I must protest -- even at the risk of having my press credential arbitrarily and summarily revoked -- the latest undemocratic decision by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Fresh on the heels of having abrogated the decision of the people at the ballot box regarding the matter of term limits,...

Van Jones, one of our nation's most dynamic and insightful orators, perhaps put it best before a fired-up Netroots Nation. "It's naïve to expect the next president to fix everything that's broken," Jones told digital activists assembled in Austin not too long ago. "In fact, I don't think we...

"What a man sow shall he reap --
And you know that talk is cheap..."
- Bob Marley

John McCain was right in August when he called John Lewis one of the "wisest people" he knew.

So when Representative Lewis -- a Georgia Democrat and veteran...

My friend phoned last week, just to check in and say hello. I missed his call, and the message asked that I not return it immediately, as it was getting late in Rome. He sounded up, as usual, and I made a mental note to get back to him later...

Only in America could a man who has been in office for decades run as an "outsider" against the entrenched interests in Washington

Only in America could a man who is a longtime Republican stalwart run against his own party, which has governed while controlling most of the institutional...

Precisely four years and one month ago, after seeing an unknown state senator from Illinois electrify the Democratic convention floor with a keynote speech that set him on what seemed clear to me at the time was a direct path to the presidency, I wrote the following words:

"Last...

On Monday, "First Read," an online analysis of the day's political news from the NBC News political unit, reported "Per NBC's Kelly O'Donnell" that master media strategist Mark McKinnon, -- who famously stunned the nexus of Big Media and Big Politics when he resigned as John McCain's top media...

Last month, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona's Maricopa County visited nearby Pima County for a book signing ("Joe's Law: America's Toughest Sheriff Takes on Illegal Immigration, Drugs and Everything Else that Threatens America") at a Tucson Barnes & Noble. The event drew protests against the controversial and reactionary lawman,...

After Jenna Kern, a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church, decided to write an Op-Ed piece for Newsday questioning whether shock jocks and hate speech contributed to the recent murderous shooting spree in a U-U church in Tennessee, the haters started to come after her as well.

Angry citizen reaction to the latest cynical, cyclical outpouring of hateful speech over the public radio airwaves -- top-rated talk show host Michael Savage's despicable attack on autistic children as "brats, morons and idiots" -- has once again injected America's talk radio problem back into the mainstream news cycle. But...

It was too good to be true.

The Romanian Senate recently and unanimously voted in favor of a law that would require 50 percent of the material reported by media outlets in that country to be "positive news."

Senators said the law would help to fight against "the extraordinary harms...

Shock Jock Michael Reagan, son of the late president, recently called on-air for the murder of a political opponent, saying "I'll pay for the bullets." Should we just "change the channel?" Check out this vlog and decide for yourself:

Conservative fears of an impending Democratic attack on talk radio -- dubbed the "Hush Rush" effort in an homage to top-rated radio talker Rush Limbaugh -- continue to escalate, despite ample evidence that such an assault is unlikely to occur when (as is likely) Democrats sweep back into power in...

The email alert read "Breaking from Newsmax.com," the conservative online news site that also publishes Newsmax Magazine. One item in particular caught my attention: Special: Will President Obama Ban O'Reilly, Rush?

One click, however, reveals this "breaking" news is simply old wine poured into a "special" new anti-Obama bottle: a...

The following is an excerpt from Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio by Rory O'Connor with Aaron Cutler (AlterNet Books, 2008).

Laura Ingraham is ... different. Not only is Ingraham younger than many other conservative radio personalities (at 45, she's more than a decade from Limbaugh's cohort), and the...

Who is Michael Savage? On its surface the answer seems obvious: he's a 66-year-old nationally syndicated conservative talk radio host whose program, The Savage Nation, airs five days a week from its home base of KNEW in San Francisco. He's the founder of the Paul Revere Society, which, according to...

There's a clever, effective technique often employed by coaches in the National Basketball Association, used to gain a subtle but demonstrable edge in close games, known as "working the refs." In essence, it involves endless and bitter complaints about your opponents' supposed advantages -- to your own future advantage. Aggressively...

If you're a Democratic primary voter in Ohio, Texas or Pennsylvania, and are still torn between Obama and the Clintons, here's the best reason I know to throw your support to Obama: Mark McKinnon.

Love him or hate him, there's general agreement that McKinnon -- the chief...

Remember back in the last century, when Toni Morrison playfully dubbed Bill Clinton our first "Black President," adding that Clinton "displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas?"

Back then, it was considered cool...

Is Time magazine's "full" and "complete" transcript of its "Person of the Year" interview with Vladimir Putin a fraudulent cover up? It appears so. A glaring factual error was apparently edited out of the transcript in an attempt to spare top executives embarrassment over an exchange at the beginning of...