Three centuries after the appearance of Franklin's 'Courant', it no longer requires a dystopic imagination to wonder who will have the dubious distinction of publishing America's last genuine newspaper. Few believe that newspapers in their current printed form will survive.

Three centuries after the appearance of Franklin’s ‘Courant,’ it no longer requires a dystopic imagination to wonder who will have the dubious distinction of publishing America’s last genuine newspaper. Few believe that newspapers in their current printed form will survive.

More and more, Democrats are starting to worry they that they have a more um, colorful version of Jimmy Carter on their hands. Obama acts cool as a proverbial cucumber but that awful ’70s show seems frightfully close to a rerun.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the tactics of the Occupy Wall Street movement, it’s easy to understand the inspiration for its anger as well as its impatience.

President Obama has lowered taxes more than he has raised them, and they are today lower than they were in President Reagan’s time. But you don’t hear conservatives crowing about that.

The word liberal has been employed as the political equivalent of an untreatable but potentially containable social disease – the kind that could be contracted merely by going to a foreign movie or ordering a decaf latte, or worse, a glass of French wine.

Ironically, tendency to ignore inconvenient facts and unwelcome evidence is actually President Reagan’s true legacy, as I noted in ‘The Nation’ back in 2000, before the current right-wing mania for President Reagan gained its full force.

One of the many, many salutary aspects of Barack Obama’s impending presidential nomination is the sea change his victory marks in the battle for the mind-set of the American foreign policy establishment.

If newspapers were a baseball team, they would be the Mets – without the hope for those folks at the very pinnacle of the financial food chain – who average nearly $24 million a year in income – ‘next year.’

Philosophers and theologians have argued for centuries over the morality of targeted assassinations - a technique that the Israelis use with some frequency - without ever reaching anything approaching consensus.