I’ve been watching the liberal revolt against health car reform with suddenly renewed interest, since, wonder of wonders, the usual rollover didn’t occur. It’s like the dog that didn’t bark. What a difference an astonishingly demoralizing year makes. Back when Obama utterly capitulated on FISA, way before the election, liberals were still so alarmed by [...]
Barack Obama must be looking over his shoulder as he steps up and sets forth his war policy for Afghanistan. No, he doesn’t sound sure of himself and, despite donning his CIC chain mail for a speech at West Point, he may be be projecting weakness, just as Dick Cheney, our great, snarling former vice [...]
That was the name of a punk band that played at Sigma Nu during my freshman year at U of O, way back in 1982, and at the time I didn’t yet see that America was becoming that; I was still a Republican, after all. We went from the Great Society to the Punitive Society [...]
I’m late in providing this because professor Cassel was talking fast and my notes were insufficient to provide an accurate reporting of all the legal details on why America can still legally abuse detainees due to: limitations in international treaties/laws; congressional bills like the Patriot and Military Commissions Acts; classified documents and directives; DoJ and [...]
It was inevitable, really. After nearly ten years of a dominant and domineering political party governing with an iron fist, unfailingly promoting the most violent, punishing, and ruthless answers to every question, Americans have become very skeptical and cheap about doing anything other than hurting people, even themselves. Cynical ploys to convert inchoate resentments into [...]
The site for the Teach-in was at the Frank Lloyd Wright Unity Temple in Oak Park IL. The architectural masterpiece is now used by a Unitarian Universalist Congregation that gives its entire collection away each week to those who need it more. They believe in Margaret Mead’s counsel when she wrote, “Never doubt that a [...]
I have a confession to make, somewhat reluctantly: I’m starting to turn into a teabagger. It’s been a slow but inexorable process that forcibly began when then-Senator Obama completely capitulated on the FISA bill during the campaign, but as the health care debacle has unfolded, I’ve found that I practically need a spreadsheet to keep [...]
UPDATE: Alert Hag reader Sysprog noted, tastefully by email, that my original attribution of “Don’t confuse me with the facts,” and therefore kinda the whole point of this post, were not actually the words of Roman Hruska, but rather the similarly addled Earl Landgrebe. Those wingnuts all look (and sound) alike to me. Someone in [...]
The Oregonian used to have two associate editors, David Sarasohn, a cranky liberal with a great sense of humor, and David Reinhard, an unreconstructed homophobe and serial liar from the right. Reinhard seems to have disappeared of late; as the Oregonian has contracted to the point where its $2 daily could be made into a [...]
Who says there’s no bipartisanship in Washington? When it comes to endorsing our culture of violence, revenge, and punishment, we’re essentially a one-party state. This was vividly on display with the release of the dying Lockerbie bomber by those commies over in Scotland, when the networks fell all over themselves to find “grieving” family members [...]