Robert Ingersoll was fat. The Great Agnostic, as he was known in his day, was so portly that critics sighed over the “spectacular auto da fé” he would have made if set alight for heresy—as he surely would have been in an earlier era.
Goddess of the Market
Give Me Liberty
Every spring, just around prom time, dead bodies and crumpled cars litter America's suburban streets. Full-scale emergency response teams swarm around the accident sites, complete with helicopters, ambulances, and the occasional hearse. Police officers visit high school classrooms to break the news…
THE CURRENT WEEKLY STANDARD sports a nifty parody of Grant Wood's American Gothic. If you want to read a learned, balanced piece about the cultural context and significance of the painting, stop reading this and click here.
IT TAKES A CERTAIN AMOUNT of chutzpah to write a book called God's Politics. But you have only to read a few pages of Jim Wallis's new bestseller by that name to discover that it isn't actually about the politics of an all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful deity at all. Instead, it's 384 pages of…
HILLARY LEANS IN TO HER husband, teeth clenched in a polite smile: "Bill! I swear, you are so predictable. Stop ogling that woman in the black beret! It's Karl's wife, for heaven's sake."
THERE IS NO WORD in Latin for "volcano."
REPUBLICAN SENATOR-ELECT Tom Coburn is proud of the number of babies he has delivered, many of them on weekends while serving in the House of Representatives. But his participation in the miracle of life can't compete with his much-more-miraculous ability to walk on water. No one has actually seen…
Columbus, Ohio
THE TEXANS FOR TRUTH have unearthed a video clip of a young-looking Bush flipping the camera the bird--or, as he prefers to call it, the "one-fingered victory salute."
HERE'S A CHUNK of President Bush's standard stump speech: "Think about what happened in Afghanistan. It wasn't all that long ago that the Taliban ran that country. Young girls couldn't even go to school. They were not only harboring terrorists, they had this dark ideology of hate. And people showed…
EVERY MAN with presidential aspirations has a black sheep in the family. Heck, George W. Bush has been the black sheep in his family from time to time. John Kerry is no exception. After decades of living abroad--most recently in Indonesia--Diana Kerry, John's younger sister, has returned to the…
YESTERDAY at 2:58 p.m. the House of Representatives passed the "District of Columbia Personal Protection Act." Floor debate was stunning, often managing to simultaneously defy the rules of logic and of constitutional law.
SOMETHING HAPPENED last week that sent reporters across the country scurrying for the nearest gun shop. A ban on certain assault weapons, signed into law by President Clinton in 1994, expired on Monday.
LAST WEEKEND, Florida was swarming with FEMA workers, insurance adjusters, and pollsters. And all three groups agree--it's a mess down there.
"FRANK JONES says he's angry about newly revealed memos that indicate President Bush got preferential treatment in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War." So reads the lede of an AP story released on Saturday, September 11.
A MAN HAS BEEN in the news lately, accused of dishonorable behavior in war, and Iam here today to defend him. Blood, after all, is thicker than water.
New York
New York
New York
YOU'D THINK DENNY HASTERT would be pretty good with a gavel by now. But when the Speaker of the House steps up to the podium, he seems as giddy as the president of the College Republicans. He's in Madison Square Garden on Monday to perform his duties as Permanent Convention Chairman of the 2004…
Central Park, New York
Boston
DENNIS KUCINICH'S campaign for president ended last week with an uninspiring fizzle, as the man who brings new meaning to the word "quixotic" tried one last time to assert his national viability.
Boston
Boston
Boston
AT A RECENT PARTY celebrating the expanded, paperback release of David Corn's The Lies of George W. Bush, ("Updated with new lies!") Corn quoted the party's "quasi-conservative" sponsor. "I'm not endorsing the book per-se," he said. "I'm just supporting your right to say it." Someone from the crowd…
NEWT GINGRICH has been leading a secret life. Night after night for years he's been slipping out of the headquarters of the vast right-wing conspiracy, wolfing down spy novels and then reviewing them for Amazon.com. So prolific and proficient has he been at this pursuit that he has attained the…
SENATOR JOHN KERRY issued a respectful and respectable statement in response to the news of President Reagan's death on Saturday. "Ronald Reagan's love of country was infectious," he said. "Even when he was breaking Democrats' hearts, he did so with a smile and in the spirit of honest and open…
THE SUN and I are in a Mexican standoff. In Cancun, appropriately enough. He glares down from his cloudless perch, unblinking. I am more furtive, peeking out from protective cover to squint up, determined not to let UV rays fry my tender flesh.
THE NEWEST EXHIBIT at the Corcoran Gallery of Art is excellent, largely because of what isn't on display. Norman Rockwell's depictions of the Four Freedoms are presented in the context of the moment of their creation. Though the temptation to use the exhibit as an opportunity to compare Rockwell's…
ALTHOUGH JUST AS MEAN-SPIRITED as the recent spate of Bush-bashing books, Paul Slansky's George W. Bush Quiz Book redeems itself from its author's intentions by being, well, oddly amusing.
