From the fireworks in DC this week, you might think the auto crisis is out of your hands, but we're all complicit: government, CEOs, autoworkers, public. The Big Three automakers are incapable of imagining and executing better on a large scale, unless forced to do so. So the problem requires...

Obama's imprint goes something like this: defeat racism by ignoring it. Obama has defanged racism by neglect.

And accordingly, there's going to be tremendous pressure within the black community to question this newfound freedom. Already, today's black leaders are cautious and quick to remind Americans that Obama won the...

"So far in 40 years!" my mother says this to me breathless.

When she got married, my grandfather said he'd shoot my dad with a shotgun (an inauspicious but common beginning for an interracial marriage).

Defying my grandfather's threat's part of the reason I got a chance at...

Video from CNN:

And oddly, this update from a Russian press agency, which does work for the government :

"MOSCOW, October 30 (RIA Novosti) - High priests from around the globe are reported to have taken...

I'm trying to think of where Sarah Palin and I parted ways. There would be the abysmal interviews, the rhetoric whipping up crowds into meanspiritedness, the questionable judgment regarding the firing of her staff and use of her power and money spent on her behalf, but for...

Americans are mistaken if they think they will be safer with John McCain.

The electorate has hardened and choices have been made, but as national security will likely be significant to the next administration, I'd go against the conventional wisdom here to say that McCain is not best-equipped to deal...

The latest NIEs report that Iraq and Afghanistan don't look good.

Putting aside policies, choices, maneuvers, America is implicated, if only because it is on display.

We are like a city on a hill. This image or myth is political and religious, as in John Winthrop's...

I feel like it's September 10th again.

You know, that time before the sh-t hit the fan.

(September 10th 2001, I was at a birthday party. I remember as I sat at the table looking around at my friends, I saw through the haze two waiters in stark clothes:...

Hillary Clinton made an excellent show of her support for Senator Obama and the Democrats at the DNC party. But now is her moment to show that she is more than just motions for the Democratic nominee for president. She is, in fact, the perfect answer to Sarah Palin, John...

As John Amato, from Crooks and Liars assiduously points out: Maureen Dowd, Steven Benen, Ana Marie Cox, and Ben Smith, among others have noted how John McCain is playing his war hero card - hard. (Newsweek's Howard...

The problem with John McCain and his houses is not that he has them or doesn't know how many he has. It's that most Americans aspire to be so lucky, to have his wealth.

So to belabor the point...

What I'm really saying is Americans are unconscious. You can see it in the verbs. This isn't a value judgment, I am just intrigued by what gets in and what get out, what impacts people and how they think.

Take those Europeans. Look at the passage below from Fareed...

A failed president looks to make a hand-off to a lackluster candidate. The young brilliant upstart Barack Obama is only ahead by single digits. Why? At least part of the reason is this: John McCain knows how to control his message.

Controlling your message shows a kind of power....

There's a current of disrespect for blacks that needs to be fixed. People who are mistreated either get even or get violent. In America, of course, we have a third option, we forgive. It seems some Americans just don't get this about blacks, that's a lesson they need to learn....

prag•ma•tism
-noun. character or conduct that emphasizes practicality.

I have some respect for practicality. You know, a few voices sharing how to impact the big picture, in the way the entire body desires. Instead of all parts walking one foot forward -- one hand is picking the...

It's one of those things -- you might assume about the people standing behind the mic at a primary victory speech -- that they're local volunteers or supporters from region which voted.

So who's that black man with the boxing gloves who's appeared at least twice at Clinton's victory...

In an amazing turn of events, in this week's primaries in North Carolina and Indiana, Americans got over Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Given Senator Obama's triumph this week - you might guess the larger community of voting Americans, at least those in Indiana and North Carolina, had seen through the Wright...

Despite its promising message, the reviews of Morgan Spurlock's new film, Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?, opening this week, have not been kind. A.O. Scott, is downright dismissive:

Mr. Spurlock, more so here than in Super Size Me, advances an essentially anti-political view of the...

I've never been one of those "free Tibet" people. And it's not because I don't like Richard Gere, the outspoken celebrity for whom the plight of Tibet has become his personal cause... it's just always seemed like none of my business.

So when the hubbub about the Olympics and...