"Winability," affability, experience,( i.e. a Clintonian Cabinet ready to hit the ground running) were the key catch-phrases the 250 guests left with along with their 'Hillary for President' badges from the Chicago Dinner with Hillary co-hosted by the husband and wife duo of JB and MK Pritzker last week in...
Steve Clemons | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
(Syrian Ambassador to the US Imad Moustapha and President George W. Bush)
New York University professor Alon Ben-Meir has written an eloquent and compelling essay on why Syria's role in any Israel-Palestine negotiation is...
Lynn Grossman | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
I was at a dinner party the other evening where the conversation moved swiftly through movies, the New York real estate market and plastic surgery before landing firmly on presidential politics. We started with possible candidate Michael Bloomberg (doesn't look presidential), and ended with Mitt Romney (If Mattel made...
Alison Rogers | Posted March 28, 2008 | Business
Okay, I'm a fairly jaded Internet user but I still marvel that today's question is from China! From Guangzhou, the City of Five Rams, a potential investor asks: Can I buy U.S. real estate if I am a non-resident alien?
The answer is "Welcome, of course you can."
...Coleen Rowley | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
We cannot express how relieved and elated we were when University of St. Thomas President, Father Dennis Dease, suddenly appeared in front of our banner today to tell us he had changed his mind and would be inviting Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak at...
Jonathan Rintels | Posted March 28, 2008 | Media
In 2004, President Bush made universal broadband "in every corner of America by 2007" an explicit goal of his administration. Well, it's 2007, and millions of Americans are still without broadband access to the Internet. Millions more have access only to low quality "fraudband" that is so slow, unreliable and/or...
Omid Memarian | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
A few weeks ago I was working on a story about Ramadan and Muslims in the Bay area, where I live. I was surprised by some of my findings during the research and interviews, in particular the increasing concern about practicing religion in public and being identified as a...
Al Giordano | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
The impressive petition drives and enthusiasm of the Draft Al Gore for president movement considered, I still don't think Al Gore wants to enter a knockdown drag-out campaign for the Democratic nomination. He's built too much credibility - maybe even an upcoming Nobel Prize - with his crusade to save...
Katherine A. Forrest | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
Thanks to the recent obvious failures of conservative policies when played out on the national scale, progressives now have an opportunity to win over many to their cause and redefine the political spectrum for generations to come. However, their potential will not be realized unless they move quickly. David...
Rick Jacobs | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
Most of us accept Tip O'Neill's adage that all politics is local. Yet, most of us want to play on the big stage, push for change from the top down. Sometimes it works, but real movements for social change are very local. Think about the 1960s civil rights movement...
Larisa Alexandrovna | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
Well then, I knew eventually that the parasites using my religion for cover in order to pursue their politics of hate would either finally expose themselves as the anti-Semites that they are or be run-out of town. I had hoped the latter would come first, frankly, because I thought us...
Bob Franken | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
Let's suppose it is October, 2008 and let's suppose the election race had a front runner. What would all the political reporters be doing? We'd all be dusting off Yogi Berra's cliche that "it ain't over till it's over" and writing that it wasn't over yet and pondering the various...
Dien Judge | Posted March 28, 2008 | Off The Bus
The following piece is published on Iowa Independent as well as OffTheBus.
Bill Richardson is a hunter, and he wants rural Democrats to know it.
He purposefully mentioned the fact that he is a hunter at least three times in the span of an hour during a campaign...
Reese Schonfeld | Posted March 28, 2008 | Business
There used to be a time when the ultimate declaration of certainty was "I'll bet you dollars to donuts, I'm right." Those were the days when dollars were worth a dollar and donuts were virtually worthless. Now no one exactly knows what a dollar is worth but a donut costs...
Nica Lalli | Posted March 28, 2008 | Living
I have a question for the Christians out there: If you could pick one living person to be the face of the entire Christian faith, who would that person be? Even if you could pick three, or even five people, it would still be a challenge. I imagine it would...
Sherman Yellen | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
This past week felt like a bad sci-fi movie released by the moguls of Washington. Many of the Republican notables have finally broken out of their pods and emerged as full fledged space aliens with a mission from planet Xandur to destroy the constitution and bring terror down upon the...
James Sample | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
Last night, a Republican was the victor in one of the most important political contests of 2007. With apologies to the debaters in Michigan, the contest last night with the most promise for a more accountable democracy was won by Jason Perillo. Perillo, a publicly financed Republican defeated a publicly...
