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

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 …

Let Obama Sleep!  —  It's a small thing but did Robert Gibbs really need to wake Obama at 4:30 am with news of the North Korean missile launch?  We knew the launch was coming and Obama had no imminent decision to make.  Waking the president to tell him things so he can return to a troubled sleep …

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.

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 …

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.

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 …

Scenes From the Real America  —  I spent Saturday at the bi-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.

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.

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.

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 …

Why this will not be a normal cyclical recovery  —  The rare nature of this recession precludes a cyclically normal US recovery.  Instead, we are consigned to a slow, painful climb-out, as are nations such as Japan and Mexico that depend on US demand.  The implications for US policy include …

Bush Bowed Too  —  More than a few people on the right are screaming that Barack Obama should be impeached for bowing to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.  —  Those of you who are buying into this hyperventilating nonsense need to see this video.  (Click the image to watch.)

There are no excuses for ongoing concealment of torture memos  —  Ever since October, 2007, the ACLU has been battling in court to compel the disclosure of three key torture-authorizing memos authored by Bush's Office of Legal Counsel chief Steven Bradbury and approved by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in 2005.

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.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.