"I DIDN'T GO to the U.N. to get into a fist fight," said Frank Calzon, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba--or, as he is known in Havana, "lackey to the United States, traitor to the motherland, capitalist pig, terrorist, and CIA agent." Calzon went to Geneva to deliver two…
FOLKS OVER AT the National Education Association headquarters are gloating. "Clearly, the ground on [No Child Left Behind] has shifted," said a statement released by the national teachers' union last week. "While publicly castigating NEA for what he called 'obstructionist scare tactics,' U.S.…
ONE SUSAN LINDAUER was arrested today on charges that she acted as a spy for the Iraqi Intelligence service, and accepted $10,000 for the information she gathered. See the full story here. Lindauer is identified as a "Takoma Park, MD woman" in news accounts, which allege that she made multiple…
WHEN FORMER Alabama supreme court chief justice Roy Moore speaks in sympathetic venues, he is "treated like a rock star, signing autographs and getting thunderous standing ovations," according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Moore's cult following (as well as his newly unemployed status) has…
EVEN CONSERVATIVES WHO ARE RESIGNED, more or less, to the president's "big government conservatism" get a little giddy when the White House releases its budget each year. Perhaps, they whisper among themselves, this will be the year that the president gets out the machete and truly clears some…
THE IMMENSELY POPULAR "Lord of the Rings" movies follow Frodo Baggins on a journey to rid Middle-earth of a ring that is compelling, powerful, and evil. The ring has destroyed countless lives, but each person who possesses it in turn believes himself immune to its malevolent force and is…
[img_assist|nid=369|title=|desc=For Kerry's hairy alter-ego, click here.|link=none|align=right|width=393|height=516]
DR. KHALED ABOU EL FADL'S reputation as a moderate Muslim thinker earned him a seat on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom last May. He is an accomplished legal scholar and an expert on Islamic jurisprudence. Born in Kuwait and bred in Egypt, Abou El Fadl is a professor…
ANTI-SPAM LEGISLATION landed on the president's desk on Monday with a loud splat. It is a patchwork of the nice-sounding, completely useless bits from the different proposals, all rolled into one.
"YOU FUMBLED THE BALL! You fumbled the ball! You embarrassed yourself and your team and your MOTHER!" Until you've had these words shouted directly into your ear by 100 drunken horn players in unison, you haven't really lived. Last weekend, I was lucky enough to relive this experience at the 120th…
MIGUEL ESTRADA, Janice Rogers Brown, Patricia Owen, and Carolyn Kuhl had their turn in the spotlight two weeks ago, at an all-night Senate debate over confirmation of judicial nominees. But a recent Democratic fundraising memo reveals that Charles Pickering--the first Bush judicial nominee to be…
STROM THURMOND would have been disappointed. What happened between 6:00 P.M. Wednesday and 9:30 A.M. Friday last week in the U.S. Senate chamber was no filibuster. No one read from the telephone book, sang show tunes, or relieved herself in a trashcan. In fact, the closest the Senate floor saw to…
Jerusalem
"THIS IS VERY EXCITING, we have never had anyone so important here since I started," said the press attaché to the Hungarian embassy, as Paul Wolfowitz arrived at the unveiling a statue on the embassy's lawn. The statue, according to the invitation, is of "Colonel Commandant Michael Kovats de…
THE MOVEMENT to set up vouchers for low-income kids in Washington, D.C., has gained a surprising ally--lifelong voucher opponent Senator Dianne Feinstein. But such breakthroughs have been few. Oddly lackluster support from school choice advocates, waffling from moderates, and a threatened…
JOINING NPR in the proud tradition of obituary relativism, the Philadelphia Inquirer offers up thoughts on the death of Elia Kazan--and his equivalency with Leni Riefenstahl. A Saturday feature, titled Kazan and Riefenstahl: Brilliant yet blemished, opens: "In an interesting coincidence, two…
DNC CHIEF Terry McAuliffe trotted out the Democratic talking points on last night's recall vote with twenty minutes to go before the polls closed: "The signal coming out of California would be, with the economic conditions there, George Bush should be very nervous. People are angry in California.…
CHANGES IN Federal Communications Commission regulations don't normally capture national attention. But a decision last June has people who worry about the growing influence of Big Media in a tizzy. Bill Clinton frets that "monolithic control over local media will reduce the diversity of…
DR. CHARLES LEE, an American citizen, was arrested immediately after arriving at Guangzhou airport in January 2003. He left his home in Menlo Park, California, to join the effort in drawing attention to the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners by the Chinese government. He has been imprisoned in…
"MY GUESS IS that Edward and Leni are together in the next world. They have eternity to work out the implications of their work," said Andrei Codrescu in a segment titled "Leni and Eddie" on NPR's "All Things Considered" last Friday. Codrescu's vision of "Eddie" (Teller) and "Leni" (Riefenstahl)…
ONE ISSUE generating a lot of heat with congressmen these days is spam. (Please, hold the discount Viagra jokes.) Congress is considering nine different bills aimed at reducing the amount of junk email in America's inboxes. None of the bills would stop spam entirely. And the most popular…
DANIEL PIPES, a prominent scholar of Islam and Middle East politics, is giving the administration heartburn, but he'll have a seat on the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace before the Senate gets back after Labor Day. After the White House announced Pipes's nomination to the Institute of Peace,…
