t’s been over a week since students at Brandeis compelled their university to refuse Ayaan Hirsi Ali an honorary degree, and the blogosphere is still roiling with grievance. Kirsten Powers laments Islam’s preferential treatment in USA Today.

by ELIAS ISQUITH

Coca-Cola’s big Super Bowl ad this year featured a rendition of “America the Beautiful” sung in multiple languages, alongside sweeping images of America’s landscape and its people.

“Homeland” has, or more precisely, has had, a lot to recommend it. The show’s depiction of Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) and his conflicted feelings about America and its role in the world — and the actions he took against America in the show’s early going — were among the most realistic depictions of the contemporary state of villainy available on TV.

In a new report that makes contextualizes the torturous force-feeding of Gitmo hunger strikers, it has been revealed that under CIA and DoD orders, doctors tortured terror suspects to gain intel after 9/11.

In an era of narcissistic self-obsession, there’s something to be said for the value of self-awareness. This week, atheist philosopher Sam Harris leapt forward to claim Malala Yousafzai as another trophy in his one-man jihad against Muslims and the weak-kneed “Muslim-apologists” he perceives on the left.

[He] sais “neither Pagan nor Mahamedan [Muslim] nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion.”
 — Thomas Jefferson, quoting John Locke, 1776


BY KHIN MAUNG WIN

THANDWE, Myanmar (AP) — Terrified Muslim families hid in forests in western Myanmar on Wednesday, one day after fleeing a new round of deadly sectarian violence that erupted even as the president toured the divided region.

BY NATASHA LENNARD

Along with the development of the NYPD’s “mini-CIA” after 9/11 came the shift towards constitution-defying preemptive policing.

I settled on a rock in Central Park, the New York skyline behind me. A glassy new skyscraper neared completion in its stretch toward the skies. I was striking a few poses in my superhero costume when a young boy perched higher on a rock chimed in.

BY DAVID SIROTA

“The Muslims are coming!” That is the tongue-in-cheek name of a new documentary by Muslim comedians. But it is also the deadly serious shriek echoing through the American right in response to the launch of Al Jazeera America.