President Obama had a special meeting with John Walsh, host of America's Most Wanted, this weekend to recognize the "more than 1,000 lives" that have been positively affected by that show since its premier in 1988. Commemorating 1,000 episodes in the past 20 years, Mr. Obama praised Walsh for the tireless work he has done to help the victims of abduction -- not just the abducted, but their families -- and to promise funds for the "Adam Walsh Act," a law passed in 2006 that mandates stricter lifetime tracking of convicted sex offenders.

Invoking his own daughters to express his concern in child safety in the United States, the president appealed to Mr. Walsh as both a fellow dad and a politician with enormous influence. John Walsh's son, Adam, was abducted at a Florida mall in 1981.

Child abduction and sex crimes against minors are horrific offenses, no doubt about it. And while I agree with Obama that America's Most Wanted has done society an invaluable service, I have to wonder if the show has also helped increase hysteria and a kind of witch-hunting mentality. Mark Bowden wrote a fascinating piece for Vanity Fair last year recounting the case of a sting operation on an alleged online child predator who was, by some accounts, entrapped by the undercover detective who set the bait that led to his arrest. "A Crime of Shadows" does an outstanding job of revealing how our desire to avenge the helpless victims of child predation can cloud our thinking about who, in fact, poses an actual threat. The subjects of his study turn the tables on who committed the greater sin: the detective becomes the wrongdoer, and the convict becomes an innocent, if troubled, man who merely fell into a trap.

Unfortunately, decent embeddable footage of the interview is hard to find. The below video of the interview filmed directly off of someone's television has OK quality, but for a clear and concise clip visit this site.

There have been whispers among the chattering classes that President Barack Obama is not a fan of Gordon Brown -- or Britain for that matter -- because of their colonialist history with his ancestral home, Kenya. Much ado was made of the President's gift of an iPod to the Queen. And in Dreams of My Father, the future President famously expressed open disdain for British imperialism. Obama certainly has treated Brown somewhat roughly, considering America's "special relationship" with Britannia. Sarkozy and France appear to have replaced Britain as America's "special friend" on the Continent. And pundits on both sides of the Atlantic have read -- maybe too much -- into the fact that President Obama removed the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office (Maybe it was just a symbolic act, removing something beloved to Dubya).

Does the President have lingering resentments over British imperialism?

It is probably all just rumors and here say, this idea that the President has lingering resentment over British colonialism and his family's past on his father's side. A President -- particularly of Obama's character -- is beyond such petty things. Still, it is too sexy and tantalizing a story to be ignored, whether factual or not, in this digital age in search of eyeballs. As a Ugandan-born person, though, I will say that British imperialism has had a lingering effect on the older generations, but to the younger generation -- and I put Obama in this category -- it is an increasingly distant factor in daily life.

[Image: Wikimedia Commons]

It is a story as old as the Republic: Americans love their country, but we have a problem with government. Some of us do, anyway. Organically-composed nations arise over time and are generally homogeneous, but the United States was founded upon ideas -- "life, liberty and the pursuit of hapiness" -- and against the tyranny of King George. This has resulted, occasionally, in what the social scientist Richard Hofstader has called "the paranoid style of American politics." Even during the 2008 presidential campaign, odd charges -- Obama will take your guns, Obama is a secret Muslim -- surfaced. Those very clever demagogues, the teabaggers, are even now taking advantage of this economically tense moment as President Obama can attest.

The President has often said that he never ran for office to be in the auto or banking industries -- and yet there he is. And here we are. CNN's Fareed Zakaria, whose GPS program remains the smartest hour on television, talks about our controversial love and hate of government.

The photograph was taken at the annual Colorado March for Life 2010 in Denver. I was a participant and took this photograph because it was being carried by two women. I thought that dimension added something to the message that they were carrying. I'm pretty sure that it will provoke a strong response in some readers, as I've seen already in another version that I also have online here.

The United States Senate -- the most aristocratic body in the world next to the College of Cardinals -- appears to be irreparably stalled on health care. Astonishingly the Democrats, with a 59 vote majority (down from 60), could not pass the legislation. On Christmas eve the U.S. Senate held its final vote on moving along the health care reform bill, and it passed 60-39. Unfortunately, they could not get their act together merging the House and Senate bills by the time Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, effectively putting the damn thing in stasis. What's wrong with the Democrats? What's wrong with the United States Senate?

Laura Flanders of Grit TV talks to New Yorker scribe and former Carter speech writer Rik Hertzberg on one of his favorite topics: getting rid of the filibuster. Says Hertzberg on the topic:

The filibuster has been around in one form or another since 1806, when the Senate absent-mindedly neglected to readopt a rule allowing a simple majority to move the previous question. It has been a favored tactic of conservatives of a particularly hard-shelled type, who have used it in the service, successively, of preserving slavery, perpetuating white supremacy, and frustrating what Lady Bracknell disapprovingly called "social legislation."

The Founding Fathers never intended that supermajorities should be needed to pass bills. Filibusters are indeed profoundly undemocratic.