In downtown Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof sees the makings of a Tahrir Square. “Crowds are still tiny by protest standards” and “no bullets are whizzing around, and the movement won’t unseat any dictators,” he admitss in his most recent Sunday op-ed column. But in spirit, in function, and in practice, he found, the two movements, half a world a part, are not all that different.

Republican Congressman Peter King begins his hearings today investigating the potential radicalization of Muslim Americans, but the Morning Joe panel is split on whether they should be taking place at all. In one corner is Donny Deutsch who thinks the hearings are “scary” and demonstrates the “extremism” of the Republican party and in the other corner is Pat Buchanan arguing the hearings are legitimate and any criticism should come only if and when the hearings are conducted in an unjust manner.

Nicholas Kristof attempts to dispel the myth that Arabs in the Middle East are “too politically immature to handle democracy.” Kristof admits there will be bumps ahead, but believes the time has come for “people power” to sweep across the Middle East and hopes the rest of the world shares his belief too. Yet is preparing in case the Arab world isn’t ready, the same as suggesting they are politically immature?

The New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof is in Cairo covering the ongoing protests and was able to get some time in with a group of pro-Mubarak demonstrators. Kristof referred to this group of protesters as “thugs” and was sure to mention that their talking points all sound suspiciously similar, adding to pervading speculation that they are working for Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak himself.

Though The New Republic is a magazine that generally leans left-of-center, its Editor-in-Chief, Martin Peretz, doesn’t always agree with the generally liberal New York Times. On September 4, Peretz wrote a blog post that questioned a Times editorial, which had expressed dismay at many Americans’ “sadly wary misunderstanding of Muslim-Americans.”

Was anyone not surprised to wake up this morning to news that President Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize? Or wonder why exactly nine months into his presidency he’d been awarded it? The view from Twitter reveals a similar sense of amazement from media folk across the board. Also the growing sense that maybe Obama should consider turning the prize down. Take a look.

Journalists, if you are going to spout off about Twitter, I beg you: Do some research. This has occurred to me frequently since Twitter hit the big time earlier this year, mostly because there have been frequent glaring errors on the part of “mainstream” journalists who write precious little articles about the microblogging service. On [...]