“[N]owhere can the impact of the Occupy insurgency be better seen than in the fumbling efforts of Romney’s GOP rivals to capture the new anti-corporate sentiment,” writes Peter Dreier. “The Republicans are trying to figure out how to tap into the national mood without sounding too anti-business and offending their corporate sponsors. They’re finding that it’s a difficult tightrope to walk.” (Photo by David Shankbone, 2011, via Flickr creative commons)

Franklin Strier argues that the Roberts Court’s Hosanna-Tabor decision last week fits into a broader pattern of expanding the authority of religious institutions. “While the Court can superficially dilute its activism by characterizing these de facto overrules as distinctions, it cannot change its results-orientation. Results speak for themselves.” (Image via noclip at Wikimedia Commons, 2008)

Ever since Muncie was christened “Middletown” in 1929, “journalists, academics, and presidential hopefuls have flocked to this blue-collar city in eastern Indiana, for a look into the petri dish of American life or simply some Joe-the-Plumber-style street cred,” writes Max Fraser. But “the very idea of Middletown now seemed a pale shadow of present realities, as the stark prose of unemployment statistics and eviction notices inscribed a very different kind of story onto the lives of millions of Americans.” (Image: abandoned factory in Muncie, IN; sungo, Flickr creative commons, 2009)

“The real divide in Europe now,” writes Jeremiah Riemer, is “about the political culture of regulation and crisis management. It’s a minor fissure across the Rhine, between the different administrative styles at loggerheads in the Franco-German duo that dominates the eurozone. The gap is larger between the northern countries, which have independent civil services and ‘clean government’... and the southern countries, where patronage and tax evasion are traditional and widespread.” (Image: Sebastian Zwez, 2009, Wikimedia Commons)

Atossa Abrahamian on the Freelancers Union: “[H]ow does one organize a workforce that is, by definition, unaffiliated? Where do you find members, if not in assembly lines or hiring halls? How do you hold your employers accountable and make yourself visible to government when you cannot strike? And isn’t a freelancers’ union, in all its individualistic self-organization, the ultimate oxymoron?” (Joel Washing, Flickr creative commons, 2007)

Matt Pearce spent ten days on Tahrir Square, leading up to Egypt's first election since the January revolution. “It seemed that Tahrir was not actually the beating, democratic heart at the center of the country, but a kind of recurring dream whose symbols and figures were losing their mystique for Egyptians over time.” (Photo courtesy of the author.)

Jake Blumgart interviews Balázs Nagy-Navarro, who has been leading a hunger strike by members of the media in protest of Hungary's new restrictions on press freedom. “They put down a rope with a sound box and it plays the same three songs, all day long....[W]e realized it was music just to annoy, just to disturb us. At first it was just on the news desk balcony. But now they have put it in a closed box and they have two guys almost guarding it. They said it was under the instruction of the CEO of the company. You can now understand the reality of the absurd tragicomedy that is going on here.”

What's happening in Wukan? Jeffrey Wasserstrom interviews Rachel Beitare, a journalist on the ground in the Chinese town in revolt. “[T]he village’s situation encapsulates almost all of the big issues that trouble Chinese society: rural poverty vs. rapid development, unchecked power, growing economic gaps, environmental degradation, corruption, official violence, the balance of power between Beijing and the provinces—it’s all there.” (Photo by Helen Lee, via Google Plus)

“In the border regions of Sudan,” writes Eric Reeves, “we are witnessing a ghastly reprise of the conduct that has defined Khartoum’s brutal military control of its restless peripheries for decades.... [J]ust as the regime has turned Darfur into a ‘black box,’ from which no honest accounts can emerge, so too has it drawn a veil over its actions in Blue Nile, South Kordofan, and Abyei.” (Image: UN photo of Abyei after northern attack, Flickr cc)

“The Republicans have concluded that the failure of Solyndra proves that the government shouldn’t ‘pick winners’ or try to act as a venture capitalist,” writes George Sterzinger. But the United States “must find ways to support innovation in energy technologies that carry environmental benefits. The loan guarantee program is one way to do that.” (Photo by Lawrence Jackson, White House, Wikimedia Commons, 2011)

A Dangerous Method "is filled with literate dialogue" between Freud and Jung, writes Leonard Quart, "keeping under control David Cronenberg's more anarchic visual imagination." The film "looks more like a well-mounted, decorous, and sometimes static Masterpiece Theater production."

