Thou Shall Not Violate the First Amendment in Alabama Earlier, talking about the recent sodomy case and the upcoming Pledge of Allegiance case, I speculated that “if something is constitutionally questionable but it dates back to the American Revolution or thereabouts, then it’s ok. But if it’s constitutionally questionable and originated in the 20th century, […]

Media Scripts It’s pretty tough to add much to Bob Somerby’s incomparable TM media criticism, but I occasionally try (most recently here). Salon’s Eric Boehlert, who often cites Somerby, is another great source for criticism and analysis of the political press corps. Both ask the big question: how could the press mercilessly hound Al Gore […]

Is D.C. becoming a one-party town? Howie Kurtz is actually good today, writing about the Republican Machine (no, not Fox News). Actually, Kurtz isn’t good, but he quotes very extensively from Nicholas Confessore’s Washington Monthy story: “Today, the GOP holds a two-to-one advantage in corporate cash. That shift in large part explains conservatives’ extraordinary legislative […]

Feeding the Base There’s a nice NYT story today, Bush, Looking to His Right, Shores Up Support for 2004, describing how Right wing base is quite happy with Bush II. For example, –David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, said: “In the first Bush administration, the conservatives were asked to be spectators — […]

Sodomy and the Pledge of Allegiance An unlikely connection, but here goes. One part of yesterday’s ruling struck me as interesting: (b) Having misapprehended the liberty claim presented to it, the Bowers Court stated that proscriptions against sodomy have ancient roots. 478 U. S., at 192. It should be noted, however, that there is no […]

Old Racist Dies I guess Billy Joel had it right: Strom Thurmond, dead at 100. I suspect that yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling overturning sodomy laws was too much for him to take. AB

Back to Normal That was fun, now back to my regularly scheduled programming of not noticing the little f*ck’s existence. BTW, if you run a Google search of “Michael Savage”, the number 3 hit is Savage Stupidity, followed by Michael Savage Sucks.com. The #2 hit is also a parody site. The objective is to keep […]

A Picture Tells a Thousand Words Remember, these graphs only go through 2000, so this is before the Bush tax cuts. Still, these wealthy people stand to lose a lot more from a crappy economy than they stand to gain from Bush’s tax cuts–but when will they figure this out? Go read the whole NYT […]

Flood the Jackass Zone I tend to ignore Michael Weiner (who you may know as Michael Savage) because anyone who would listen to him for more than two minutes is beyond reason or redemtion. My initial take when MSNBC hired him was to highlight the obvious: “Michael Savage is a jackass…I guess that makes the […]

Failing the Hillary Test By now you have probably heard about the latest move by the Senate Rules Committee: passing, in a voice vote in which no Democrats were present, a measure proposed by Bill Frist to “provide for a series of cloture votes, where the threshold would gradually decrease until only a simple majority […]