Alex Blagg | Posted March 28, 2008 | Entertainment
As any self-respecting indie rock fan worth the price of their designer jeans already knows, the latest musical masterpiece from Radiohead has been released, through a visionary self-distribution experiment in which you're able to download the record directly,...
Katrina vanden Heuvel | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
This week marks the fifth anniversary of Congress's vote to authorize the Bush Administration to overthrow the government of Iraq by military force. The Nation opposed the war authorization. In "An Open Letter to Congress," which we published on the magazine's cover on the eve of the vote, we...
Heather Wood Rudúlph | Posted March 28, 2008 | Business
A class action suit brought against New York mayor and presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg (Bloomberg L.P, specifically) this week alleges that his company fosters a hostile environment towards working mothers, citing demotions, pay cuts, and career "freezing" as consequence of conception, but it also alleges viscous name-calling from executives...
Bill Curry | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
Nearing the end of a catastrophic presidency George Bush seeks redemption in odd ways. Having wrecked Iraq he takes aim at Iran. Having denied global warming, he asks others to fix it. Having waged war on a credit card, he mimics fiscal prudence in symbolic budget battles with Congress.
It's...
Richard Wiles | Posted March 28, 2008 | Living
It is one thing to report both sides of a story. It is quite another to be bamboozled by an industry PR campaign passing off self-serving "science" as new public health research.
Last week the fish industry bamboozled a credulous gaggle of the national news media into...
Peter Mehlman | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
In the '60s, the media pushed the country against the Vietnam War. The Tet Offensive bled onto living room TV sets, Walter Cronkite came out against the war, citizens were outraged and convinced.
The same with Watergate: Central and somewhat trusted media outlets pushed and probed and...
John Cusack | Posted October 13, 2008 | Politics
Pachacutec | Posted March 28, 2008 | Business
[Right, that's crime boss Randall L. Stephenson, CEO of AT&T]
Monday I shared a train ride with Jane. She was headed to New York to make an appearance on a panel at NYU,...
Gretchen Rubin | Posted March 28, 2008 | Living
"Old age ain't no place for sissies," H. L. Mencken proclaimed.
We all want to be energetic and pain-free for our whole lives, but just watching how older people walk down the street (or are pushed in a wheelchair) is a reminder of how differently people age.
Some people look...
Nancy Watzman | Posted March 28, 2008 | Off The Bus
The following piece is part of an ongoing series of OffTheBus reports by citizen policy experts critiquing different aspects of Campaign 08.
With presidential candidates leaking their third quarter fundraising totals right and left before their reports are officially due next Monday, it may seem like the big news...
Art Brodsky | Posted March 28, 2008 | Media
It seems as if the only time Republican policymakers care about our poor telephone companies is when they want to protect the companies from liability from illegal spying or when they want to allow the companies to strengthen their hold over the economy.
Neither approach is particularly helpful, although...
Aemilia Scott | Posted March 28, 2008 | Living
Last weekend, the Chicago Marathon was brought to a forcible halt by police cars and helicopters ordering marathoners to finish the rest of the race at a walk. This happened because Chicago was experiencing record-high temperatures, and many runners were passing out cold on the trail from heat exhaustion. One...
Jeffrey Feldman | Posted March 28, 2008 | Media
In an alarming trend that has received scant notice from journalists, more and more consumers of right-wing media have started using violent threats to respond to political opinions that differ from their own. Once a rarity in American political discourse, it has now become commonplace for people who appear on...
Carl Pope | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
Washington, DC -- This morning, the Justice Department announced that American Electric Power (AEP) -- one of the most recalcitrant operators of outmoded, dirty coal power plants in the country -- has agreed to spend $4.6 billion cleaning up its 46 dirty units in the Ohio Valley, including three of...
Mark Weisbrot | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
The 2006 Congressional elections were a turning point for U.S. trade policy. One issue that helped Democrats retake the Congress was a renewed sense of distrust among the electorate of our government's trade policy, which is commonly mislabeled as "free trade." President Bush has lost his "fast track" authority to...
David Sirota | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
Following his announcement yesterday that he will be supporting Wall Street's push to expand NAFTA into Peru, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has embarked on a campaign of misdirection - ironically (or perhaps, predictably) similar to the original campaign of deception that marked the original debate over NAFTA.
Here is...
