Coloring outside the lines
The candidacy of Darcy Burner gives me a lot of hope. When you live in a state where your senators are named Kyl and McCain, you look beyond the borders for opportunities to help bring about change....
View ArticleIdeas that need to be circulated more widely
Praising Glenn Greenwald to Kos readers probably sounds like preaching to the converted. Some Greenwald fans may hesitate to dive into A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush...
View ArticleKathleen Parker and the fountainhead of international wisdom
A journalism prof of mine, way way back in Boys on the Bus days, said you should never write a letter to an editor. "You’re just playing into their hands." As the news media struggles to come to...
View ArticleAZ state hack sticks it to "party of anarchy, flag-burning"
Even for Arizona, this is a pretty shocking bit of political hackery.
View ArticleKids today, part XXXIV
This is an honest-to-God quote from the newsletter of the pre-K-5th grade school my son goes to.
View Article'I don't want to hear about al-Qaeda anymore': Ashcroft, July 2001
A review of The Commission by Philip Shenon. NY/Boston: Hachette Book Group/Twelve, 457 pp., $27. "I don't want you to ever talk to me about al-Qaeda, about those threats. I don't want to hear about...
View ArticleUpdating 'I don't want to hear about al-Qaeda anymore'
Glenn Greenwald has been on the story about Mukasey's apparently fabricated anecdote.
View ArticleIch bin ein Nixonlander, and so are you
These cherry-picked bullet points are not intended as a substitute for actually reading Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America by Rick Perlstein.
View ArticleImpeachment: Will You Tolerate This?
Understood: Not everybody here sees eye to eye on this issue. (You mean we're not the Borg after all?) I have pretty strong feelings on impeachment myself. When Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL19)...
View ArticleNotes Toward a Deconstruction of Ayn Rand
My friends know I'm obsessed with Ayn Rand, who for better or worse I’ve got to own up to as an influence. For a long time I've been wanting to write about that influence. I thought I would use...
View ArticleI Took the Ed Sullivan/Beatles challenge...
...and lived to tell about it. In a post about Nixonland, Tristero suggested that to really understand that era, you need to watch the DVDs of the Beatles' appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show under...
View ArticleScalia: Not entirely accurate
Some of us are still naive enough to be surprised by things like this. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia apparently uses faulty information in his opinions.
View ArticleShhh... be very quiet; we're Republicans...
En Tequila Es Verdad got an email from Washington State Democrats (h/t frostokovich): You may have heard that [gubernatorial candidate Dino] Rossi and 27 other Republican candidates in our state will...
View Article'A cuckoo clock in Hell': A brief note about Kurt Vonnegut
For some reason -- maybe because it's summer in Arizona; maybe because I'm having a mini-midlife crisis -- I'm re-reading a lot of books I liked in high school and freshman college. This includes the...
View ArticleWhat should I ask Carville/Matalin?
So I have a chance to hear James Carville and Mary Matalin speak next week. Before the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, no less.
View ArticleFollowup: What should I ask Carville/Matalin?
As promised: So I had the chance to hear James Carville and Mary Matalin speak. I'd asked Kossacks for question suggestions. Thanks again to everybody who posted. Sadly ... the Q&A was a bust....
View ArticleRaids on (suspected) protesters: This is not America
They will get away with it. Glenn Greenwald has a couple of important reports up on Salon about massive police raids on -- well, not just protesters, but people only suspected of merely planning...
View ArticleSo I got one of those 'Obama is a Muslim' emails
It was forwarded to me about a week ago by a left-leaning friend under a can-you-believe-this-nonsense cover note. I was going to ignore it, but suddenly it seems that asking legitimate questions...
View ArticleMcCain or 'Sweeney Todd': Which is scarier?
A friend from Pennsylvania send me the following email. I liked it a lot. I suggested she start a diary here. Instead, she gave me permission to post it. So let's give her a big welcome and see if...
View ArticleEddie Haskell: Republican Role Model
After I was making some calls for Obama this afternoon (trying to set an example, folks), it hit me. Maybe it's not an original thought, but it explains a lot of downright bizarre behavior we've been...
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