For those looking to circumvent the big blockbusters, kid stuff and puerile comedies, summer at the movie theatre can leave us cold.  Michael Douglas’ sad, smoldering performance in “Solitary Man,” which might have been left in the pre-Oscar popcorn dust of the fall, is one of the season’s serious surprises. I don’t want to over-sell [...]

A report, published by Human Rights Watch yesterday, accuses France, Germany and the United Kingdom of sending the wrong message on torture by using foreign intelligence obtained under torture in the so called “war on terror”. The global ban on torture is a corner stone of international law for all nations either in peace or [...]

The extraction of oil is a catastrophe whether it goes as according to plan or not. We are not talking about whether we save the Gulf or not – we are quibbling about whether we get to use the oil before it kills off the oceans. That is the only thing that is at issue. Either way we destroy the Gulf, so can we please stop pretending otherwise?.

Things change, slowly but surely. Under the leadership of Raul Castro, official policies have changed slightly in Cuba. Early in his tenure, Raul Castro hinted at experimenting with an expansion of independently-owned small businesses, alongside the creation of worker-cooperatives, in an attempt to revive the island’s collapsed economy. Since then,  small business experiments with Cuba’s [...]

The confirmation hearings for Solicitor General Elena Kagan to be the next Supreme Court Justice begin Monday. The hearing could be full of political grandstanding, legal debate, or personal inquiry. I expect all of the above. Words such as bright, wonderful temperament, great listener, straight shooter are often used to describe Kagan. When he announced [...]