The Los Angeles Times

Multiculturalism breeds terrorism. That's what British Prime Minister David Cameron said Feb. 5 in a high-profile speech in Germany, thereby opening up an absurd new chapter in the never-ending debate over how much to embrace, exalt and protect cultural differences in Britain and beyond.

... "They allowed themselves to go into denial," said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli Justice Ministry advisor who is now a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington. "Now they've got no strategy and their options just narrowed." ...

The stunning live images out of Egypt last week had millions of Americans glued to their TVs and computer screens. Once again, cable TV news brought real-life, real-time history into our homes and offices. The narrative was irresistible, the suspense palpable and the stakes high. The Egyptian revolution was real reality TV at its best.

... Peter L. Bergen is CNN's national security analyst, and Michael Scheuer spent three years in the late 1990s heading the CIA unit assigned to track Bin Laden. Their new books — "The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and Al Qaeda" and "Osama Bin Laden," respectively — make useful contributions to our growing understanding of these issues, ...

President Obama's resurrection of Cold War iconography in last week's State of the Union address — calling for a new "Sputnik moment" that would inspire American workers to "win the future" — sounded a lot like old-fashioned "America First" rhetoric and not so much like a leader in the new globalized world order.

I demand a recount! Or a re-survey! Or some form of redress for the aspersions Travel + Leisure magazine has cast not only on the City of Angels but on all of us Angelenos.

The magazine released a survey last week of travelers who, in all their wisdom, concluded that Los Angeles surpasses New York as the rudest city in America.

Excuse me?

Evgeny Morozov, a Belarus-born scholar at the New America Foundation, has just published a book, "The Net Delusion," that argues that the idea of promoting ...

Once you get a look at the evil smirk captured by the mug shot of Jared Lee Loughner, it's hard to believe that mere heated political rhetoric was the decisive factor in his allegedly pulling the trigger over and over and over again.

But that doesn't mean there's no link between politics and violence, or even, to some degree, mental illness.

The ugly American — the stereotypically brutish, ethnocentric, bumbling traveler abroad — is dead. He's gone the way of global U.S. hegemony, the strong dollar and mid-20th century American naivete.

Recessions are not only depressing, they're downright boring. I don't mean to make light of the real financial hardship many Americans are facing. Unemployment is at 9.8%. One in every 492 homes received a foreclosure notice in November. Those are devastating figures. And even for those who are still employed, still making the rent or the mortgage payment, hard times are taking a psychic toll.