NEWSLANC EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is an Op-Ed published in the Sacramento Bee. It was 75 years ago this summer that the war on the Devil Weed was launched by a former railroad cop named Harry Anslinger. If Mr. Anslinger had found some other line of work, it’s quite possible that marijuana prohibition might never […]

NEW YORK TIMES:  A Chinese scientific research center has built the fastest supercomputer ever made, replacing the United States as maker of the swiftest machine, and giving China bragging rights as a technology superpower. The computer, known as Tianhe-1A, has 1.4 times the horsepower of the current top computer, which is at a national laboratory […]

PATRIOT-NEWS:  Each day the men and women of our armed services put their lives at risk to do our country’s bidding throughout the world, most particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many have lost their lives or have been wounded. The Department of Defense said Tuesday that 5,655 military personnel have died so far in Operation […]

PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW:  On the campaign trail, Pennsylvania’s candidates for governor have proposed reforms, some more ambitious than others, but political experts say it’s unrealistic to expect them to achieve much of what they outline — especially changing the Legislature that cost taxpayers $295 million this year. Democrat Dan Onorato, the Allegheny County executive from Brighton […]

NY REVIEW OF BOOKS:  (By George Soros) . …The Republican opposition has been highly successful in turning “stimulus” and “bailout” into dirty words that cannot be used. The opposition narrative blames the crash of 2008 and the subsequent recession and persistent high unemployment on the ineptitude of government and claims that the 2009 stimulus package was […]

NEWSMAX:  The CEO of the Zogby International polling firm says no one will know the size of the Republican wave until Election Day, contrary to many pundits’ predictions of a huge GOP wave on Election Day. “Historically, we don’t know when those waves hit until the Election Day itself,” pollster John Zogby says in an […]

 USA TODAY:   Fewer people applied for unemployment benefits last week, the second drop in a row and a hopeful sign the job market could be improving. The Labor Department said Thursday that initial claims for jobless benefits dropped 21,000 to a seasonally adjusted 434,000 in the week that ended Oct. 23… The economy needs to […]

NEW YORK TIMES:  ….The most challenging impediment to human travel to Mars does not seem to involve the complicated launching, propulsion, guidance or landing technologies but something far more mundane: the radiation emanating from the Sun’s cosmic rays. The shielding necessary to ensure the astronauts do not get a lethal dose of solar radiation on […]

 Historian Gary Wills told Charlie Rose (and thus the rest of the world) how he was one of about a dozen biographers of presidents who met with President Barack Obama which was to be the first of a series of off the record meetings during Obama’s  tenure in office. Wills indicated disappointment in Obama because […]

THE DAILY BEAST:  But behind those issues—behind the ads and candidates’ speeches, behind the rhetoric about “out-of-control” government spending—there lurks a hidden, less-talked-about issue: the cost of the ongoing wars. Already, we’ve spent more than $1 trillion in Iraq, not counting the $700 billion consumed each year by the Pentagon budget. And spending in Iraq […]