Robed Muslim clerics kicked off U.S. flight after pilot refuses to take off with them (and they were en route to conference on Islamophobia)  —  Two Muslim religious leaders were asked to leave a commercial airliner in Memphis - and were told it was because the pilot refused to fly with them aboard.

When We Hated Mom  —  ONE of the most enduring myths about feminism is that 50 years ago women who stayed home full time with their children enjoyed higher social status and more satisfying lives than they do today.  All this changed, the story goes, when Betty Friedan published her 1963 best seller …

Now, to Find a Parking Spot, Drivers Look on Their Phones  —  SAN FRANCISCO — It is the urban driver's most agonizing everyday experience: the search for an empty parking place.  —  It is part sleuthing and part blood sport.  Circling, narrowly missing a spot, outmaneuvering other motorists …

In Another Universe  —  Think Progress returns to Silsbee, Texas, where a deplorable sexual assault of a cheerleader by a star athlete took place.  —  The timeline of events is not controversial, yet Think Progress simply can't or won't present the facts accurately.  And the facts do seem to matter.

Time to Celebrate?  —  No doubt, very few of those who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 anticipated that the high point of his administration would be the extra-judicial killing of a terrorist leader by a team of Navy SEALs.  This, as our involvement in Iraq winds down on the Bush administration's timetable …

Thoughts on a Surreal Depression  —  Here in Fresno County, in the heart of California's San Joaquin Valley, the official unemployment rate in February to March ranged between 18.1 and 18.8 percent.  I suspect it is higher in the poorer southwestern portions, especially near my hometown of Selma, about two miles from my farm.

The SEAL Sensibility  —  From a member of the elite force, an inside look at the brutal training and secret work of the commandos who got Osama bin Laden.  —  At Camp Pendleton in California, where I did my initial weapons training, we must have fired thousands of rounds at practice-range targets printed …

If You Have the Answers, Tell Me  —  AFTER more than a quarter-century as a professional economist, I have a confession to make: There is a lot I don't know about the economy.  Indeed, the area of economics where I have devoted most of my energy and attention — the ups and downs of the business cycle …

“We Dare Not Let This Happen” (But Don't Support Doing Anything About It)  —  Dean Baker is frustrated with a Washington Post editorial telling the public there's nothing we can do about the unemployment problem, a problem it cannot even characterize correctly (see Dean on this point).  Me too.

Killing Evil Doesn't Make Us Evil  —  I don't want closure.  There is no closure after tragedy.  —  I want memory, and justice, and revenge.  —  When you're dealing with a mass murderer who bragged about incinerating thousands of Americans and planned to kill countless more …

Pakistan breaches trust, names local CIA boss  —  WASHINGTON: Amid bitter, recriminatory exchanges between the United States and Pakistan over the Osama bin Laden extermination, planned bilateral visits of President Asif Ali Zardari to Washington DC and a return trip of President Barack Obama to Islamabad are both in jeopardy.

Why Pakistan knew it could hide Osama  —  As my old friends at The Spectator in London pointed out Monday morning, I scooped the entire planet in breaking the news of Osama bin Laden's death: “Osama bin Laden is dead, says Mark Steyn.”  This was in The Spectator's edition of June 29, 2002, which turned out to be a wee bit premature.

‘Obama Has Pounded His Chest a Little Too Much’  —  Andrew Card served as the White House chief of staff for the first five years of George W. Bush's presidency.  In a SPIEGEL interview, Card speaks about Bush's failed efforts to get bin Laden, how President Obama “has pounded his chest a bit too much” …