A recent article in The Wall Street Journal by Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, “The Dark Side of the Digital Revolution,” makes for very scary reading. It is not so much because of what he and co-author Jared Cohen, the director of Google Ideas, have to say about how dictators can use new information technology to suppress dissent; we know those guys are evil. What is truly frightening is that the techniques of the totalitarian state are the same ones pioneered by ...

"The stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost." — Reverend Jeremiah Wright

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Can you hear yourself think? Can you manage more than bursts of confusion and anger? Can you feel your own humanity anymore? I'll admit it — I've had trouble this week, too. After an explosion like the one in Boston, it is indeed hard to hear one's own internal monologue, much less meditate on such horrific events. Polluting that sacred quiet of the mind is both the haunting boom of the bombs themselves and even worse, the noisy coda that we've become so accustomed ...

As one of the world’s largest news outlets, the Associated Press’s linguistic mandates significantly shape the broader vernacular. So when the organization this week decided to stop using the term “illegal immigrant,” it was a big victory for objectivity and against the propagandistic language of bigotry.

I'm shopping for a sweater online, and as so often happens, up pops a "tell us what you think" box. Or I'm on social media, and another social media company hijacks the screen, trying to sell me another product. Then there's:

"How did you like the app?"

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Anthony Lewis, the former New York Times reporter and columnist who died Monday at the age of 86, shaped the American conscience on a broad range of issues, from civil liberties and civil rights to war and diplomacy, for almost 50 years. During his long career, Lewis won numerous awards and published several important books. ...

I am not sure exactly when the death of television news took place. The descent was gradual—a slide into the tawdry, the trivial and the inane, into the charade on cable news channels such as Fox and MSNBC in which hosts hold up corporate political puppets to laud or ridicule, and treat celebrity foibles as legitimate news. But if I had to pick a date when ...

What was Michelle Obama thinking? If the card for “Zero Dark Thirty” had been lurking in that best picture envelope Sunday, the gushing first lady would have appeared to the 1 billion people watching to have endorsed the very torture policies that her husband has denounced, at least rhetorically, if not always in ...

As anyone who has ever experienced a panic attack well knows, one of the most difficult aspects of managing anxiety disorders is having to do it in secret for fear of being labeled a freak. I can personally attest that such a fear often makes the problem worse, compounding generalized worry with the specific concern that you ...

Albert Woodfox has been in solitary confinement for 40 years, most of that time locked up in the notorious maximum-security Louisiana State Penitentiary known as “Angola.” This week, after his lawyers spent six years arguing that racial bias tainted the grand-jury selection in Woodfox’s prosecution, federal ...

Believers in arithmetic are in full retreat in the national budget debate, thanks in large part to Pete Peterson’s Fix the Debt gang. The range of acceptable debate goes from yelling that the sky is falling because of the deficit to the more moderate perspective shown by President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders in favor of a gradual and balanced approach to deficit reduction. But stating the simple and obvious truth—that we have a large deficit because the economy ...

The Academy Awards ceremony will make history this year with the first-ever nomination of a feature documentary made by a Palestinian. “5 Broken Cameras” was filmed and directed by Emad Burnat, a resident of the occupied Palestinian West Bank town of Bil’in, along with his Israeli filmmaking partner Guy Davidi. What does a Palestinian farmer wear on ...

Let us address the declining fortunes of today’s mainstream mass media.

(Yes, I can hear your pained screams of “Nooooo…we don’t want to!” However, we really must, because it’s not about them, but us — about our ability to be at least quasi-informed about ...

Keep an American soldier locked up naked in a cage and driven half mad while deprived of all basic rights, and you will be instantly condemned as a barbaric terrorist. Unless the jailer is an authorized agent of the U.S. government, in which case even treatment approaching torture will go largely unnoticed. Certainly if a likable constitutional law professor happens to be president, all such assaults on human dignity will easily pass ...

Let us address the declining fortunes of today's mainstream mass media.

(Yes, I can hear your pained screams of "Nooooo ... we don't want to!" We really must, however, because it's not about them, but us — about our ability to be at least quasi-informed about who's-doing-what-to-whom-and-why, in order ...

To publish or not to publish? That was the debate in media circles this week after the New York Post printed a horrifying photo of a man named Ki Suk Han who had been pushed onto the subway tracks and was trying to avoid getting hit by a train. In its typical bombastic fashion, Rupert Murdoch's tabloid offered up the image as cheap, ...

On a recent “Meet the Press,” host David Gregory presided in a tailored jacket and tie. Panelists Al Sharpton, David Brooks and Ken Burns appeared similarly professional. But the two female panelists, Andrea Mitchell and Carly Fiorina, seemed ready for cocktails, not coffee, in form-fitting ...

Last week, the most-read items on the RealClearPolitics website were complaints about the "mainstream media." Basically, it was Mitt Romney supporters claiming that their man was behind in polls because the so-called mainstream media were biased against conservatives. On the left, meanwhile, the beefs tend to focus on "what the media aren't reporting" — most often plundering by big business. About 11 out of 10 times these commentators ...

Unemployment is still above 8 percent, job gains aren’t even keeping up with population growth, the economy is barely moving forward. And yet, according to most polls, the Romney-Ryan ticket is falling further and further behind. How can this be?

Because Republicans are failing the central test of electability. Instead of putting together the largest possible coalition of voters, they’re relying largely on one slice of America ...

Your chipper TV friend Flo, otherwise known as Progressive Insurance's ubiquitous shill, wants you to be excited — very excited. As you've probably learned from her effervescent commercials, she and her Big Brothers in the insurance biz want you to see their new tracking devices for your car not as a privacy-destroying step to justify raising your government-mandated car insurance premiums. Instead, they want you to see the gizmos, which record your ...