A variety of links to articles and interviews on current topics that may, or may not, be of interest.

Utah is commonly considered as one of the most conservative states in America, and for good reason; Democrats are essentially nonexistent in the state. Some Southern states will occasionally vote (or used to occasionally vote) for a conservative Democrat. Not Utah; its Republicans are rock-hard Republicans.

How is it that Americans—consumers of the most media in the world—remain so misinformed about so many fundamental issues? How much does this phenomenon relate to the content offered by the news media? How much of mass media’s content is related to the political structures such as ownership, the law, and the organizations’ own goals? News for All The People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media examines this issue within two contexts – history and race.

The seven OccupyMN protesters arrested Thursday are: Peter Leeman, Devin Wynn, Ben Egerman, Katrina Plotz, Merritt Benton, Misty Rowan and Jason St. John. If one of these names, that of Ben Egerman, might sound familiar to you, it’s because the last time he was in the news, it was for glittering Karl Rove when Rove came to the Twin Cities for a book signing two weeks ago

George Will explains why taxation is socialist.

This is a part of a series of posts analyzing the 2010 midterm elections. This post will analyze the Pennsylvania Senate election, in which Republican Pat Toomey won a narrow victory over Democrat Joe Sestak in a Democratic-leaning state.

Adam Winkler’s Gunfight is a book of contradictions: a dispassionate book about a passionately debated topic, a sane book about competing insanities, a page-turner about legal doctrine and obscure bits of history, a piece of serious scholarship combined with journalistic flair.

I recently had the opportunity to visit California’s State Assembly and watch the legislature in action. I think this opportunity provided me a deeper understanding of the problem ailing California politics.

The first thing to know is that, if you’re a Republican legislator in California, you are always, always losing.

It’s one thing for S&P to pursue its corrupt ideological agenda against the US Government. But now S&P has taken that confusion and stuffed it down another rabbit hole. It has downgraded the credit ratings of several insurance companies that had the good sense to have their reserves heavily invested in safe US Treasury bonds — that is, for doing exactly what a financially prudent board would have expected.

Gods bless the churches in Alabama where leaders of Episcopal, Methodist and Roman Catholic churches, representing 338,000 Alabama residents, filed suit Monday to block enforcement of the state’s new immigration law, claiming it prevents free exercise of religion. The Southern Poverty Law Center has also filed a suit opposing the law.