In a matter of days, the IRS is already getting ground to mincemeat. Meanwhile, a spectacular panorama of Bush-era abuses have yet to draw the attention of a single Congressional subcommittee.

We live in a time that bears out the most dystopian of George Orwell's predictions, yet even in a world of bluster and BS few news events are as surreal and mind-blowing as a so-called secret bombing.

Few Americans are aware of how the vast majority of the so-called detainees got to Guantanamo. Mostly, they were sold. Yes, like slaves.

You can argue that the Tsarnaev brothers' politics were wrong. That their tactics were counterproductive. That they were just "losers," as their uncle called them. But we can't understand why unless we dig into those politics. Which is something that, 12 years after 9/11, the American media still refuses to do.

The Chechen-born suspects who bombed the Boston Marathon may have viewed the US and Russia as partners in crime rather than enemies.

The Hillary for President bandwagon looks and feels an awful lot like the Obama campaign while it was revving up in 2006. But we have traveled down Clinton Inevitability Road before.

To be young, technodouchey and shilly at SXSW.

"Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead," a new book by social media mogul Sheryl Sandberg, fails because the author wants to accelerate the "race to the bottom" behavior that has become standard in American business and politics. She is not the solution to a problem. She is a problem.

"Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead," a new book by social media mogul Sheryl Sandberg, fails because the author wants to accelerate the "race to the bottom" behavior that has become standard in American business and politics. She is not the solution to a problem. She is a problem.

The Republicans aren't anywhere close to achieving a coherent -- much less popularly appealing --ideology. On the other hand, neither are the Democrats.

As America continues to degenerate into unapologetic authoritarianism, prosecutions for thoughtcrime are increasingly common.

The United States is as ossified as the USSR was before its collapse.

A shooting spree is an inappropriate response to injustice. Still, the case of the L.A. cop gone rogue is a parable for our time. Authority is unaccountable. Individuals are powerless. Checks and balances, however well they worked in the past, have evaporated.

What's to stop a hostile nation-state from attacking the U.S. with drones? The technology is relatively simple and cheap, so cheap that soldiers occupying Afghanistan use throwaway six-pound mini-drones to see what's around the next mountain.

Obama needed to come out as a liberal in his first term, when he had more power.

Aaron Swartz, who helped invent RSS feeds, was, in his family's words, "the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach" -- a system that ought to be changed for everyone, not just loveable Ivy League nerds.

Six weeks after reelection, President Obama sells out liberal Democrats.

The Newtown massacre, so tragic and pointless, would be just another run-of-the-mill, made-in-USA afternoon in the places targeted by America's campaign of aerial terror.

Fewer Americans are taking chances. People are holding on to jobs they hate, making it harder for young people to find work. Businesses are hanging tight, picking safe bets (stuff that worked before) and slashing budgets for research.

In what passes for a democracy that's supposedly protected from extreme behavior by checks and balances, the legislative branch took no interest whatsoever in a president--make that two presidents--who secretly claimed the right to murder anyone they please.