The International Atomic Energy Agency has been monitoring potentially dangerous sites and materials in Iraq from before the war. Apparently, it’s recent findings are not exactly encouraging. First, there’s this horrifying AP report: Some Iraqi nuclear facilities appear to be unguarded, and radioactive materials are being taken out of the country, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog […]
The Bush campaign, in speeches and ads, has targeted John Kerry’s credibility as a primary target. He’s a flip-flopper, they say. He waffles, they insist. He can’t be trusted, they argue. The attacks are infuriating, of course, because they are equal parts false and hypocritical. On the one hand, the charges are just factually wrong […]
I’m definitely with Eugene Oregon on this one. Like him, I’ve always more-or-less believed that there wasn’t much the White House could have done to prevent the terrorist attacks on 9/11. It was exceedingly difficult to “connect the dots,” the “chatter” didn’t tell our intelligence officials enough, the real threats were believed to be abroad, […]
As someone who takes church-state separation seriously, I’ve never cared much for the legislative practice of official invocations. If lawmakers are inviting local religious leaders, faith groups are inevitably left out. If the reverend uses a faith-specific prayer, public officials of different faiths are offended. If a pastor uses a watered-down, generic prayer, officials who […]
This is probably a day late, but I had one final thought in reaction to Bush’s prime-time press conference on Tuesday. I’ve already written about my general reaction to the event and why it was so disappointing, but something else occurred to me last night. The whole press conference may have been a disjointed mess, […]
I’m sure this wasn’t easy for them. White House officials tend to insist that all Bush statements are inherently right, even when they’re wrong, by virtue of Bush saying them. Fortunately, however, the White House admitted yesterday that Bush was wrong about mustard gas found in Libya when he spoke on the issue during this […]
Stop me if you’ve heard this one. A GOP lawmaker in the 90s said he loves term limits and wants to make Congress a “citizen legislature” that will somehow return political power “to the people” by having less-experienced officials serving them in public office. Said lawmaker gets elected and realizes that lawmakers actually learn things […]
If you want to get a disturbing look at the role the Bush administration is willing to give its industrial allies, there’s a must-read article in the Washington Post today about rat poison. Over the past six years, the pesticide industry has fought off or stalled two regulatory initiatives designed to protect children and wildlife […]
Everyone’s favorite theocrat, Alabama’s Roy Moore, wasted a lot of time and energy abusing his power and launching a crusade to advance his theocratic agenda. His drive to use his office to promote the Ten Commandments was obviously an unconstitutional effort and Moore lost at every level and before every court in which his case […]
It’s April 15, so I thought it appropriate to share a few tax-related items for your viewing pleasure. Although, in this instance, I’m not sure how pleasurable they’ll really be. First, you might find it interesting that taxes on U.S. corporations are shrinking dramatically. In fact, as the Wall Street Journal noted this week, “it […]