Nora Ephron | Posted April 21, 2008 | Living
There's a new book out about diet, and it apparently says what I've known all my life -- protein is good for you, carbohydrates are bad, and fat is highly overrated as a dangerous substance. Well, it's about time. As my mother used to say, you can never have too...
Melissa Silverstein | Posted March 28, 2008 | Entertainment
Anne Thompson reports in today's Variety that Jeff Robinov, who was accused over the weekend of having said he is not interested in making films with female leads, is still committed to making films with women in them.
"Citing such Warners hit chick flicks as Cinderella Story and...
Bruno Giussani | Posted March 28, 2008 | Media
(Or, if you don't read French, as soon as it is translated. Seriously.)
It is increasingly difficult to provide a whole and appropriate context for the news that reach us. Consider just this sequence: last January, the Chinese used a ground-based missile to destroy one of their own satellites,...
Amitai Etzioni | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
A recent book has been criticized for vastly exaggerating the influence of the Israel lobby in Washington. As a former senior advisor to the White House, and a longtime active resident of Washington, let me tell you that the opposite is the truth. As all the other lobbies are shutting...
Leslie Goldman | Posted March 28, 2008 | Living
Every Halloween, women across the country get dressed up, using the holiday as an excuse to flaunt their bodies. It's a fact, not an opinion. Sexy nurses, sexy cops, sexy pirates, mermaids, hula dancers with coconut bras and genies-in-a-bottle. I've even seen an ad for a Sexy Ghostbuster. Really. And...
Celeste Whiting | Posted March 28, 2008 | Off The Bus
The following piece was produced by the Huffington Post's OffTheBus project.
Tuesday afternoon, as Republican presidential candidates readied for debate in Dearborn, Michigan, Democratic presidential candidates withdrew from Michigan's renegade early primary. Edwards, Biden, Obama, Richardson, Kucinich and Clinton believe in playing by the rules.
Although their interpretations...
Tony Newman | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
What do San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson share in common? They are three mayors who are speaking out forcefully against the failed, racist drug war.
Last week Mayor Newsom gave a passionate interview about the need to end...
Kirsten Anderson | Posted March 28, 2008 | Off The Bus
The following piece was produced by the Huffington Post's OffTheBus project.
Welcome to the CNBC/Wall Street Journal Republican Debate! At last, a debate with a start time that means kids won't have to go to bed before it's over. Will we ever again see those glory days when kids...
Jenny Price | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
On December 31, 2006, the health insurance I purchase through a group of freelance artists and writers cost me $4715/year. On January 1, it jumped to $12,268. That's $1.40 per hour. I watch a Dodgers game, and I'm down $3.50 by the 7th inning. I go to sleep, and I've...
Scott Thill | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
Lost in a haze of hyperreal distractions and the weakening of our body politic, we forget in fact how our planet came into being: Violent eruptions, long periods of stability, sometimes equilibrium. But its eruptions were serious, and nothing to shrug off....
Ali Eteraz | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
The amount of disinformation about Muslims is disconcerting. One popular smear is that Muslims are in an alliance with the left to take over the West; it is an allegation that far right loves to use.
The other, equally popular and equally absurd, idea is that Muslims do...
Paul Rieckhoff | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
In the spring, as the scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center dominated the headlines, the President promised to fix the problems facing returning veterans. Congress proposed the best veterans' budget we've ever seen, including the biggest increase in funding for vets' health care in 77 years.
But more...
Jennifer L. Pozner | Posted March 28, 2008 | Media
I know, there are so many promos I could choose from with a headline about the most offensive cable TV PR moment of the day, what with the new fall schedule in rotation. In recent days we've seen on repetitive loop:
-- "hot chicks are dumb as...
Robert Naiman | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
Unless you happen to live in Virginia or New York, right now Hillary Clinton is doing more than both of your U.S. Senators to prevent the Bush Administration from attacking Iran.
How does that make you feel?
On October 1, Senator Clinton took a step that no other Senator...
Jeff Dorchen | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the amazing Technicolor dream coat.
What's this I hear about Los Angeles cops having contests to see who can make the most arrests or impound the most vehicles in twenty-four hours? Has all that sushi made the LA police go soft? What happened...
Jane Ciabattari | Posted March 28, 2008 | Media
On October 4, former NBCC finalist Edwidge Danticat testified before the U.S. Congress' Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law. It is our privilege to publish the text of this powerful testimony -- which is the basis of her new memoir, Brother, I'm Dying...
