John McCain talks a lot about the MiddleEast and the threat of “radical Islamic terrorism.” He challenged Barack Obama to take a tour with him of Iraq so McCain could educate him on the country — so Obama could get in touch with the facts on the ground. In his celebrated tour of Iraq in [...]

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Wesleyan University, my alma mater, is a small liberal arts school that gets a disproportionate amount of media coverage, usually for its uber-liberal ways. It has made the press for having a naked dorm and co-ed rooms. This time we made the headlines, and we didn’t have to take our clothes off. [...]

In the midst of a massive humanitarian crisis in Burma in which 1.5 million people are at risk of dying from disease, local government officials in Rangoon have been selling aid and bribing residents in order to turn a profit, according to sources in Rangoon. It has been eight days since Cyclone Nargis wiped out [...]

The most frustrating aspect of Saturday’s cyclone in Burma, which left 22,500 dead and 41,000 missing, is all the ways the junta running the country makes the relief process more difficult.
UN relief workers are ready and willing to bring aid and medicine into the country. But the Burmese government hasn’t yet issued them visas. Foreign [...]

The Burmese government has rigging votes down to an art. In the aftermath of protests demanding political reform, the Burmese junta is holding a referendum on its new constitution. The vote represents the junta’s way of appeasing the international community by pretending to enact democratic reforms. The referendum will be May 10, and advance voting [...]

A U.S. federal appeals court ruled yesterday that customs officers can search your laptop at the airport for absolutely no reason. No need for suspicious activity. You don’t even have to make a bomb joke (see below). Even if you look and act as innocent as a child, your laptop, cell phone and Blackberry are [...]

This photo is from Thingyan (Water Festival) to celebrate the Burmese New Year. The festival was April 13, 2008, in Monterey Park, Los Angeles. To see more photos, click here.
In Burma, all businesses, shops and restaurants close for the week to celebrate the holiday. Burmese society is typically conservative - except on Thingyan. Young people [...]

On two different occasions my media law professor at USC Annenberg asked our class of aspiring journalists whether we would be willing to go to jail to protect a source. As prosecutors force more reporters to either hand over the names of anonymous sources or risk going to jail, the question takes on greater importance. [...]

Silda is everywhere. In email exchanges between friends, in discussions around office water coolers, on television shows and radio reports, in op-eds and articles. In the midst of a massive scandal concerning sex, money and a self-righteous-turned-self-destructive resigning governor, our country has chosen the wife to focus on. There have been countless political sex [...]

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been caught not only cheating on his wife, but also hiring a prostitute and bringing that prostitute across state lines, making it a federal crime. A law enforcement official caught Spitzer, or “Client 9,” on a wiretap arranging to meet the prostitute, as reported in the New York Times. [...]