In the wide world of sports, football, or soccer as we Americans call it, is the game most foreign to me, the game with the most danger and the most glitter. I grew up in a suburb of Philadelphia called Rydal. My afternoons consisted chiefly of reading or martial arts. Though now, I can add literate black belt to my CV; then, I was in quiet awe of the kids from nearby Elkins Park who'd arrive to school wearing impossibly shiny soccer jersey's and baggy Umbro shorts. Their last names -- Farrell, McGinley, Beatty -- were printed in bold white letters across their backs but their jerseys might just as well have read Cool, Confident and Manly. My favorite shirt, on the other hand, was one commemorating the appearance of Halley's Comet in 1986. At recess, they were the ones first picked and more often than not, the captains. I became an expert at Oregon Trail and played it an hour per day, on our schools Apple IIe's. From the computer lab window, the soccer field was a tableau of glistening athleticism and wholesomeness. Frozen for an instant, one could pick out the striations on the boys' -- and the occasional girls' -- prepubescent quadriceps, sweat beadlets flung off their heads and coolness -- like heat waves -- radiating outwards. I had just attempted to ford a river and my oxen had drowned. Soccer 1, Oregon Trail 0....Full post... (read more)

When I heard on cable television what Ann Coulter wrote and said about the widows of 9/11, my first reaction was pretty much unprintable. I have no apologies for it. Did this woman ever for a second stop and think that these womens' children might be watching TV and have to listen to her venomous words? So much for family values. Then I thought: grotesque as it is, this is her attempt to be provocative -- infamy's its own kind of fame -- to get her mug on TV and sell books. Coulter is counting on this "controversy" to get her ink and sell her angry harangue of a book....Full post... (read more)

For 12 days I have been living in a tree or a tent in the middle of South Central L.A on the South Central Farm. I've been staying here 24/7 with dozens of other supporters including the inspiring Julia Butterfly Hill (who is on her 17th day of a water fast as a prayer for the farm) and John Quigley (another forest defender and tree sitter) who are trying to secure permanent protection for this beautiful oasis which is the largest urban farm in the United States....Full post... (read more)

Tom Hayden1% (1 vote)Alec Baldwin2% (3 votes)Stan Goss0% (0 votes)Harry Reid1% (1 vote)Sheldon Drobny1% (1 vote)Max Blumenthal1% (2 votes)Greg Gutfeld88% (119 votes)Deepak Chopra1% (2 votes)Jane Hamsher4% (6 votes)Russell Shaw0% (0 votes)Total votes: 135... (read more)

As a child I recall Thanksgiving with mixed emotions. I enjoyed the big family feast with relatives I had not seen since the previous Thanksgiving, but I dreaded the days after. It was turkey ad nauseam. By the sixth day my father would make what he called "Turkey a la King," which was turkey remnants along with whatever else he could find to put in the pot. As emotions flare on both sides of the immigration debate it has morphed into "Immigration a la King." But unlike my father's mysterious concoction, the ingredients are well known. It consists of one part legitimate public policy, one part ethnocentrism, and one part political pandering. ...Full post... (read more)

In 1966, Robert F. Kennedy first walked with disenfranchised farmworkers in Delano, California to learn their story and to see what he could do to bring hardworking people some justice. Forty years later, Ethel Kennedy and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney walked with members of the southwest Florida based farmworker's rights group the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in the impoverished farmworker community of Immokalee, FL. This was the first stop of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Poverty Tour: a Journey for Economic and Social Justice commemorating the 40th anniversary of RFK's original "poverty tour"....Full post... (read more)

Like other great issues that defined earlier generations, Americans today are conflicted over illegal immigration. It is not surprising, because not only is this a complicated issue, it also represents another serious clash of competing values that many of us hold dear. This conflict over competing values, which will play out in cities across the nation over the next week and beyond, is the trademark of great struggles in our society. For example, a majority of Americans will say that abortion represents manslaughter because destroying a fetus is killing a human life, yet majorities support the competing values of a woman's right to choose an abortion, and the use of embryonic stem cells for medical research to cure dread diseases. In this case, as in the case of illegal immigration, our recent polling shows many people embrace conflicting values....Full post... (read more)

My goodness, I thought POST readers were too sophisticated to fall for--let alone employ--the old "it's just illegal immigration we're against" dodge. So I'm postponing this week's blog to provide a little historical context. "It's only because they're illegal that we're against them" would be more convincing if those who employ this evasion weren't making the very same complaints about illegal immigrants that were directed against the legal immigrants of yesteryear: "they're taking our jobs", "they're a drain on the state", "they're monopolizing our resources", "they're undermining our values", "they're uncivilized", "crime rates will rise". These anti-immigration arguments led to the very same exclusionary laws behind which today's ethnocentrists are hiding. "Illegal" is Washington shorthand for "poor and Mexican". People sneak across the Canadian border every day, but no one ever talks about these "illegals"....Full post... (read more)

Thirty-five years ago today, I testified before the United States Senate. I was a 27-year-old Vietnam veteran who believed the war had to come to an end. It was 1971.Three years earlier, Richard Nixon had been elected president with a secret plan for peace -- a plan he kept secret from the American people as young Americans continued to die for a mission high-ranking officials of two administrations had decided was unwinnable. ...Full post... (read more)

When hundreds of thousands took to the streets throughout the country last week in protest of the House of Representatives immigration bill it was a defiant act demonstrating a belief in American democracy. It is but one more example of a curious phenomenon in our country's brief history where those on the underside of life remind the dominant culture of the democratic ideals it claims to represent. ...Full post... (read more)