Americans Support Goal of Improved Relations With Muslim World  —  Most Americans think President Obama's pledge to “seek a new way forward” with the Muslim world is an important goal, even as nearly half hold negative views about Islam and a sizable number say that even mainstream adherents …

Voters Say 3-1 Paterson Does Not Deserve Election, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds; Most Say He Should Announce Now He Won't Run  —  New York State voters disapprove 60 - 28 percent of the job Gov. David Paterson is doing, the lowest approval ever for a New York Governor, and say 63 …

Bob Dylan on Barack Obama, Ulysses Grant and American Civil War ghosts  —  Listen to an exclusive track from Bob Dylan's new album, and read his views on US politics and history, exclusively on Times Online  —  Exclusive track: Listen to Feel A Change Comin' On

From Bubble to Depression?  —  Bubbles have been frequent in economic history, and they occur in the laboratories of experimental economics under conditions which — when first studied in the 1980s — were considered so transparent that bubbles would not be observed.

How to Clean a Dirty Bank  —  COMMERCIAL banks in the United States are not subject to the bankruptcy statute — when they become insolvent they are simply acquired by the government.  This is what banks sign on for in return for a charter, deposit insurance and direct access …

THE BUSH SIX  —  About a year ago, a book came out in England that made a fascinating prediction: at some point in the future, the author wrote, six top officials in the Bush Administration would get a tap on the shoulder announcing that they were being arrested on international charges of torture.

Special panel set to do last count in Minn. Senate race  —  The Minnesota Senate race has been undecided for so long that “it's sort of like the Iraq war,” says Bruce Carlson of Brooklyn Park, Minn. “People almost forget that it's still going on.”  —  A sharp reminder will come Tuesday …

Italy muzzled scientist who foresaw quake  —  Source: Reuters  —  An Italian scientist predicted a major earthquake around L'Aquila weeks before disaster struck the city on Monday, killing dozens of people, but was reported to authorities for spreading panic among the population.

Obamateurism of the Day  —  George Bush's critics rightly roasted him for his tortured syntax and waterboarded grammar, and used it to make the claim that the graduate of both Harvard and Yale was an idiot.  Well, perhaps, but I don't recall him ever claiming that Austrian was a language.

2006 Israel-Lebanon War Looms Large in Pentagon Debate on Future  —  Leaders Divided on Whether to Focus On Conventional or Irregular Combat  —  A war that ended three years ago and involved not a single U.S. soldier has become the subject of an increasingly heated debate inside the Pentagon …

Pentagon lets media see return of US war dead  —  DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. - The Pentagon's 18-year ban on media covering the return of fallen U.S. service members ended with a solemn ceremony for the arrival of a flag-draped casket of an airman felled in Afghanistan.

Pew: Partisan Gap in Obama's Approval Largest in Modern History  —  Pew released a poll last week showing the partisan gap in President Obama's approval numbers is the largest in modern history.  Like many recent surveys, Pew finds Obama's overall approval rating at 59 percent.

Truth Stings  —  The conservative blogs are enraged that people are pointing out that they have and are stoking the fires of an atmosphere of hate that leads to police officers getting killed.  As I've written for years, this is part of their pattern of behavior in America and for too long we've accepted …

Life After Newspapers  —  Few industries in this country have been as coddled as newspapers.  The government doesn't actually write them checks, as it does to farmers and now to banks, insurance companies and automobile manufacturers.  But politicians routinely pay court to local newspapers …

Cultural divide: Mosque doesn't agree with restaurant's plan to serve alcohol  —  Editors Note: Comments were sadly disabled on this story due to issues overnight Sunday with commenters.  Please be respectful of others in commenting.  —  It's a Fort Sanders clash of cultures and good intentions.

Ward Churchill Redux  —  Last Thursday, a jury in Denver ruled that the termination of activist-teacher Ward Churchill by the University of Colorado had been wrongful (a term of art) even though a committee of his faculty peers had found him guilty of a variety of sins.

Why Didn't Ashcroft-the-Christian Stop The Torture?  —  When George W. Bush was running for President, Christians hoped that having a devout man in the White House would lead to more a more moral government..  —  But Bush wasn't the most interesting test of the theory.

Voting to kill and injure kids: A congressional CYA endangers children  —  Thousands of children 12 and younger ride motorcycles, ATVs and snowmobiles, which is why a lot of effort and time has gone into designing vehicles made for smaller folks.  On Friday, The Wall Street Journal noted …

Some voluntary confessions still out  —  Rehabilitating one of the more controversial criminal law rulings of the “Warren Court,” a decision that decades ago stirred angry complaints from “tough-on-crime” politicians, a divided Supreme Court ruled on Monday that some confessions …

Scenes From the Real America  —  I spent Saturday at the annual Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot, right outside of Louisville, Ky. Gun enthusiasts of all stripes were there — from the National Rifle Association and sportsmen to militia members to white supremacists and Obama birthers.

Bachmann fears ‘politically correct re-education camps for young people’  —  U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann says she fears the Obama administration will create “re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward …