Highlights

This piece is written by Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix, Kat of Kat's Korner, Betty of Thomas Friedman is a Great Man, Mike of Mikey Likes It!, Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz and Wally of The Daily Jot. Unless otherwise noted, we picked all highlights.



"Kat's Korner: Ann Wilson sings and stands tall" -- Kat's latest review. Ann Wilson's Hope & Glory is strongly recommend by all of us. So is Kat's review. We'll note that Rebecca talks about the problems with Flickr in "Mailbag" for this edition. We did that early in edition and Rebecca notes that due to time issues, we'd already missed the "open window" when uploading to Flickr is the easiest. She wasn't kidding. She and C.I. have worked and worked trying to get Flickr to take the scan of the album cover and Isaiah's latest comic (they've given up on new illustrations for this site being uploaded). If the cover finally uploads, it'll be added to the review.

"Ruth's Report" -- Ruth's latest is a hard hitting look at what public radio is not covering and what CounterSpin is. Amazing commentary.





"Betinna goes to the movies" -- Betty's latest finds Betinna seeing Brian De Palma's Redacted and then running into two peace resisters. Wonderful film critique and hilarious commentary on those who resist peace.



"Mexican Corn Chowder in the Kitchen" -- as Trina reminds, Dennis Kucinich is a guest today on RadioNation with Laura Flanders (1:00 p.m. EST).





"naomi wolf, bruce dixon, vanity fair & the falling star" -- Rebecca tackling a number of subjects including "pretty lame destroying her career, pretty lame but don't shed a tear . . ."





"Did they check the widows and orphans fund too?" & "THIS JUST IN! RUDY G STEALS OVER $10,000 FROM THE DISABLED!" -- Cedric and Wally on who paid for Rudy G's extra-marital affair.





"Mitt and Oprah" -- Elaine tackles two of the biggest jokes in politics today: Mitt Romney and Oprah Winfrey.





"Marjorie Cohn, Third" -- Mike offers a rundown of last week's edition and Jim said we had to note "this must read."





"Operation Happy Talk rolls into the shore" -- Reader Caitlin asked that this commentary by C.I. be noted. It really is impressive and we've not yet chosen "Truest statement for the week" but there are several worthy contenders in this.





"Marjorie Cohn and an embarrassing 'reporter'" -- Ruth asked us to note this by Elaine because she enjoyed it and because she deleted a post a few weeks back about the script being written by two friends of C.I.'s that paints an ego maniac in a bad light. Elaine says she can understand Ruth deleting because she deleted a great deal of what she wrote before posting this. "The reading, which I begged for, at C.I.'s on Thanksgiving was hilarious. I had written about that specifically including quoting lines. I deleted that aspect of it."





"screw the pacifica radio archive special" & "2 hours of war resistance killed for a rubber chicken dinner speech" -- A number of us got e-mails asking if we left Rebecca and Kat hanging? Not intentionally. They wrote about this topic on Monday and wrote about it amazingly. The rest of us who post on Tuesday (including Ruth) had intended to address the topic but were asked not to by Kat and Rebecca. Despite Rebecca making it clear that she was speaking for herself and only to her readers, the inboxes at The Common Ills bulged with too many e-mails on this topic.


Kat: "Rebecca and I shared our thoughts. Those in agreement or disagreement didn't really need to try to pull C.I. into it. We purposely avoided doing that for a number of reasons including the fact that C.I. just doesn't have the time. When Jess told me how many e-mails had come in on the topic, to The Common Ills, I called Rebecca." Rebecca: "We both thought, 'What else can we do?' I guess we could have written "DO NOT DRAG C.I. INTO THIS!" but other than that, what could we have done? So we asked everyone to just find another topic and not link to our posts."





"Third time's the charm?" & "THIS JUST IN! WIFE NUMBER 3 IS A KEEPER!" -- Cedric and Wally explain how blushing bride al-Maliki keeps getting undeserved praise.





"Bill Moyers Journal: Accessible to all" -- Ruth explains the importance of "accessible" and considering all the lip service being given to returning wounded veterans, it's a damn shame the issue needs to be explained at all.





"And the war drags on . . ." -- C.I. discussing how unchallenged myths take hold and prolong the illegal war.



"DN! on Venezuela, Nii OkaiJah, IVAW " -- Mike sharing thoughts on the death penalty, DNA and many other issues. Jess' father asked that we note this one and says Mike's right, even supporters of the death penalty should be demanding universal DNA tests for everyone on death row. We agree.