Eric Williams | Posted March 28, 2008 | Media
Last week, we endured much righteous huffing and puffing over the shocking fact that Barack Obama does not wear an American-flag lapel pin, briefly shifting the national debate from "Is Obama black enough?" to "Is Obama red, white and blue enough?" Now, some on the Right are attempting to...
Off The Bus | Posted March 28, 2008 | Off The Bus
The following piece was produced through the Huffington Post's OffTheBus. Edited by Richard Riehl and Denise Wheeler. Reported by Kirsten Anderson, River Curtis-Stanley, Jodi Lampert, Julie Pierce, and Debbi Plummer.
Tancredo the Geographer: Ted's solution to grumpy Texas mayors who...
Let's suppose it is October, 2009 and let's suppose the election race had a front runner. What would all the political reporters be doing? We'd all be dusting off Yogi Berra's cliche that "it ain't over till it's over" and writing that it wasn't over yet. and pondering...
Robert Scheer | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
The 40th anniversary of the death of Che Guevara elicited considerable media attention, mostly about his iconic image captured on T-shirts throughout the world. There were the standard snarky asides that many young people wearing those T-shirts have scant notion of who Che was, but the journalists reporting the story...
Margaret Carlson | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
The sixth Republican presidential debate was pass-fail for former Senator Fred Thompson. To succeed, all he needed to do was stay alert and not nod off in the middle of an answer.
That doesn't mean the audience didn't doze off every so often. There was a build-up to this one,...
Al Gore is rumored to be a recipient of the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize when it's announced this Friday, Oct. 12.
The last American to be so honored, Jimmy Carter, won on the very same day the U.S. Senate voted to give George W. Bush authority to use...
Allison Gilbert | Posted March 28, 2008 | Living
Last night, I went to a support group for women who have tested positive for BRCA1 and BRCA2. If you didn't know the reason we were coming together, you would have thought we were gathering for a book club or PTA meeting. We look just like you, except there's this...
Behold, The League of Maternal Justice! Their manifesto reads:
It's perfectly legal for women to breastfeed publicly in most of the United States, and throughout Canada. We HAVE the right to breastfeed publicly. So why are we insisting upon Festing the Breast?Because people like Bill Maher would...
Paul Slansky | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
Richard Nixon's observation about Fred Thompson being "dumb as hell" is just one of thousands of aspersions cast in the Oval Office and captured on tape. Test your knowledge of Tricky Dick's bountiful Oval Office bile:
1) What did Richard Nixon call his Secretary of the Treasury, George Shultz?
Sam Sedaei | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
When it comes to making policy in the Middle-East, the United States has consistently and unilaterally pursued a double-standard in favor of Israel. There is no better example of that than the U.S.'s position on the Iranian nuclear issue.
Under the Non-Proliferation Treaty - which Iran is a member...
Meredith O'Brien | Posted March 28, 2008 | Living
Remember the 1970s commercial for Enjoli Perfume in which a woman danced around in a sexy dress claiming to be able to bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan -- and never let you forget you're a man? I venture to bet that very few modern women...
Paul Helmke | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
Some of us think to ourselves, "It can't happen to me," or, "It can't happen here." We think, "I'm a good person and I don't hurt anybody. I live in a safe neighborhood. I couldn't possibly be a gunshot victim, and neither could my family. It can't happen to me."
...Mike Piscal | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
Few would argue with the fact that we have an educational crisis in South Los Angeles. Consider this: of the close to 4,000 kids that enter a ninth grade public school each year in the 45 square-mile area between USC and the Los Angeles Airport, fewer than 1,600 of them...
Amy Swift | Posted March 28, 2008 | Living
Boobs. You nursed on them as a baby. If you're a woman, you felt the
dull ache of them developing into little rosebuds under your Izod. You
blushed as your mother dragged you through the pre-teen section to find
you a training bra. They were a big...
Dan Solin | Posted March 28, 2008 | Business
I am thinking of calling my next book The Smartest Doomsday Prediction You'll Ever Read.
After all, if you want to write a best-selling book, predicting disaster for the U.S. economy seems like a sure bet.
It worked for Howard Ruff. His book, How to Prosper During the...
Beth Feldman | Posted March 28, 2008 | Living
I don't know how it happened, but my daughter has decided to delve into some old fashioned pursuits that I never thought would hold her interest. When I was growing up, I was a tomboy. I loved to climb trees, build fortes, play soccer, baseball and tennis; if my brother...
