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The resignation Sunday of Van Jones, White House environmental jobs "czar," is as much a cable TV story as it is a Washington political one. Jones, who was appointed by President Barack Obama to a high level position as a special adviser on "green jobs" and the environment, has been exposed in recent weeks for using coarse and reckless language in public meetings and signing a petitition that suggested members of former President George W. Bush's administration might have known about the 9/11 attacks in advance and still allowed them to happen. The media entity that first brought much of...

President Obama and the US Secretary of State fuelled a fierce American backlash against Britain, claiming Abdelbaset Al Megrahi should have been forced to serve out his jail sentence in Scotland – but a senior Whitehall aide said their reaction was ‘disingenuous’. British officials claim Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton were kept informed at all stages of discussions concerning Megrahi’s return. The officials say the Americans spoke out because they were taken aback by the row over Megrahi’s release, not because they did not know it was about to happen. What did Obama know and when did he know it?

Back to town comes Barack Obama after his holiday on Martha's Vineyard, to plummeting polls and sour columns rolling his presidency into the hearse. The memory offers scant comfort, but the previous two Democratic presidents endured similar rentrees to the nation's capital. When Bill Clinton got back from his own outing to Martha's Vineyard in the late summer of 1993, the collapse of his administration was already three months old. He was well into his rebirth cycle as a committed Republican. As an opposing, progressive challenge to business as usual, even by the wan standard of its own timid promises,...

Australia has a health care system which is similar in some aspects to what the Democrats are proposing. There is a public plan which covers about 70% of the country and private insurance which covers the rest. In a short time (the system was set up in 1983) the country became divided into one group that gets good medical care (private insurance) and the group whose insurance is not as good.For example those in the public system have to wait longer for surgery. There are also extensive waiting times for non emergency surgeries at public hospitals. Although waiting lists for...

NOVATO – The '60s aren't dead. They're in an archaeological site north of San Francisco. An old commune where the Grateful Dead and other bands used to romp is being excavated and items catalogued by state park archaeologists at Olompali State Historic Park. Among the artifacts: the classic hippie beads, a marijuana "roach clip," fragments of tie-dyed clothes, and a reel-to-reel tape a Marin County studio technician has promised to try to restore. They are the stuff of memories for Noelle Olompali-Barton, who was 16 when she and her showbiz mom plunged into California's new counterculture, retreating to this once-private...

If people relied on the mainstream media, especially print media, to keep up to date on the government, then they must have quite a shock this morning with the resignation of Van Jones. For instance, the New York Times makes its first mention of the Jones controversy this morning — by reporting his resignation: "In a victory for Republicans and the Obama administration’s conservative critics, Van Jones resigned as the White House’s environmental jobs “czar” on Saturday. Controversy over Mr. Jones’s past comments and affiliations has slowly escalated over several weeks, erupting on Friday with calls for his resignation." Did...

Director Michael Moore now wants nothing less than the complete overthrow of the modern capitalist system. Moore’s long-awaited film, which will open in L.A. and New York on Sept. 23 and nationwide on Oct. 2, is in part his post-mortem on the global financial system crash that began a year ago this month with the collapse of brokerage Lehman Bros. But the film takes on much more than the usual cast of blood-sucking bankers to make the case against capitalism, delving into unrewarded worker productivity, vultures who make their living off foreclosed homes and horror stories from a privately...

See how Axelrod tried his very best not answer Shuster's questions regarding Van Jones.

The August ratings are out, and once again, the ratings for the Fox News Channel are phenomenal. Rather than throwing a million pieces of data that every channel is spinning into madness, I ask you to consider just this one: On Sunday night, the third episode of AMC's highly-publicized and much-discussed series, "Mad Men," drew an audience of 1.6 million viewers at 10 p.m. when it debuted. Throughout the month of August, Fox News Channel averaged an audience of 2.29 million viewers during every single hour of prime time. And some nights, Bill O'Reilly drew an audience twice as large...

