After the Arizona Shootings: Can the Approach of "No Labels" Succeed? (Haddigan)

Unfortunately, No Labels does not seem to have stirred the imagination or won the backing of Americans. It is still early days, and recent events may catapult them to prominence among citizens tired with the controversy over "violent rhetoric" and/or the motives of the alleged Arizona gunman, Jared Lee Loughner; however, their prospects for the 2012 elections do not look good. Currently, only 13,000 visitors to their site have signed the declaration to “join your neighbours who are asking their leaders to put the labels aside and do what's best for America", and there is no sign of acceleration.

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US Saturday Special: Pardon Jim Morrison, But Don't Pardon the Counter-Culture (Haddigan)

So, good luck to Jim Morrison and fans of his music; he deserves a pardon. But if you read elsewhere that it is long-deserved recognition that a lilywhite and innocent counterculture --- who, as that sickly 1971 Coca-Cola ad says, thought they could "teach the world to sing in perfect harmony", were harshly treated --- take a pause. A counterculture of "peace and love" was never anything more --- at least after the Diggers disbanded in 1967 in disgust at the way the movement was headed --- than the invention of a privileged few.

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