Credit: blog.chron.com There was a bit of a fly in the ointment for the birthday bash for Obama in Chicago on Saturday, as any of his advisors who read the New York Times were able to plainly see. The editorial noted that job growth in July wasn't enough to lower the unemployment rate and said that since the market lacks forward momentum, that the government could and should provide. "What’s needed is direct intervention in the form of more federal spending on education, infrastructure, clean ...

Credit: map.google.com The New York Times has a report on a suppressed 800-page human rights report concerning Afghanistan's civil war in the 90s, which reveals that many of the most senior members of the Afghan government are, not to put too fine a point on it, as much mass-murderers as any Taliban leader. The list of names is a sort of who’s who of power players in Afghanistan: former and current warlords or officials, some now in very prominent positions in the national government, as well ...

The entire North of the continent of Africa seems to be melting down right now, with the underlying causes being drought, famine and competition to exploit natural resources. There are Egypt's calvinball twists and other Arab Spring revolts, as well as unrest and chaos in Mali, and Sudan, and Somalia. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo the rebels are making inroads in the east - possibly with Rwandan help. The ongoing violence in Nigeria, is both tribal and religious. A revolt in Chad with ...

As a Scotsman living in the U.S. I get the same question, often in tones of anticipatory schadenfraude, every Fourth of July, "How do you feel watching us all celebrate our Independence Day?" But few expect the answer, "Jealous!" You see, British history makes the issue a wee bit more complicated than many Americans realise. I'm not just a citizen of what used to be the great Imperial Power, which lost a war to a bunch of backwoodsmen who then went on to found the greatest, most powerful singl...

Journalists are taking a look at the various Obama administration assertions about the number of civilians killed by US drone attacks in Pakistan and are concluding they are "contradictory and sometimes imply improbable conclusions." They all minimize the possible civilian death toll, saying there's been "a handful." The maximum figure ever given is sixty. Worse, US policy appears to consider all military age males in a strike area as combatants and thus targetable. There have been 307 drone st...

This is not a rhetorical question: would you have the guts to appear on the cover of Time magazine if you were an undocumented immigrant? Honestly, I don't think I'm brave enough for that. I couldn't do it. Featured on the magazine's cover between the phrases "We Are Americans*" and "*Just not legally," Vargas is joined by other undocumented immigrants from around the world. The men and women pictured along with Vargas also recently came out of the shadows and revealed their immigration status ...

Quite a few conservative commentators are making waves about a Government Accountability Office statement (PDF) which says that 1.5 trillion barrels of shale oil in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming may be recoverable. Their reactions are all along the same lines: this shale-oil reserve could "by itself supply domestic oil consumption for more than 200 years", and "will Obama, in a possible second term, block the development of the resources that can assure America’s economic supremacy for generation...