Author: Norman Solomon

A reasonably evenhanded biography of Barack Obama, published last year, describes him as “an exceptionally gifted politician who, throughout his life, has been able to make people of wildly divergent vantage points see in him exactly what they want to see.” The biographer, David Mendell, reports that “the higher he soared, the more this politician…

Speaking in a time of war, Martin Luther King Jr. said: “Somehow this madness must cease.” Forty-one years later, young soldiers are returning to the United States from terrifying zones of carnage. The old claims of a justified war have melted away. So have the promises of a humane society back home. Statistics about the…

With 223 days left in his presidency, George W. Bush laid more flagstones along a path to war on Iran. There was the usual declaration that “all options are on the table” — and, just as ominously, much talk of diplomacy. Three times on Wednesday, the Associated Press reports, Bush “called a diplomatic solution ‘my…

In politics, as in so many other aspects of life, anger is a combustible fuel. Affirmed and titrated, it helps us move forward. Suppressed or self-indulged, it’s likely to blow up in our faces. With the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination coming to a close, there’s plenty of anger in the air. And…

Barack Obama’s triumph on Tuesday night was a victory over a wall that pretends to be a fly on the wall. For a long time, the nation’s body politic has been shoved up against that wall — known as the news media. Despite all its cracks and gaps, what cements the wall is mostly a…