A year from today, Americans will go to their local polling places in schools, community halls, and firehouses around the country to choose the 44th President of the United States. As a lifelong Democrat and a committed liberal on social issues - and as a blogger - I believe Senator...

A few weeks ago, my daughter and I started a bank and now we make loans to businesses all over the world. Now, before you speculate on my family wealth or means -- and my place among the banking titans -- consider that we started this little lending institution of...

There is some irony in the location for the annual Milken Institute Global Conference, which this week celebrated a decade of meetings. The Beverly Hilton, a plush walled garden on busy Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills, used to be the site of Michael Milken's high-80s meetings of buy-out funds...

Matthew Arnold called Oxford the city of dreaming spires, a reference to the timeless beauty of the harmonious colleges here but also the centrality of thought that Oxford plays for all of Britain. Last week at the fourth annual Skoll World Forum, "dreaming spires" took on another meaning - as...

One of the signature cultural moments in the globalization of the economy unfolded last Sunday, amidst the roar of high-octane engines at the Daytona International Speedway. Sure, there are some grumblings in racing-obsessed quarters about the entry of Toyota-branded stock cars for the first time in the history of a...

Time magazine ignored Warren Buffett when it came to naming its ballyhooed 'Person of the Year' last month. His biggest-in-history divestiture of personal wealth - and related comments about inheritance and the growing gap between rich and poor- didn't make the cut. In a year of big philanthropy headlines, the...

Never has the world of brands and consumer culture been more closely aligned with philanthropy - and the human desire to change the world for the better. World leaders, captains of industry, rock stars and mega-athletes. They're all embracing philanthropy in the new 21st century, bringing a "win now" mentality...

This weekend unless something big and horrible breaks, the lead story in every newspaper and on every news network will be the economy - specifically, consumer behavior in the run-up to the most wonderful time of the year. Huge crowds, traffic jams, "Black Friday," and the instant analyis of whether...

When Forbes released its annual list of the 400 richest Americans in September, nine figures not longer cut it: the list was made up entirely of billionaires. It's true, the economists confirm, the rich really are getting richer - and they're getting richer faster.

And as the ranks of the...

When you've seen beyond yourself, then you may find, peace of mind is waiting there.
-- George Harrison

The May 2006 issue of Conde Nast's upscale consumer magazine Vanity Fair may well be remembered as a key chapter in the long history of American philanthropy. Along with the release...

Richard Branson looked over the commitment document, looked up at Bill Clinton, and held his pen in the air with just a short, dramatic pause.

"That's an awful lot of noughts," he quipped.

Then he bent to the task, scratching his name on an agreement that will commit all profits...

Last week, President Bush delivered a blatantly political and laughably facile public relations presentation at the U.S. Naval Academy that dumped an expensive, glossy "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" on a public tired of waiting, tired of death, and tired of the very word victory. George Bush looked every...

There is a reason why, throughout western literature and popular culture, those who would torture individuals within their custody have been portrayed as weak, as cowards, as fools -- in short, as significantly less than just.

Think only for a moment, and vile characters come rushing in. Recall Olivier's  SS...

In the long, hot summer of 1974, three prominent Republican members of Congress - including a living right-wing icon - traveled down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. They were Senator Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, Congressman John Rhodes of Arizona, and his state's white-haired senior Senator, one Barry Goldwater. The...

So there are still some right-leaning fundamentalist Republicans who don't believe in the evolution of the species? They ought to look to their guy in the White House, who is clearly engaging in some natural selection of the political kind, as he tries desperately to deal with the exploding Karl...

On the morning of September 13th, 2001, the officer in charge of the Coldstream Guards Band and 1st Battalion Scots Guards received a call from Buckingham Palace. Banish tradition. The music accompanying that day's tourist-swathed ceremomy at the changing would be different. That day, the band played The Star-Spangled Banner....

Ah yes, the so-called "Free" Republic - the online home of President Bush's conservative base, a faithfully conservative group of "Freepers" who take on the left, bash the liberals, and fight the good fight of American conservatism. Here, verbatim, is what the Republican denizens of Jim Robinson's highly-edited, march-in-lockstep...

You've watched Russert with the Huffingtonian guide, tuned into McLaughlin's Rovian revelations, and punched through that fat stack of mainstream media in print (yes, the newspaper). So here's some juice from the lair of the semi-professional auteur, the alternative weekly reading from the Sunday papers:

Richard Edelman honestly...

Sandy, the fireworks are hailing over Little Eden tonight, forcing a light into all those stony faces - left stranded on this warm July.

Those stony faces belong to moderates, practical liberals, and pretty much those Americans who do most of the living and breathing and working and dying in...

If more journalists were bloggers - in between creating their more considered pieces - Norman Pearlstine would not have caved today, Judith Miller wouldn't face jail in two day's time, and bullying prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald would find his nose filled with blood from a blog-based punch to the...