Dina Rasor | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
Another day, another story about an out of control private security contractor shooting. This time it is an Australian run company, Unity Resources Group, was returning from escorting a USAID subcontractor convoy. They shot two women in a car. The Washington Post reports, "'A vehicle got close to them...
Amanda Michel | Posted March 28, 2008 | Off The Bus
On Saturday October 13, Barack Obama's presidential campaign is organizing "Canvass for Change," a grassroots mobilization in neighborhoods around the country. We're looking for volunteers to gather stories and observations from those events. With the help of Mayhill Fowler, an OffTheBus correspondent who has been covering Barack Obama's grassroots...
Kelly Nuxoll | Posted March 28, 2008 | Off The Bus
The following piece was produced by the Huffington Post's OffTheBus project.
Two weeks ago, I did what no person should ever do. I signed up for every presidential candidate's email list.
Taken together, the messages revealed campaigns' divergent attitudes not only toward campaign strategy, but toward...
Kirsten Anderson | Posted March 28, 2008 | Off The Bus
The following piece was produced by the Huffington Post's OffTheBus project.
He's a virtually unknown Texas congressman, come from seemingly nowhere to launch a quixotic quest for the Presidency. He preaches a gospel of freedom, individual rights, and a Federal government so small it verges on nonexistent. He proclaims...
Nathaniel Bach | Posted March 28, 2008 | Off The Bus
The following piece was produced by the Huffington Post's OffTheBus project.
It's the moment that every glad-handing, flesh-pressing presidential candidate fears: some loony activist has somehow seized control of the microphone at your folksy town hall event. Aides with clipboards flash into action, signaling to the hired muscle to...
Steve Clemons | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
(Senator Gary Hart and Steve Clemons at Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley's official residence in Annapolis)
During October and November, Washington College's C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience will host five former and current U.S....
James Boyce | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
"The best way to kill a bad product is with good advertising." That's one of the oldest maxims in the ad business, an industry I have spent my career in, usually online but with a fair amount of traditional branding experience as well.
Simply what it means is that good...
Deborah Norville | Posted March 28, 2008 | Living
In Thank You Power: Making The Science of Gratitude Work For You, two-time Emmy Award-winning journalist and Inside Edition anchor Deborah Norville argues that gratitude is the secret to unlocking one's full life potential. In this excerpt of Thank You Power, Norville asks all of us, "What do you...
Heather Cabot | Posted March 28, 2008 | Living
Calling Larry David! Have I got a sketch for you!
I love Curb Your Enthusiasm. The Larry David you play on HBO manages to offend, insult and otherwise annoy just about any person he meets. No one of any gender,...
Dan Brown | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
The secret is out that No Child Left Behind's brand of measuring success and failure for students and schools does not work. For five years, principals and teachers across the country have been subjected to immense pressure to bump up students' test scores, by any means necessary. While NCLB certainly...
Chris Weigant | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
Sovereignty (n) -- government free from external control
Is Iraq a truly sovereign state, or is the Maliki government a puppet of America? We may know the answer to this crucial question in a very short time. Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki could show independence from American interests in many ways,...
Miles Mogulescu | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
Faster than you can say the word "Sicko" and turn around 3 times, the Democrats' promise of health care for all has gone from "Universal Medicare For All" to "Individual Insurance Mandate". In Monday's New York Times, Paul Krugman defends that reversal in an article entitled "Why Not Single Payer?"
...Joseph A. Palermo | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
Yankee Stadium erupted in thunderous booing when Rudy Giuliani's mug flashed on the jumbotron during the seventh inning stretch. Could New Yorkers' chilly reception of their former mayor, (even in the middle of "God Bless America"), be the result of the fact that he continues to milk shamelessly for his...
OK -- so let's see if that whole power-to-the-people thing is alive and well (as usual) on HuffPo.
I just received a mass email from a friend that begins like this:
Hi Everyone --
As all of you know, my wife and I are...
Matthew Schwieger | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics
It was hard to miss the clarion call for class based affirmative action seen in the pages of The New York Times the past few weeks. Starting with a September 24 op-ed from Jerome Karabel, the UC-Berkeley sociologist, and in two articles from "The College Issue"...
Sugar Rautbord | Posted March 28, 2008 | Politics