WASHINGTON -- In a striking move aimed at both shoring up his failing agenda and hoping to stop his administration from hemorrhaging into the worst since Jimmy Peanut-brained Carter’s, pResident Barack Obama today unveiled a bold new Cash for Czars program. “Van Jones was an environmentally-conscious Communist dedicated to outlandish statements, un-concealable past indiscretions, and irrepressible acts of irresponsibility,” Obama said during an impromptu news conference in the Rose Garden Sunday, attended by only a few remaining media friends, in particular Chris Matthews. “We admit to incredible breaches in our czar evaluation system. As a result, by the executive order...

The video report implies that Glenn Beck began focusing on Van Jones after Color of Change launched an anti-Beck Campaign. In fact, Beck had been reporting on Jones before the boycott was announced.

The victim: John Colman. Not much is known about him, much less about his murder. His body was hastily buried and has never been found. A weapon was recovered, but it vanished. The only account of the crime is secondhand, pieced together from a few witnesses, some of whom might have harbored a grudge. The chief suspects were singled out because of racial profiling but were never questioned. No one was ever prosecuted. It was on Sept. 6, 1609 — 400 years ago Sunday — when this, the first recorded murder in what became metropolitan New York, was committed. Colman...

Along with a box of matches and a piece of string, they've always been an essential part of a Scout's kit. But now penknives are going to be restricted on scouting trips as a seemingly innocent tradition succumbs to concerns over the nation's blade culture. The Scout Association is advising boys and their parents that they should not bring such knives to camp - despite it being legal for anyone to carry a foldable, nonlocking blade in a public place as long as it is shorter than 3ins. Scouts have been taught to carry knives and have used them to...

TOA BAJA — First, riot police raided the slum with batons and pepper spray. Then authorities shut off the water and electricity. With an eviction order pending in the courts, police stand sentry outside the shacks belonging mostly to Dominican migrants.

America has been greatly blessed by God and has stood as the greatest country in the history of the world for over 200 years. America has many foreign and domestic enemies that are seeking her destruction.This thread is a daily call and reminder for people of faith who believe in God and in the power of prayer to make a commitment to intercede for America at this critical time in her history2 Chronicles 7:14If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I...

The outspoken Democrat and former presidential candidate vigorously defended Jones, who resigned in the wake of criticism over his past statements and associations -- including his past support for a group that believes the Bush administration may have been involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. "I think he was brought down," Dean told "FOX News Sunday," saying he just spoke to Jones. "I think it's a loss for the country." Dean pointed to Jones' credentials as a Yale Law School graduate and best-selling author. Though Jones signed a 2004 statement calling for an investigation into possible Bush administration involvement in...

When China’s biggest oil company signed the first post-invasion oil field development contract in Iraq last year, the deal was seen as a test of Iraq’s willingness to open an industry that had previously prohibited foreign investment. One year later, the China National Petroleum Corporation has struck oil at the Ahdab field in Wasit Province, southeast of Baghdad. And while the relationship between the company and the Iraqi government has gone smoothly, the presence of a foreign company with vast resources drilling for oil in this poor, rural corner of Iraq has awakened a wave of discontent here. “We get...

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights sent a letter in August to Attorney General Eric Holder, issuing a stinging rebuke to the Obama administration's Department of Justice (DOJ). A footnote in the letter criticized the DOJ's dismissal of a Philadelphia voter intimidation case against a group called the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (NBP). The footnote called the DOJ's voluntary dismissal of the case “even more corrosive to the rule of law than the dismissal without comment.” The DOJ filed a lawsuit in January under the Voting Rights Act against the NBP and three of its members alleging the...

SEATTLE (AP) -- A cougar that apparently had lived in Seattle for more than two weeks and forced the city's largest park to close was captured early Sunday and returned to the wild, state wildlife officials said.

Here's an FR thread from when Mark Lloyd's article on the "Structural Imbalance in Broadcast Talk Radio" first appeared.