Category: Media

The Founders’ ‘Musket Mandate’

Exclusive: The negative tone of the Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court suggests that the Affordable Care Act, with its individual mandate to buy health insurance, may be overturned as “unconstitutional” by a partisan 5-4 vote. But key Founders had a…

National Outrage over Trayvon Case

Despite attempts in the right-wing media to smear 17-year-old Trayvon Martin with references to minor school disciplinary problems, the overall reaction across the United States has been outrage over his slaying and the lack of an arrest, what Sherwood Ross calls a…

How Friedman Fixes Mideast Faults

Official Washington treats New York Times pundit Thomas Friedman as an oracle on the Middle East, but his commentary is often pedestrian and wrongheaded, as it was disastrously on the Iraq War. But Friedman has now proclaimed what must be done to…

TV Stations Resist Listing Ad Buyers

Among the “winners” in Election 2012 will surely be the giant corporations that own many U.S. television stations as they rake in billions of dollars in SuperPAC and other political spending for attack ads. But these stations aren’t eager to make…

Nature of Self-Defeating Convictions

One of the curious realities of modern America is how many people especially white males have been propagandized into siding with a “free-market” power structure that treats them like tissue paper, to be used and thrown away. Poet Phil Rockstroh…

Israel to Iran, with Love

Almost drowned out by the pounding of war drums is the rare voice for peace and sanity, like that of Israeli graphic artist Rony Edry, who designed a poster with the message, “Iranians. We will never bomb your country. We…

‘Hunger Games’ Left Appetite for More

Exclusive: “The Hunger Games” based on a trilogy of best-selling novels about an apocalyptic future set box-office records for a non-sequel film on an opening weekend, but Lisa Pease also found the film’s story compelling enough to leave her hungry…

PBS Undercuts Indie Documentaries

In recent years, PBS has grown more and more timid as financial and political pressures have mounted, explaining why two of its more controversial series presenting independent documentaries have gotten stuck in a time slot guaranteeing fewer viewers. PBS veterans…

The Sarah Palin/Neocon Alliance

Exclusive: “Game Change,” the HBO movie on John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin, faults his Republican campaign for its slipshod vetting of the little-known Alaska governor, but leaves out the back story of big-time neocons from D.C. helping position Palin for her…

Kony’s Deleted Christian Fanaticism

Joseph Kony, the brutal commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army, has been introduced to millions through a video on YouTube. But that denunciation of his war crimes skirts his claim to be motivated by Christianity, an omission not applied to violent…