The writer Yu Jie, his wife, Liu Min, and their son, Yu Guangyi, in Washington last month after China allowed them to leave. Living now in Fairfax, Va., Mr. Yu says he hopes to stay but sees his “lifelong goal as achieving democracy and freedom in China.” - Cliff Owen/Associated Press

By EDWARD WONG
Published: February 25, 2012

FAIRFAX, Va. — If the place that the Chinese writer Yu Jie and his family live in nowadays, a modest house in this pleasant Northern Virginia suburb, seems ordinary, the story of what brought them here is anything but.

In January, Mr. Yu, one of the foremost critics of China’s leadership, left China after months of abuse, house arrest and round-the-clock surveillance by the state. At its worst, it was flat-out torture: in a detention cell, security officers bent back Mr. Yu’s fingers one by one, kicked him in the chest and held burning cigarettes close to his face, he said.

“If the order comes from above, we can dig a pit to bury you alive in half an hour, and no one on earth would know,” Mr. Yu said the head officer told him.

Mr. Yu fainted and was taken to a hospital, where doctors pulled him from death’s door, he said. That was on Dec. 9, 2010. Months later, after returning home, he talked to family and friends about leaving China.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/world/asia/yu-jie-dissident-chinese-writer-continues-his-work-in-us.html?_r=1&hp

Memories of a junky car cause one vet to ponder whether George Romney's son, Mitt, would do any better serving the nation's poorer classes.
By Jeff Danziger

February 23, 2012

Jeff Danziger's editorial cartoons appear in The Times and other newspapers.

I was stationed at Ft. Bliss, Texas, in 1968 for a year at an Army language school learning Vietnamese. During the breaks in the endless memorization of the endless monosyllabic vocabulary, we would escape over the border to Juarez, Mexico, or out into the wasteland of west Texas to reclaim a bit of sanity. I met a family through a church group that invited me to their ranch on weekends. And I still bless them for their thoughtfulness.

The grand dame of the family was a wonderful Texas horsewoman who always needed work done around the place. I recruited one or two fellow soldiers, and we spent the weekends building hay shelters and fixing the barns and exercising her quarter horses. She had a garden where fresh chili peppers grew in abundance the year around, and she made the best chili rellenos on the planet.

I was fairly good at the language school, but many of the other troops were not. Vietnamese is a tonal language, spoken in a sing-song, up-and-down sort of way. One wrong tone and you've changed the meaning completely. It's a hard language for Americans. For draftees, hoping to forestall reassignment to the infantry, it was a struggle. I helped some of the other soldiers, not always for charitable reasons. One hopeless fellow turned out to be passable barber; another had family in El Paso that would feed us dinner; a third had the best of all trading materials: a car.

More: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-danziger-rambler-20120223,0,4469233.story

Houses of the Holy: Rick Santorum rocks out.

Can you tell the difference between Santorum quotes and Megadeth lyrics? Nope, you probably can't.
—By Asawin Suebsaeng
| Wed Feb. 22, 2012 3:00 AM PST

On his rise to the top of the Republican charts, Rick Santorum has picked up plugs and plaudits from media and entertainment luminaries including Glenn Beck, the Duggars, Pat Boone, and Dave Mustaine. Wait, what? Dave Mustaine? The heavy-metal ex-warlock is an admirer of Rick Santorum?

In a recent interview with MusicRadar, Mustaine—the Megadeth frontman, former Metallica guitarist, and pillar of the 1980s thrash metal movement—said that Santorum possesses some truly presidential qualities:

Earlier in the election…when the dude went home to be with his daughter when she was sick, that was very commendable. Also, just watching how he hasn't gotten into doing these horrible, horrible attack ads like Mitt Romney's done against Newt Gingrich…I'm hoping that if it does come down to it, we'll see a Republican in the White House…and that it's Rick Santorum.

To take the quiz click the start tab after entering a name: http://motherjones.com/media/2012/02/rick-santorum-heavy-metal-megadeth-quiz