Remember when patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel? Now it's religion. Or, I should say, the cynical and hollow use of it for the sake of political expediency.
And that’s the way it is, indeed! Boy, do we miss hearing your voice every night, Walter. It’s not just the reassuring dulcet tones either. It...
Since we intend this site to be a conversation, filled with the kind of back and forth all good conversations have, let me start by disputing Jack Sha...
I see that The Hotline picked up on my pal David Corn's good-natured griping over having had his serious post on religion in politics bumped from the ...
In touting their proposal (which, by the way, isn’t really theirs [pdf]), Gingrich said e-health care info systems would eliminate medical mistakes caused by illegible prescription orders. “Paper kills,” he warned ominously. I can hear the TV ad now: “Making the world safe from bad handwriting!”
Yassou from Greece. Thankfully, Poseidon granted me easier passage than he did to the original blogger, Homer. Hopefully, when I return to Ithaca -- ...
Next week may be the first week that finds Newsweek on the cover of Time. It's certainly our top story, as you'll see from the posts below. Roger Simo...
The vast left wing media conspiracy strikes again as the Los Angeles Times editorial page comes out... in favor of the "nuclear option" on Senate fili...
So John Podhoretz digs us...kinda. But in an email he reprimanded me for evoking the image of a dapper four year old Walter Cronkite. So I challeng...
An anonymous source at Newsweek tells me that there's real agitation and concern among the staff about the way the magazine's leadership is caving to ...
The Bush White House has proven itself incapable of leveling with the American people about Iraq. But where are the Democrats? Where is Harry Reid? Where is Nancy Pelosi? The only Democrat of note speaking out about Iraq this week is Bill Clinton. And he’s out there prostituting himself and providing cover for the administration’s continued lies.
Wouldn’t it be delicious if the female orgasm were the thing that tips the scales in favor of the Intelligent Design crowd? It would make for a great closing argument: "The female orgasm is so complex and strange, it could only have come from God. The reason there is no evolutionary purpose to it is because there is no evolution!
At a news conference yesterday, Condoleezza Rice was asked about the New York Times story depicting U.S. military commanders as increasingly pessimistic about the outcome of the war in Iraq. Her answer was a model of obfuscation with more than a hint of that Bush administration specialty -- complete and unrelenting deception. So, as a service to those who prefer their leadership straightforward and candid, I’ve taken the liberty of translating her response from Modern Bush-speak to plain English.
There I was, as is my Sunday morning tradition, watching Meet the Press while doing yoga. (Or is it doing yoga while watching Meet the Press? Whatever.) Tim Russert was interviewing Howard Dean. At least, I’m pretty sure it was Russert. For one thing, I was in the Uttanasana II position, so I couldn’t see very well. For another, what I was hearing sounded remarkably like some White House flack...
Contrary to the President's disingenuous dismissal, the power of images –- for bad and for good -– has been enormous. Who can forget the photo of Kim Phuc, the naked girl who had just been napalmed in Vietnam and what it did to public opinion about the war? Or police dogs attacking civil rights protestors? Or Abu Ghraib? Do you think more people remember the details of the articles about Abu Ghraib, or the photo of Lyndie England holding an Iraqi detainee on a dog leash?
So now we finally know why Grover Norquist founded the "Leave Us Alone Coalition". He wanted to be left alone to work on more shady deals with occasional lunchtime companion Jack Abramoff.
How come these geniuses in Washington never “accidentally” create legislative loopholes that make it easier for working mothers to afford childcare or sick kids to see a medical specialist or wounded war vets to call their loved ones without being stuck with the long distance bill? How come it’s always big corporations or the owners of gas-guzzling SUVs -- or impotent rapists -- who seem to catch a break?
It’s great that the Democrats staved off the nuclear option. But the reason the nuclear option was even a possibility in the first place is because they have ceded the foreign policy battlefront to a majority party that doesn’t represent the majority of this country on the crucial foreign policy issue of Iraq. Democrats need to realize that they will remain a minority party so long as they only dare to take on Bush and the Republicans on domestic issues.
The filibuster deal did plenty more than show that moderates have not gone the way of the dodo bird, Betamax, and worry-free casual sex. Where to begin? For starters, it guaranteed the confirmation of several immoderate judges who now have the rest of their lives to make immoderate ruling after immoderate ruling. Second, given that the Republican party keeps lurching ever further to the right, it officially redefined a GOP "moderate" as anybody to the left of Santorum or Frist (i.e. almost the entire civilized world).
[comments are now open...so comment away!] So it turns out the 9/11 president, whose entire reelection campaign was based on scaring us into believin...
Yesterday I wrote about how the Bush administration continues to ignore one of the most glaring chinks in America's national security armor -- our nat...
Why can’t Democratic leaders talk straight about Iraq? The latest example is Hillary Clinton on CNN: "You know, I am not one who feels comfortable setting exit strategies. We don't know what we're exiting from. We don't know what the situation is moving toward…. How do we know where we're headed, when we don't know where we are?" Wow. Very existential. Very Zen koan. If a foreign policy disintegrates in the desert and no one hears it fail, what does this mean for our country and for our safety? Do you hear that? It’s the sound of one Greek gagging.
During our taping of Left, Right, and Center Friday morning, Tony Blankley (he represents the “Right” part of the equation) made a pronouncement t...
Another Sunday morning, another case of serious reality disconnect on Meet the Hacks Press, brought to us by Tim Russert. The full hour of today's ed...
Kathryn Ireland, fellow HP blogger, was the seventh mother -- of boys, as it happens -- who mentioned to me today the New York Times Magazine cover st...
