William Bradley

"Prepare for a great leap forward!"

-- Chairman Mao Zedong, er,
Don Draper

"Christmas Waltz" is an improved episode of Mad Men in this uneven fifth season of a longtime great TV series, an episode with a very welcome return to advertising. Too much of this...

There's a lot of confusion about the ballyhooed NATO Summit in Chicago, intended as a big boost to Obama's geopolitical leadership, showcased in his hometown.

Questions about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, founded 62 years ago in the early days of the Cold War with the late Soviet Union and...

In one of the least surprising announcements of late, Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday unveiled the annual spring revision of the California state budget, proposing steps to deal with what he says has become a $15.7 billion budget deficit, up from $9.2 billion in January. Absent more tough cuts, and...

If there's one thing we know for sure about the latest episode of Mad Men, it's this: All this soapiness can mean only one thing. People are about to die. You simply can't have so many soap suds flying around without folks slipping and hitting their heads on the sharp...

Don't look now, but one of the biggest and most famous industries in the world, nuclear power, once seen as the lynchpin of the future, is reeling yet again after huge political setbacks in Japan and France.

Last year's disaster at Fukushima is having an even bigger effect than the...

"Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream. It is not dying, it is not dying.
Lay down all thought, surrender to the void. It is shining, it is shining.
That you may see the meaning of within. It is being, it is being."

John Lennon and Paul...

As if he didn't have enough geopolitical crises already.

President Barack Obama got a complicated new crisis to manage this week, this one in China, where blind dissident icon Chen Guancheng -- who, somehow, escaped house arrest in his village and made his way hundreds of miles to the U.S....

Somewhere, Conrad Hilton is saying he always thought Don Draper should listen to his wife. He always wanted the Moon, that ultimate symbol of Space Age striving in the '60s, from Don, and he didn't get it, which is why he dumped him at the end of Season 3. But...

It's a year since the daring Navy SEAL raid that took down Osama bin Laden. (The al Qaeda leader was killed around 1 a.m. on May 2 in Pakistan, but it was mid-day to early afternoon on May 1 in the U.S.)

It was a triumph of American arms, satisfying...

Governor Jerry Brown is in Washington for a round of meetings and appearances on CBS's Face the Nation and at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, where he and First Lady/Special Counsel Anne Gust Brown will be at the Newsweek table, along with General David Petraeus, the Iraq War and...

On what is actually my favorite show, as in most greatly enjoyed, Doctor Who, there is a hand-waving phrase to cover the shifty plot twists inherent in the saga of the antically enigmatic traveler through time and space known as the Doctor. "Wibbley-wobbley, timey-wimey." As in, the flux capacitor went...

It might just be President Hillary Clinton, after all. But what would that mean? Could she move the country forward after a tumultuous period of transition under Barack Obama?

Pulling back from the usual back-and-forth of the moment reveals the potential for historic opportunities. But it's a rugged gauntlet getting...

Jerry Brown has a number of problems to deal with in his new/renewed governorship. One of the biggest of all is a persistent tunnel vision in California's frequently dysfunctional political culture.

Unfortunately, it's a problem that afflicts both political parties and most interests, as well as their adherents, acknowledged...

This week's Mad Men offered up a much more insular episode, though the sense of decay and decline in New York which I wrote about earlier in the season is evident. The American studies social themes, aside from the trademark dissatisfaction with success and a sense of impending change, are...

It was an interesting first week in the general election campaign. After Rick Santorum's sudden withdrawal essentially handed the Republican nomination to Mitt Romney, on the 100th anniversary of Titanic setting sail on its fateful voyage, President Barack Obama had a mostly good week. But the big flap over foolhardy...

Well, that was one of the spookier Mad Men episodes, complete with not one but two dream sequences. As always, there be some spoilers ahead discussing this episode, the aptly titled "Mystery Date."

The horizon of the future, i.e., the later '60s, is getting much darker, and a lot closer....

California's youngest governor since it was barely a state back in the 19th century turned 74 on Saturday. Jerry Brown, back for a third term after his fascinating two terms as governor in the 1970s and '80s is now California's oldest governor, with little sign of slowing down.

It's not...

Is Mitt Romney "inevitable," again? For the Republican presidential nomination, that is, as I don't believe he can beat Barack Obama. Or is he merely back in command of the race?

On the strength of a stunning four to one spending advantage, Romney swept three primaries Tuesday night, winning...

The roar of generational change got ever louder in this week's Mad Men, so much so that Roger Sterling plaintively wondered when things will go back to normal. That would be "Never," Roger. At least for you. As always, there be spoilers ahead.

Meanwhile ... She's baaack. It's around the...

Another big shoe dropped Wednesday in the ongoing crisis of the California Republican Party. One of its young rising stars, state Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, a decorated Marine veteran of the Iraq War, dropped his party registration to become an independent. Which might be a path forward for Republicans who don't...