The New York Times recently ran an article proclaiming the "return" of identity politics. This assumes that there's some other kind. Politics is about the accumulation of individual interests into collective decisions. Your interests, by definition, reflect your identity.

As the crisis in Iran deepens following Friday's disputed election and Western democracies debate its legitimacy, it seems important to remind ourselves that the burden is not on the people to prove state impropriety but on the state to demonstrate that it is expressing the will of the people.

In an article in this morning's Washington Post, two of the senior regulators most responsible for the current mess explain how, trust them, they'll do a better job this time round.

What does a shootout at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., the confessions of a Khmer Rouge jailer and the murder of a Kansas medical doctor have in common? The answer is "children," and how they suffer from being targeted and used by extremists to advance their own hateful agendas.

I read the quote from Helen Philpot in last Friday's Cheers and Jeers saying: "If you are born a white, male Christian in today's world and life didn't turn out the way you wanted, you probably have only yourself and the Rush Limbaugh Show to blame." Below the jump, a white male in today's world who's life hasn't turned out the way that he wants has a few thoughts.

The US media has been generally silent about $134 billion in bearer bonds seized by Italian police at the Swiss border. On June 8, AsiaNews reported: Italy's financial police (Guardia italiana di Finanza) has seized US bonds worth US $134.5 billion from two Japanese nationals at Chiasso (40 km from Milan) on the border between Italy and Switzerland. They include 249 US Federal Reserve bonds worth US $500 million each, plus ten Kennedy bonds and other US government securities worth a billion dollar each. Italian authorities have not yet determined whether they are real or fake, but if they are real the attempt to take them into Switzerland would be the largest financial smuggling operation in history.

If the fates had been kind, a world-famous author would have celebrated her 80th birthday yesterday. The fates, however, were not kind, and she never made it past sweet sixteen. She never lived to see herself become famous, as a result of the book prepared from her diary, which she had begun on her 13th birthday. Indeed, the diary survived only because of a family friend who, along with others, helped her and her family at tremendous personal risk. The book was originally published in the Netherlands as Het Achterhuis: Dagboekbrieven van 12 Juni 1942 " 1 Augustus 1944 (literal translation: The Back House: Diary Notes from 12 June 1942 " 1 August 1944), in 1947 in Holland. Even without clicking the link above, I'm sure you all realized the author to whom this introduction referred. What you may not remember immediately is that she

As the aftermath of the contested Iranian election continues, it's worth remembering that it isn't a military attack by the U.S. or Israel that the Islamic Republic of Iran fears most. It's a bloodless toppling of the regime as the result of reform and closer ties to the West. The trademark green of Mr. Mousavi's campaign, while in theory representing of Islam, aggravated those fears, as many in power saw parallels with the "Orange" and "Rose" revolutions that overthrew repressive regimes in Georgia and the Ukraine. Ironically, the bogeyman pointed to by fundamentalist Iranian clerics is the same one often cited by American right-wing conspriracists -- liberal currency speculator and political philanthropist George Soros.

I joined a discriminatory club the other day. Do I feel bad about it? No. I feel great. Proud, in fact. My husband and I joined together a month ago, actually. There was an initiation ceremony and a huge party to celebrate right after. Before you tell me that I should be ashamed at my bigotry, please understand, I was raised this way. My parents joined the same restrictive club years ago, well before I was born. Lots of their friends joined, as well. In fact, most of my friends either signed up or are thinking of doing so. And they all came and celebrated my decision to become a member. Now, some of my friends aren't allowed to join because the club has restricted membership. We don't discriminate on the basis of race. Well, not anymore. We stopped that in the 1960s.

It's Saturday, and my wife, the public school teacher, had a ton of grading to do before the end of the school year. So my daughter and I went out with our next-door neighbor and her daughter. My kid is four, her friend is eight. We rode the subway into town, planning to pass some time in the Boston Public Garden -- run around on the grass, watch the ducks, ride the swan boats, kill some time on a sunny afternoon. When we came up to street level from the subway, we heard a Mighty Noise, and to our astonishment and delight, there was line of colorfully dressed people marching down the street! It was the Boston Pride Parade.

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