Like so many others, I have been listening to the President's Cairo speech, and reading and listening to various commentaries on it. I was moved by the compassion and courage of the speech, aware that it was not strong on details, but recognizing that details were not its purpose. I saw a President who not only changed the rhetoric of the Bush years, but also brought a totally new world vision to the issues.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has decided to try to slash cal grants to solve the budget crisis. The future of hundreds of thousands of college students literally hangs in the balance. Please, watch this action video, send it to your friends, and call your legislators to preserve the dream of education and opportunity for all Californians.

A new website has been launched to address the economics of climate change. The Real Climate Economics website "offers a reader's guide to the real economics of climate change, an emerging body of scholarship that is consistent with the urgency of the problem as seen from a climate science perspective."

Two have succeeded. Others are threatening to dump their milk. There have been two suicides. I buy from a local raw milk dairy myself but a when you look at ag from the perspective of the people doing the work you make it personal. It's not a cardboard container or plastic jug that appears regularly in your grocer's dairy section. There are human beings behind that product.

I am old enough to remember what are often called "back-alley" abortions. My suite mate in college died in a pool of blood from one such procedure, performed by an un-trained medical student. Back in those days (I was attending an historically black college with strict rules mandating "morality" for young women) if a female student got pregnant, she was expelled from school. No disciplinary procedures ensued for her impregnator.

Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC) has been played for a fool. He accepted Sri Lanka's offer of an expenses-paid, whirlwind p.r. tour and then came out flaking for a government that has reportedly shelled hospitals, detained doctors for reporting on the shelling of hospitals, confined civilians in deplorable conditions, denied reporters access, and blocked humanitarian aid.

President Barack Obama's historic speech to the Muslim world, delivered June 4 at Cairo's al-Azhar University, Islam's highest institution of learning, was"like much in the president's program"a meaningful step forward nonetheless compromised by tactical equivocation. This is illustrated by two historical invocations in his text: one a courageous repudiation of his predecessor's Christian crusader mentality"the other a dangerous omission that undermines his message of reconciliation.

You may recall that I created the Obama Inauguration cover for The Nation magazine. It's been a while and I've been busy on the poster for that cover. I've added over 30 new figures to the artwork, but I could still use your advice.

There are countless news publications dedicated to "insider" political information, a commodity that, if done well, is supposed to cater to various pols and wonks who meticulously follow action inside the Beltway. But when it comes to the on-line reporting from Politico, there appears to be a growing divide between insider fantasy and reality.

In 1974, F.W. Winterbotham told a story that put thirty years of historical analysis into question. His story involved a huge conspiracy, amidst one of the most widely studied events in human history, and it had been kept secret for nearly three decades. And it was true. It was a conspiracy of commonality.

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