standard.

grist.org

I've noticed that lots of people talk about a carbon tax and a gas tax as if they're interchangeable, or the same thing, or connected parts of some larger package.

That's bad. Please stop it.

A carbon tax is just that: a tax on carbon content. It could take numerous forms,...

The wingnuts are afire. Between the O'Hanlon-Pollack op-ed and other military news out of Iraq, Republicans think they've found a winner. The surge is "working," progress is being made. However, this discussion is happening in a vacuum that...

In an op-ed yesterday, Senator Feinstein hit the nail on the head when it comes to the Military Commissions Act. "We must track down, prosecute and punish terrorists," she wrote. "But we must never forget that we are a nation of...

It is possible, just possible,that things have gotten just a little bit better in Iraq. If so, this is a good thing, for all concerned. Let's just hope it is true. Maybe with a bit of breathing room the world can start to find a way out of the terrible,...

America does not understand Iran (if the baseline criteria to qualify a country for U.S. invasion is "know thy enemy," then Iran is hereby disqualified). Nor does it fully comprehend Iran's multilayered, complex leadership. For one, Americans pay far too much attention to the ranting of its lunatic president,...

I try hard not to read Jonah Goldberg more than is humanly possible, since I tend to suffer from excessive head-spinning afterwards. But every once in a while, a headline makes such avoidance near-impossible, either from curiosity or the same gene that drives people to the circus or horror movies....

Following up on my last post (which got more comments, I think, than anything I ever wrote), today, veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq wrote to President Bush, calling him to come clean on the death of former NFL star and Army Ranger, Pat Tillman, and we...

I know there are at least a few HuffPo readers who self-identify as "pro-life." So here's a question for you: How much time should she do?

One goal of the anti-choice movement is to outlaw abortion. But, as Anna Quindlen points out, anti-choice activists are almost never...

Dear "Mommybloggers,"

We are so sorry that we couldn't be at your cute, little ladies' soiree in Chicago last week. You know how hard it can be to fly into O'Hare in the summer time -- it can really throw the campaign off schedule with those thunderstorm delays.

We...

In the last two weeks, something profound started happening out on the 2008 campaign trail -- a momentum has started building like I haven't seen in my lifetime. Two out of the top three best-polling Democratic candidates are starting to engage in a battle for the populist mantle. How this...

"Grossly inappropriate" and "insulting." So says the Clinton campaign of a recent article prompted by the fact that during a speech on the Senate floor, the New York Senator wore a black top with a neckline low enough to reveal a small amount of cleavage.

How could anyone notice anything...

After the collapse of the effort to address immigration at the national level, we saw good news last week at the local level on how progressives should be addressing the issue.

Across the country in 2006, 570 bills involving immigrants were introduced in state legislatures. In 2007, that number...

The recent feud between Senators Clinton and Obama on the question of whether they would meet with President Ahmadinejad captured my attention because I was in Tehran in the run-up to the 2005 election that placed Ahmadinejad in power. But the reason for my trip was not about Iran's nuclear...

A former mayor of New York City, Rudolph Guiliani, is a leading Republican candidate for president. The current mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is the subject of much speculation since he is said to be considering a run. Few mayors have had the national standing to aspire to the presidency.

In...

At our house, we've tried to instill in our kids an understanding of the power of apologies. Each of our three kids has wound up in "time out" not for whatever the action was but for the refusal to apologize.

Apologies come in all different forms but typically the best...

America is looking less and less like America. And more and more Americans are worried about it.

What country is this? The president is claiming the right to keep his aides from testifying for Congress about the U.S. attorneys scandal; hundreds of men -- according to a Seton Hall...

"If there is a vacuum and if there's a real need for somebody to be prepared to debate Senator Clinton, then I would consider running. I think we'll know that in October," Gingrich said. Gingrich spoke on "Fox News Sunday."

Dear Newt,

Please run...

WASHINGTON -- Some rank-and-file potential donors to a September fund-raiser hosted by Oprah Winfrey for Democratic White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama at her California estate are being told the event is sold out.

Meanwhile, in other California 2008 presidential contest news, a forum on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender...

Yesterday, US lawmakers decided they wanted Japan to apologize for the forced prostitution of 200,000 women carried out by the Japanese military in World War II.

Just a couple of points:

These same lawmakers did not make President Bush apologize when he decided not to impose any penalties...

Today, the Omaha World-Herald launches "Parties '08," an occasional op-ed series assessing the state of the two main parties throughout the '07-'08 political season. The initial package includes my own contribution analyzing the relationship between the Democratic Party and the netroots, which follows below.

Bloggers Promote Fresh Ideas, Help...

... "lefty blogs" did not engage in "hate speech" by "wishing for John Roberts's death." Instead, two prominent righty blogs forcefully stated the opposite of the truth. Surprised?