The first round of the Egyptian parliamentary elections is over, and the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party has come out on top. “The FJP’s inevitable missteps in the new parliament might make Egyptians look elsewhere in the future,” writes Feisal G. Mohamed. “One can only hope that they will look left rather than right, and that organized and competent parties will be waiting there to greet them.” Now with an update following the run-off elections. (Photo by Mosa'ab Elshamy, via Flickr creative commons)

Dissent brings you audio and video from two events it hosted this November. Listen to a discussion on Phase II for Occupy Wall Street, featuring Liza Featherstone, Frances Fox Piven, Michael Hirsch, Nikil Saval, and Dorian Warren, here. And watch a panel on the internet and democracy, featuring Evgeny Morozov, Jillian York, and Deirdre Mulligan, here. (Photo by Brennan Cavanaugh, Flickr creative commons)

Earlier this year, Herman Cain said that “when Margaret Sanger—check my history—started Planned Parenthood, the objective was to put these centers in primarily black communities so they could help kill black babies before they came into the world. It’s planned genocide.” “Cain was wrong about Planned Parenthood and about Sanger,” writes Peter Dreier, “who is a far more interesting figure than the straw woman created by opponents of reproductive freedom.” (Image: Margaret Sanger, seated, middle; Library of Congress)

“[T]raditional print critics claim the Internet has replaced expertise with amateurs, fanboys, and obscurantists,” writes Charles Taylor. “Web enthusiasts counter that we’re in a new golden age of film criticism and accuse the traditionalists of jealousy, resentment, and Ludditism. In other words: idealization of the past versus idealization of the present; resolution via what Pauline Kael once referred to as ‘saphead objectivity.’ Screw that.” (Image: Sabine Schostag, Wikimedia Commons, 2009)

“Like many brilliant artists, Guthrie was a mass of contradictions,” writes Zach Pontz. “He touted peace but sung often of war, he took a job as a radio host for Model Tobacco Company despite his contempt for capitalism, and though sympathetic to the plight of mankind he was known to act terribly toward his wives and was often absent as a father.” Despite all this, “with the recession-sparked social upheaval of the Occupy protests, America could use a Woody Guthrie or two.” (Image via Wiki. Com., Library of Congress, 1943)

The occupation of Zuccotti Park was cleared out early this morning. While the occupiers will face difficult decisions in the coming days, their recent adoption of a new, complementary governing body provides a useful tool to that end. Matthew Wolfe reports on the transition from the sole use of the general assembly—“both a soapbox and a chorus, a leaderless collective that is at once communal and individualistic”—to the adoption of the spokes council. (Image: General Assembly in Zuccotti Park; Bogieharmond, Flickr creative commons)

“Berlusconi’s fall was precipitated not by Italy’s center-left opposition, but by rebels within his own coalition desperate for a change of leadership,” writes Alexander Lee. “In allowing the 2010 budget report to pass without opposition, the Partito Democratico and its allies have illustrated that they lack a realistic alternative. With Italy staring financial oblivion in the face, this is cause for real concern.” (Image: Barb Mayer, 2011, Flickr cc)

“[T]o what extent are we protecting women’s ‘freedom,’ ‘choice,’ or ‘autonomy’ when we focus on abortion as a right in the absence of other social protections for women and families: subsidized day care, job security, a family wage, quality public education, and universal health care?” asks Amy Borovoy. “The discourse of ‘choice’ alone has not provided a sustaining moral framework for handling the necessity of abortion, which will always be a final recourse.” (Image: Paul-W, 2011, Flickr creative commons)

“In 1959, at a time of violent unrest among American youth, a publisher commissioned a study of juvenile delinquency from Paul Goodman,” writes Horatio Morpurgo. “The resulting volume, Growing up Absurd, was an immediate if unlikely success...[F]ifty years on he is once again unknown. But to reread his book in the aftermath of this summer’s riots in Britain is to be visited by uneasy feelings.” (Image: Fire at a store during riots in London in August; Andy Armstrong, Wiki. Com.)