Democratic Conversation

by Mark Beyer 
The airwaves and cyberpages hum with comments on Tibet’s domestic uprising against Chinese rule, repression, and their latest military crackdown against mostly (but not exclusively) peaceful demonstrations. The reporting is dutiful, the commentary sympathetic. But the Tibetans need neither dutiful nor sympathetic words. What they need is action.
But what can The West do? […]

by Mark Beyer 
What I think really doesn’t matter. Only, lets look at some facts on the largest issues of the 2008 presidential election.
If you vote for Sen. John McCain, you vote for $1 billion per week spent to fund George W. Bush’s Iraq occupation. Whatever else the Iraq occupation is and is not, the American […]

by Mark Beyer
Any review of John Bolton’s “Surrender is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad” could without great effort slump into ad hominem attacks of this former US Ambassador to the United Nations. In fact, I’m sure some will. Bolton is an easy target, given his inflammatory rhetoric about and […]

by James Houda
Change. What is it? Do we just understand it better than its synonyms; how about “modification” or “alteration” for the future?
“We shall mutate your future!”
Now that’s a slogan I can get behind.
How does anyone truly effect change with those powerhouse slogans in mind? Change is not something that is easily embraced. The fear […]

Nearly half of the USA’s children start school in the middle of August. Another 12% begin before Aug. 14. The kids certainly feel this; their summer vacation has been cut short, and right now they often stand in summer mornings’ heat waiting for a bus, or else stand in summer afternoon’s blazing heat and ozone-poisoned […]