Daniel McAdams

January 6, 2016

Is House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce purposely deceiving the American public, or is he just that badly informed? As the Saudis beheaded 47 prisoners, including a prominent Shiite cleric, Royce went on CNN to blame the whole thing on the Iranians! The problems started when the Iranian military invaded Yemen, he said. But […]

Peter Van Buren

January 5, 2016

For 25 percent of your grade this term, compare and contrast the following two true descriptions of the same thing. The opening to the New York Times story: A 25-year-old man in Rochester has been arrested and charged with preparing to stage a New Year’s Eve machete attack on diners at a local restaurant on […]

Daniel McAdams

January 5, 2016

The Saudis and Iranians are at each other’s throats after Saudi Arabia’s penchant for executing the political opposition netted a prominent Shiite cleric. US reaction was muted. The Saudis have broken diplomatic relations after angry Iranians stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran, and Riyadh is considering banning citizens from traveling to Iran. Meanwhile, the Chinese […]

Medea Benjamin

January 4, 2016

The brutal Saudi execution of Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Al-Nimr has led to protests around the globe, as well as the burning of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, followed by the Saudi severing of relations with Iran. This exacerbation of Sunni-Shia tensions is the result of the reckless Saudi action against a popular, nonviolent Shia […]

Peter Van Buren

January 4, 2016

So while we huddled in drunken fear here in The Homeland, Germans in Das Homeland played out a similar game. You may have missed it among updates of our impending doom from terror attacks on New Year’s Eve, but in Munich two train stations were evacuated and closed after German officials had received a “very […]

Peter Van Buren

January 1, 2016

I survived. America, and the world, and you, survived. We awoke the first day of 2016 to find that once again, using the extraordinary power of fear, we defeated the terrorists. Hard as it is to persuade a constantly re-frightened American public, there have been only 38 Americans killed inside the Homeland by so-called Islamic […]

Peter Van Buren

December 30, 2015

Ho, ho, ho, can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys. That might as well be America’s war of terror slogan (copyright, 2001-2015.) So see if you can sort out the Good from the Bad. Pretend you’re Secretary of State and this is a puzzle Barack has asked you to solve. Here are the […]

John V. Walsh

December 28, 2015

Who is the arch racist, Hillary or Trump? To answer that, let us ask another question, a simple one. Which is worse: to denigrate some members of a group or religion or race – or to kill them by the millions? And maim more millions and displace even more millions? Which is more “racist”? With […]

Peter Van Buren

December 28, 2015

In most people’s minds, America’s biggest exports are things like iPhones made in China, or swank Levi’s made in China. But in fact, America is the world’s leading seller of one category of goods, and those goods are nearly 100% made in America: weapons. Maybe not a huge surprise, given that America maintains the globe’s […]

Adam Dick

December 27, 2015

It may not be surprising that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) snooped on renowned singer-songwriter Pete Seeger for decades and even that the bureau’s file on Seeger runs to nearly 1,800 pages. After all, Seeger was a high-profile opponent of the Vietnam War, and war is the health of the state. But, Seeger was […]