Events of the last week in Bahrain have made me see how naive I was about the country - even after my visit there last October. Before this last week, I had no idea that much of Bahrain's internal tensions stem from a Sunni minority's rule over a Shia majority. Other factors are at work, of course - including basic tenets of democratic civil ( Read more... )

I guess after what happened in Egypt I shouldn't be surprised by anything, but I definitely wouldn't have guessed that protests would now be taking place in Bahrain. As I wrote when I visited the country back in October, Bahrain seemed stable - not exactly a representative democracy, but certainly much more so than its immediate neighbor Saudi ( Read more... )

I've been watching with some interest the "Jasmine Revolution" in Tunisia (also known as the "Twitter Revolution"), as protesters in that country have successfully overthrown a corrupt, autocratic government. Seeing as how I recently visited a neighboring country in the Maghreb - Algeria - I asked an American friend living there if similar ( Read more... )

Yesterday kicked off a momentous fortnight in New Orleans, with a mayoral election, the Saints' participation in the Super Bowl, and Mardi Gras all taking place in a span of eleven days.

Saturday's election of Mitch Landrieu ushered in the city's first new mayor since Hurricane Katrina. (Ray Nagin was term-limited - and surely would have been voted ( Read more... )

My MoveOn.org Obama pin finally arriving - on election day... Testing the "electioneering" rules and wearing my pin to the polling place - only to have the poll worker make me remove it... Pulling the lever with pride (and hope)... Spending the day in strangled anticipation and worrying about the Bradley Effect... My sister-in-law's 9 p.m. self- ( Read more... )

Recently, Phoebe has discovered the word (and concept) "baby." Wherever she sees a baby - in real life, in books, on TV, on her jars of food, even photos of herself - she yells out "bay-beeeee!" She's totally fixated.

The funniest thing, though, is she thinks pictures of balding old men are babies too. Specifically, one of the guys running for ( Read more... )

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You are a

Social Liberal

(80% permissive)

and an...

Economic Liberal

(10% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Socialist


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I was never a horror movie fan as a kid, but lately I've become attracted to them, specifically to zombie movies. I'd seen George Romero's Night of the Living Dead some years ago, but recently I took in the sequels Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead. I also saw two British takes on the genre, the hilarious but gruesome Sean of the Dead and 28 ( Read more... )

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