By Richard Schickel —The inherent problem with Oliver Stone's follow-up to his 1987 classic is that it does not have the courage of its own nastiest convictions.
This week on “Left, Right & Center,” the gang chats about the shakeup in Obama’s economic team, the GOP’s alleged new ideas, the Democrats’ spine on taxes, and the ever important but little-discussed issue of schools. Tune in to find out more.
With a wit unheard of on Capitol Hill, Stephen Colbert has taken his message of truthiness and testified in front of Congress on behalf of migrant farmworkers, citing his expertise on the matter after spending an entire day in the picking fields.
Our friends at Brave New Films send this video highlighting the accusation that Delaware Senate candidate and tea party darling Christine O’Donnell was improperly living off campaign funds.
“This book really began around the kitchen table at the rectory with crock-pot stew.” Eliza Griswold—with a poet’s eye for the telling, homely image—is tracing the genesis of her new book, The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches From the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam.
This is news that will come as a relief to some (ahem, Sean Penn): Former Fugee and wannabe Haitian president Wyclef Jean has conceded that he’s not in the running to become his homeland’s next leader and has officially withdrawn from the race.
Mike Rose notes that no one in power is asking fundamental questions about the purpose of education and whether much-hyped reforms might do more harm than good.
By their actions, alcohol companies are admitting that more sensible drug policies could cut into their government-created monopoly on mind-altering substances.
How is a country with a lower per capita income than Kazakhstan, one of the worst environmental records of any major nation and a dictatorship, besides, hailed by so many as the next global superpower?
Finally! The announced departure of Lawrence Summers as the president’s top economic adviser is welcome news. Harvard’s loss in taking back its $586,996-a-year professor and “president emeritus,” who is also paid millions by Wall Street on the side, is the nation’s gain.
The Wal-Mart moms were pessimistic, bordering on despondent, about the state of the country, but they were also surprisingly understanding about the president’s plight.
The relationship between Western Europe and the colonies that became the United States was complicated from the beginning. The situation reversed, it is now Europe that tires of America’s imperial wars.
Combat operations in Iraq are over, if you believe President Barack Obama’s rhetoric. But torture in Iraq’s prisons, first exposed during the Abu Ghraib scandal, is thriving, increasingly distant from any scrutiny or accountability.
The president and the American people will all too soon come to recognize that the quagmire in Iraq is far from over. In fact, one might say it has only just begun.
The U.N. is warning that the world may be on the cusp of a new major food crisis as the result of a wave of recent environmental disasters (heat waves, floods, wildfires) and capitalist disasters (market speculation, inflation) that are pushing up the price of foodstuffs.
The Nigerian government may or may not have warned residents that it would open up the floodgates of two dams in the northern part of the country last month, unleashing a deluge of water that has displaced more than 2 million people.
The FBI has executed several search warrants (aka breaking down people’s doors) in Minneapolis and Chicago as part of an investigation into a handful of anti-war protest organizers on allegations of, we kid you not, “activities connected to the material support of terrorism.”
In a fascinating tale of international financial intrigue, the Wall Street Journal reveals how a secret task force of European leaders—dubbed “the group that doesn’t exist”—was formed in 2008 to prevent the collapse of the eurozone, which could have triggered another global economic tsunami.
It’s a bird? It’s a plane? No, it’s super Wi-Fi! The FCC has finally approved a proposal to open the unused space between broadcast television channels—dubbed “white space”—for high-speed wireless broadband ... or, in more campy terms, super Wi-Fi.
From stinking up his hotel with food to decrying U.S. involvement in 9/11, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made quite the splash in New York this week. And now Ahmadinejad has served up a surprise by declaring his country would consider ending uranium enrichment.
Just days after an Israeli private security guard killed a Palestinian man and wounded four others, the Israeli navy fired upon a Palestinian fishing boat near Gaza and killed one fisherman. —JCL
Sign up for our newsletter and you will be automatically entered for a chance to win an autographed copy of Robert Scheer’s new book!
Sign up for our newsletter today and enter to win a personalized autographed copy of Truthdig Editor and Columnist Robert Scheer’s new book, “The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street.”
‘Left, Right & Center’: Summers and Volcker, GOP Pledge, Taxes, Schools
Newsletter 
Become a Fan
Follow Us
Subscribe