"Because of my commitment to the environment, I think I can bring Greens into voting in the Democratic primary . . . and because of my commitment to civil liberties and challenge to the Patriot Act, I bring libertarians in." --Dennis Kucinich, Congressional Quarterly Weekly, July 18, 2003
THIS AFTERNOON, a ceremony will be held for the 2003 Medal of Freedom recipients in the East Room of the White House. President Bush's list is uniformly excellent, and incredibly revealing when compared with some of Bill Clinton's picks for the nation's highest civilian honor. Clinton's choices, of…
REMEMBER the Iraqi National Museum tragedy? In April it was reported that 170,000 priceless pieces had gone missing in the aftermath of the U.S. victory in Iraq. It turns out now that only 33 exhibition quality pieces are missing, along with 3,000 to 5,000 other items that were in storage.…
"DO YOU HAVE A PASS?" asks the burly rent-a-cop, as I stand in the midst of a swirling mass of middle schoolers. No, I explain, I have come to the Capitol to acquire a press pass, so naturally I don't have one yet. "You can't get in without a pass," he replies stoutly, and crosses his arms.…
AFRICANS ARE STARVING, American farmers are going out of business, and the administration says Europe's to blame. In a suit brought to the WTO earlier this month, the Bush administration alleges that the E.U.'s five-year moratorium on the approval of new genetically-modified (GM) foods violates the…
IN A BROOKLYN FEDERAL COURT yesterday the defense wrapped up its case in a lawsuit brought by the NAACP against Smith & Wesson, Glock, and dozens of other players in the firearm industry. Cherry-picking statistics from a confidential ATF "trace" database obtained by subpoena, the NAACP argued that…
PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE agrees that Dennis Kucinich is a long shot for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. Everyone, that is, but the man himself. Kucinich, who represents Ohio's 10th District in Congress, has run for office 18 times in the last 35 years. He got started with…
"THERE ARE OTHER WAYS to go about [this war] than to have thousands of people killed on both sides." So proclaimed House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi last Tuesday on CNBC's "Capital Report."
THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE version of Al Jazeera's website was test-launched early last week, but became inaccessible almost immediately and has been down ever since. It appears that American hackers are the most likely culprits. (For a brief period last week, those who tried to access the site were…
IT'S BEEN TOUGH for Democrats to avoid the temptation to badmouth the president. With Senate minority leader Tom Daschle calling him a "diplomatic failure" and worse, reporters seem to be begging prominent Democrats to bash Bush at every press conference, in every interview. Conflict does make for…
AFTER THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS in January, David Tell suggested that some might object to the United States acting "unilaterally" by spending $15 billion over then next 5 years to alleviate the AIDS crisis in Africa. It seemed like a funny joke at the time.
"AM I TOTALLY BORING, or what?" asks Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.
ON TUESDAY, after winning approval from the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, agribusiness giant Monsanto gained consent from the EPA to sell genetically-altered corn designed to resist rootworm, one of the biggest pests to America's largest crop, corn.
THIS WEEK, the Manhattan Libertarian party launched its "Guns for Tots" campaign to protest a bill that would make toy guns illegal in New York City.
MISSISSIPPI, all too used to ranking last or near last among the states in everything from education to wealth to race relations, has just seen a black mark against it erased: It is no longer the "jackpot justice" state, notorious for huge jury awards to plaintiffs who sue corporations and doctors…
NO ONE CAN BE SURE of the exact size of China's Internet police force, but estimates hover between 30,000 and 40,000 officers. And their back-up is impressive--China has just spent $200 million on new firewall technology as well. But for those who still try to access forbidden material, China's…
pork (n) 2. Government funds, appointments, or benefits dispensed or legislated by politicians to gain favor with their constituents.
THE "VOTIN' MINNESOTANS" (you have to say it with the accent) have done it again. Republican Norm Coleman has squeaked by former vice president Walter Mondale in an election featuring record turnout and a few lessons in campaign strategy.
POLLS RELEASED LAST WEEK have Gov. Gray Davis beating the pants off Bill Simon with a double-digit lead in the race for the California governorship. But, believe it or not, a select few still believe Simon has a chance. What are they thinking?
AN ELECTION REFORM ACT in the works since the last presidential election headed to the president's desk last Wednesday after receiving approval from the Senate.
BRITS ARE MORE LIKELY to kill themselves under conservative governments, according to a report just out from the department of social medicine at Bristol University. The study's authors claim that there have been, on average, 17 percent more suicides when Tories were in power during the twentieth…
"Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, said today that the authorities should examine whether the spread of the West Nile virus in this country is a result of biological terrorism."
THERE IS new draft legislation in the works that could severely curtail Americans' rights to exchange files on the Internet or share copies of music or other forms of entertainment in digital and analog formats (you can download a PDF of the bill here). The same bill would also more firmly…
THE INTRODUCTION of electricity has caused the "destruction" of cultures in the third world, according to the editor of an environmental website. He says "there's a lot of quality to be had in poverty."