Back in 2004, a blog commenter at Daily Kos made a video that compared Bush to Hitler, and there was a immediate run on smelling salts that lasted for weeks. At the time I was working for a couple who were regular Fox News watchers, and they were naturally horrified. “Really?” I responded. “Aggressive wars, [...]
As I wrote about last week at FDL, I’m still gobsmacked, flabbergasted, you name it, over Supreme Court Justice (!) Antonin Scalia’s comments about the Voting Rights Act, and to my considerable delight, so was the often flaccid and boring Saturday Night Live. Sorry to all about the lame posting, but I’ve been so busy [...]
One of the great advantages of having spent an embarrassingly large amount of my disposable income over a quarter century on books is that the darn things just never stop coming in handy. Although lack of space, blogging, and less travel in the last few years has sharply slowed my acquisition rate, for each Presidency [...]
The media is duly abuzz about the Supreme Court hearing arguments for (and agin’) Obamacare, beginning today. But the coverage is revealing; the case is discussed solely in political terms, blandly acknowledging that the highest court in the land functions not as a neutral arbiter of “Equal Justice Under Law,” but as just another sleazy [...]
Predictably, incoming Speaker of the House (!) John Boehner cried when handed the gavel by Nancy Pelosi, and as promised, he and his party are about to give America plenty to cry about. Of course, several of the lies they told to get the House majority have already been exploded, most significantly the $100 billion [...]
I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. –Lady Bracknell, in Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest“ Many observers have long commented on the anti-intellectualism that pervades American politics, but given the events of the past several [...]