Conservatives in this country have latched on to this attack that the Obama administration is pushing us toward socialism, often tinged with enough paranoia to qualify them for their own custom-fit tinfoil hats. Most often the attacks contain no facts. So here are some facts for them. The U.S. Government has nationalized $82.3 billion in corporate and business assets. Big number, huh? But it makes up only .21 percent of all corporate and business assets in this country, which add up to $39.2 ... Read Full Story

I guess that Rush and his buddies are too stupid to read. They are taking a single sentence of a speech by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor out of context and branding her a racist. Maybe they should read the entire passage: … Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O’Connor has ofte... Read Full Story

As newspaper publishers get more desperate, they keep going back to this thing about charging for content. Now Dean Singleton jumps all in. But he trots out this stupid justification: First, we continue to do an injustice to our print subscribers and create perceptions that our content has no value by putting all of our print content online for free. Not only does this erode our print circulation, it devalues the core of our business - the great local journalism we (and only we) produce on a ... Read Full Story

Do you remember the story about how the big bad government forced Wells Fargo to take TARP funds they didn't want? Take a look at who is second on the list of the most troubled banks. Perhaps the Wells Fargo execs were more worried about their own compensation packages than their bank's health when they were making those noises about TARP. Read Full Story

Sorry, but this is just too good to pass up. The fact that a member of Congress could be so historically illiterate is astounding: As a matter of fact, the recession that FDR had to deal with wasn't as bad as the recession Coolidge had to deal with in the early 20s. Yet, the prescription that Coolidge put on that -- from history -- is lower taxes, lower regulatory burden, and we saw the "Roaring 20s," where we saw markets and growth in the economy like we'd never seen before... Read Full Story

It's been 41 years since one of the greatest agents of change was gunned down by someone afraid of that change. I think back to those days when I was a child and realize I was born into a different world than the generation before. I was six days old when Dr. King told America about his dream for a better nation. Only when patriots like him step up will this nation attain the lofty goals set forth by our founding fathers. I, too, have a dream. Read Full Story

Headlines like this make it impossible not to respond. Bad start? Let's review for a minute. Obama got almost exactly the stimulus bill he first proposed, and the polls show Americans approve of the job he's doing by almost 70 percent. The GOP congress critters on the other hand have approval rates at half that. Oh, they whine, Obama wasn't bipartisan enough! Really? Obama gave the GOP their tax cuts, which made up 37 percent of the final bill. What did the Republicans bend on? N... Read Full Story

This account of a lead interrogator in Iraq on why torture doesn't work is really eye=opening: I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Ira... Read Full Story

With the many challenges facing the newspaper business, many different ideas on how to save the industry have been trotted out. One that I had pretty much dismissed immediately was the non-profit model. Maybe it's the capitalist in me, but I thought the quest for profits to be a great catalyst for innovation, and a required element of any attempt to revolutionize the newspaper business. But the more I think about it, the more I'm beginning to see the genius of the non-profit news mo... Read Full Story

Markos asks a very good question. Read Full Story