Recent items in the news: The commandant of the marine corps said a few days ago U.S. forces will likely be at the “war on terror,” or whatever it’s called now, for a bit longer, maybe another decade. Or more. The marine leader’s remarks echo those by an obscure defense official overseeing undercover doo doo. [...]
Prostitution in the old Massachusetts Bay Colony (1628-92), which then ran north into southern Maine and included the seaside town of Kennebunk (“So Close, Yet Worlds Away”), was a hanging offense. Times have changed however. And so on Friday a state judge in Portland accepted a plea deal from alleged Zumba dance madam Alexis Wright [...]
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 [...]
“Gentlemen, we have run out of money. It’s time to start thinking.” – Ernest Rutherford, British explorer – quoted sometime after 1910 Political analysts unaffiliated with The Onion suggested Monday that Silvio Berlusconi and upstart challenger Beppe Grillo may have enough votes between them to form a new, coalition government in Italy. If this [...]
Like 10% of the US population, I am what is commonly known as a “lapsed” Catholic, making me part of what would be the third largest denomination in America. Although I’m probably not all that representative of my brethren, given that from about age 8 on I didn’t believe a word of what I heard [...]
One of the chief reasons GOP politicians and the Village Media who love them are able to maintain any semblance of credibility was on vivid display at the Hagel confirmation hearings: for wrongness, there is always strength in numbers. What really lay at the heart of John McCain’s cartoonishly crabby badgering of Hagel about the [...]
Republicans have found themselves in an uncharacteristic moment of self-reflection these days, but unsurprisingly, none of this involves actually looking at themselves. At their Charlotte retreat, they gazed into the mirror, declared themselves fairest of all, and went home to continue shaking down billionaires and jury-rigging elections in their favor. You see, each unpopular policy, [...]
UPDATE: (somewhat unnecessarily) Sure enough… http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/01/twitter-impeach-obama-gun-control.html And Republicans have to impeach Democratic Presidents with the temerity to beat them. In some ways I’m surprised it’s taken this long; Clinton was denounced as illegitimate before the drapes went up in the oval office, and within months the media was announcing his Presidency was “over,” a [...]
Today former President (!) Richard Nixon would have been 100, and I’m sorry the ol’ creep isn’t still around; since he would undoubtedly be in a very bad mood. You see, his most infamous legal doctrine, “if the President does it, it is not illegal,” once a shockingly outrageous statement, is now comfortably enshrined [...]
On Thursday I wrote a post at FDL ridiculing the fact that Meet the Press host David Gregory was NRA President Wayne LaPierre’s choice for his “exclusive” post-Newtown interview rather than occasional journalist Chris Wallace on Fox News. Unsurprisingly, it turned out to be a canny decision, as the video below amply demonstrates. Though [...]