BY FROMA HARROP One item in the annals of American exceptionalism is how exceptionally badly behaved American children are. We who hang around international airports often marvel at how European toddlers wait calmly while their American cohorts run down the halls or lie sprawled on the floor in a screaming tantrum. This is a generality, […]

BY ALEXANDER COCKBURN Back in the 1960s, Herbert Marcuse pointed out in one of his books that the Pentagon had given up on verbs. Pentagonese consisted of clotted groups of nouns, marching along in groups of three or four. Verbs, which connected nouns in purposive thrust, were regarded as unreliable and probably subversive. They talked […]

BY SUSAN ESTRICH Newt’s easy. While all of us on the Democratic side were playing “root for Newt,” Republicans were taking the proverbial second and third look – and getting scared by what they saw. Hello, Herman Cain. Oldest rule in politics: The faster the balloon fills with air the faster it blows up. On […]

BY FROMA HARROP My, how you’ve changed, Big Brother. What happened to the sourpuss in 1984, George Orwell’s grim novel about a thought-controlled future? Gone are the piercing eyes and the perennial threat: “Big Brother is Watching.” You’ve had quite the fashion update. I like how you dress in T-shirts and sweats, just like the […]

BY JIM HIGHTOWER Early last year, during an intimate chat and chew dinner with some Silicon Valley high-tech barons, President Barack Obama posed a question to Steve Jobs, baron of the Apple empire: “What would it take to make iPhones in the United States?” Good question! To rebuild our middle class, we need to put […]