Great line from Eugene Robinson: The story line was a classic: Beauty and the Beast. Remember the Atlanta courthouse shootings a few months ago? Brian Nichols was the ogre whose homicidal rampage led him to the apartment of an attractive young woman named Ashley Smith, who soothed his savage breast by speaking gently of God […]
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Divvying Up Ohio
If elections are ugly things, primary elections are downright hideous, especially on the Democratic side. Ronald Reagan’s famous Eleventh Commandment — paraphrased as, “Thou shalt not speak badly of a fellow party member” — is rarely respected, no matter how much it is publicly venerated. Few argue that these primaries weaken a party’s ability to […]
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Hunting Kony
Joseph Kony is a lot of things to a lot of people. To his followers in the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), he is God-like, with mystical powers that render him immortal. To the president of Uganda, he is a murderous gadfly who has been terrorizing the population of the northern provinces for nearly two decades. […]
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Framing Katrina
Hurricane Katrina exposed far more than rank incompetence and negligence by Bush administration officials. It showed Americans, in full force, the intellectual bankruptcy of modern conservatism. With millions of Americans displaced in the hurricane’s aftermath, and thousands needlessly injured or dead, the nation witnessed the pillars of modern conservative ideology — less government, lower taxes, […]
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My How Things Change
From page four of Michael Katz’s The Price of Citizenship: The positive connotations of “welfare state” were so entrenched that The Saturday Evening Post’s editors advised critics to avoid the term when discussing President Truman’s plan to extend social benefits. “The opponents of such a system,” they wrote, “have an excellent case, but they do […]
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Dissing His Own
You could cut the disappointment with a knife. “This is the moment for which the conservative legal movement has been waiting for two decades,” David Frum, the right-wing activist and former Bush speechwriter, wrote on his blog a few moments after the president dashed conservative hopes by nominating Harriet Miers to succeed Sandra Day O’Connor […]
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Shenanigans
Oh, this is just too rich. According to RedState, Tim Kaine, the Democratic nominee for governor is desperate and pulling “shenanigans” because — get this! — he wants to be able to use moments from this Saturday’s debate in ads. The Kilgore camp, apparently terrified of what their candidate will say, is insisting on a […]
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Good To See
Props to Rod Blagojevich for making health care a priority in his state: Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) will unveil a proposal Thursday to subsidize health insurance for 253,000 uninsured children in Illinois, a move that specialists describe as more far-reaching than any other program in the country. Seventy-percent of the state’s uninsured children belong to […]
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What Happened to Rob?
I’ve had a couple folks e-mail in to tell me that, contrary my allusion at Tapped yesterday, Sam Seaborne actually won his quixotic campaign in Orange County. My recollection was that he got crushed and we last saw him sobbing into the arms of Toby and Josh, who, on Bartlett’s orders, were wresting control of […]
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Gore 08 — Vote for the Firebreather
Man, I don’t know what happened to that wooden dude we had a few years back, but these days, each time Al Gore opens his mouth barns everywhere spontaneously burst into flame: I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness […]
