The Daily Show with John Stewart is one of the best sources from satire and criticism of the American political/media establishment, but it is often lacking in its occasional attempts to offer civics lessons to its viewers.
Monday's show offered a surprising change in that pattern as it dealt with the current situation in Iran. In the opening segment, critiquing the government/media calls for the Obama administration to "say something" backing the protesters, Stewart makes the observation that, of course, the protests were, "All about us." And, in a hilarious serious of interviews by Jason Jones, from Iran, with Iranian critics of the country's revolutionary regime the common theme presented was of being critical of both the Iranian regime and U.S. policy toward it.
Last night on MSNBC's "Countdown" with Keith Olbermann viewers were treated to the always entertaining (and often insightful) former governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura. Ventura continues his principled stance on the issue of torture -- particularly opposing waterboarding, which he, himself, was subjected to as part of his training in the Navy SEALs.
Olbermann, to his credit, has been fairly good about putting aside his Obama-sycophancy to push for investigations and prosecutions of Bush administration officials involved with approving torture. In this interview, however, he onc
Peter Schiff's video blog today is interesting for several reasons -- not the least of which is, as always, his sage economic advice. Schiff gives his take on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court and the idea of the "living" Constitution. He gives a rigorous and salient defense of constitutional principles.
I have long wondered why so many ignore the fact that the Constitution need not be cleverly "interpreted" when it can simply be amended, but some do ignore that fact, preferring to rely on executive force or judicial activism to get their way. Followed correctl
Today, over at Antiwar.com, Kelly Vlahos has a profile of Colonel Gian Gentile. Col. Gentile is a critic of the now-accepted wisdom that the Surge in Iraq was a success and that counterinsurgency strategy, or COIN, is the universal panacea to America's military problems. According to its supporters, such as Lt. Col. John Nagl -- co-author of the military's new counterinsurgency manual How to Eat Soup with a Knife -- counterinsurgency strategy will aid the U.S. military in "transforming societies" (i.e.
This is an excellent interview with Dr. Paul from Tuesday's Rachel Maddow Show. Though Congressman Paul isn't the most articulate or charismatic politician, there are times when he hits a home run, and this was one of those times. It also helps that Ms. Maddow allowed him to speak and finish his thoughts instead of constantly interrupting him like most interviewers do with Paul and indeed most interviewees. Maddow is undoubtedly a liberal -- and thoroughly invested in the false left-right dichotomy of American politics -- but this is a good venue for someone like Dr.
Doug Bandow, former special assistant for policy in the Reagan administration and currently senior fellow at the Cato Institute, discusses recent Republican attempts to play the national security card on the Obama administration, as well as the Democrats in congress. Writing at the Cato-@-Liberty blog, Bandow says,
I have a lot of bad things to say about both parties on foreign as well as domestic policy. But it’s hard for me to imagine the previous eight years of Republican governance as a golden era for national security.
First there was 9/11. Perhaps it is too much to expect the Bush administration to have prevented the terrorist atrocity, but the administration did nothing over the Clinton administration to improve American defenses to prevent such attacks. Then there was diverting troops and attention from Afghanistan before that war was finished, to invade Iraq. The Iraq debacle occupies a category all its own. Policy towards North Korea was spectacularly misguided and incompetent: refusing to talk to the North for years as it generated nuclear materials, before rushing to embrace Pyongyang while offering few immediate benefits to entice the North to change its behavior. The results of this strategy were, unsurprisingly, negligible.
Contrary to popular belief, the War in Iraq continues. As U.S. forces make preparations to begin their withdrawal from Iraqi cities next month, death tolls are back on the rise. The Anbar Awakening, Sons of Iraq, Concerned Local Citizens, or whatever other term is being used to describe the Sunni Iraqis that the U.S. government were paying to not shoot at U.S.
Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter has decided to change his political party affiliation from Republican to Democrat. In the past, when there were actual differences between the parties, this might have been a truly meaningful act of political rebellion against a party that has so thoroughly lost its way. Of course in today's one party system, a legislator moving from one wing of the party to another will make little to no difference whatsoever.
Specter's defection to the Democrats will do little in the way of a seismic shift on key pieces of legislation since Specter held few of the econ
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