Article

A plastic sign outside a polling place in Andes Central High School on the Yankton Sioux reservation was clear and concise. “Photo ID required,” it read. The only problem, said Charon Asetoyer, executive director of the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center in Lake Andes, South Dakota, was that the sign was illegal. Sitting […]

Once upon a time, two queens reigned over the land of HomeEcistan: one the hooting, shambling, messy Queen of Light, who demystified the art of French cooking for the home cook, and one the icy Queen of Darkness, who made the simplest of domestic tasks into an impossible, fetishistic, bonsai-pruning nightmare. The two kept a […]

HEDGESVILLE, W.Va. — This is a little town on Route 9, almost directly south of where the Potomac loops around in the mountains and begins its run toward the Chesapeake Bay. There is a big Food Lion grocery store and a 7-11 that sells liquor. Cornfields and apple orchards ripple out from the middle of […]

If you like the Karl Rove-inspired attack on John Kerry’s Swift Boat service, you’re going to love the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s coming assault on John Edwards. Like the right-wing vets smearing Kerry’s Vietnam record, the anti-Edwards group is nominally an independent committee. But as The New York Times reports, the cochairmen of the new […]

Florida. Florida is never far from the minds of either campaign’s top strategists, but Floridians had bigger fish to fry than the presidential campaign this August as the state suffered much devastation at the hands of Hurricane Charley. Conventional wisdom has it that then-President George Bush Senior and then-Governor Lawton Chiles both suffered mightily at […]

I am a retired U.S. Army officer and a volunteer two-and-a-half tour Vietnam veteran. I also wear the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star with a “V” device (for valor) and oak leaf clusters (MACV General Orders Number 154, January 10, 1969) for wounds received and performance in combat action on July 3, 1968. It […]

Things have gotten a bit tangled on the old electric television set these days. All sorts of strange critters seem to be wandering around inside the cathode’s glass. Chris Matthews’ political libido, for example. Last time I saw it, it was sitting in the Prospect Buffet, staring down at a spot between its hands, the […]

Considering that he’s the sort of man who’s not above pretending to like Cheez Whiz in order to gain a fleeting political advantage, it should come as no surprise to learn that George W. Bush thinks of the Olympics less as a celebration of athleticism than as yet another opportunity for electioneering. Thus, while the […]

Among conservative commentators, and in certain quasi-liberal circles, there’s been lots of tut-tutting in recent weeks about John Kerry’s foreign-policy instincts. What has these concerned citizen-pundits nervously stroking their chins is the suspicion that Kerry is a “realist” who has no particular interest in promoting democracy and human rights abroad. It may well be that […]

I’ve sort of grown to like Bob Dole over the years, mostly because he’s shown himself to be a genuinely funny guy, able to move beyond the sort of faux-earnest self-righteousness of the practicing politician ever since he lost the presidential race. That, combined with his age (81) and the fact that he was missing […]