Song of the Day 3/16: Yusuf Islam, “Don’t Let Me Be Understood”
When Cat Stevens converted to Islam in 1977, he changed his name and dropped out of the music industry for almost 30 years. He made headlines in 1989 when he…
Biden, Stacey Abrams Hold Private Meeting
The Associated Press reported that Stacey Abrams, who lost the Georgia governor's office in a race tainted by voter suppression, and Joe Biden held a private meeting in Washington on…
White Nationalists Now World’s No. 1 Terrorism Threat
That's not just my opinion. It's what anti-terrorism expert Brian Levin, Director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, told MSNBC this morning.…
Song of the Day 3/15: The Who, “Pictures of Lily”
I've been talking a lot about power pop recently, mainly because it seems Jason330 is a fan of the genre even if he didn't realize what it was called. So…
Song of the Day 3/14: Van Morrison, “In the Days Before Rock and Roll”
Everybody is familiar with the Van Morrison canon from his classic period in the '60s and '70s, but he's been turning out often-inspired music without a break ever since leaving…
If Two Years Wasn’t Such a Long Time
My wife and I have a friend in Lebanon -- the country, not the Pennsylvania town -- whom we've known since the 1970s, when Lebanon's civil war was still being…
Song of the Day 3/13: Minus the Bear, “Absinthe Party at the Fly Honey Warehouse”
I'm not an absinthe drinker, but the lyrics of this song from Minus the Bear's first album speak directly to my present situation: Hey, let's cross the sea and get…
Song of the Day 3/12: Sugar Stems, “We Only Come Out at Night”
I'm invoking our new Earworm Warning for this one, which I first heard when it was released in 2014 and not much since. Yet it popped into my head unbidden…
High Praise for Kathleen Jennings’ Reforms
El Somnambulo wrote weeks ago about Attorney General Kathleen Jennings' bold prosecution and sentencing reforms. Now her program is gaining national attention. Shaun King, the social-justice activist, journalist and author,…
Even If Justice Is Blind, It Knows the Smell of Money
The light sentence a federal judge handed to Paul Manafort infuriated people who saw giving him only 4 years after his execrable behavior as a travesty of justice. But the…
Climate Change Won’t Wait for Your Incrementalism
Today's Tom Tomorrow strip sums this all up nicely: Behind all the criticism of the "New Deal of Greenness" lies an inescapable truth: Doing only what is "politically possible" dooms…
Song of the Day 3/11: AC/DC, “Hard as a Rock”
Can someone please explain why Viagra hasn't used this as their theme song? The Young brothers didn't even bother to disguise it a double entendre -- it's crystal clear what…
Song of the Day 3/10: The Outsiders, “Time Won’t Let Me”
The American answer to the British Invasion was in full swing by 1965, when a Cleveland R & B outfit called the Starfires got signed to Capitol Records and changed…