As a rule, I find conservative activists embrace a rather silly agenda, but they’re particularly entertaining when they go after harmless children’s books. In the latest example, children in Savannah, Missouri, need to be shielded from allegedly-gay penguins. A children’s book about two male penguins who raise a baby penguin has been moved to the […]
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers: * Thanks to a couple of weeks of wooing from party leaders, Kathleen Troia McFarland, a former speechwriter and public affairs official at the Defense Department during the Reagan administration, announced yesterday that […]
As readers have probably heard by now, South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds (R) signed legislation Monday banning nearly all abortions in the state, as part of a conservative drive to directly challenge Roe v Wade now that the composition of the Supreme Court has changed. For opponents of abortion rights in the South Dakota legislature, […]
The WaPo had a good editorial today that emphasized the right points: the Supreme Court was right to say that publicly-funded colleges can’t restrict military recruiters based on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” but the policy still needs to go. The real problem, which [the Solomon Amendment] has tended to obscure, is that the military, even […]
The Bush White House has included the idea of a line-item veto power in each of its federal budgets, but this year, the Bush gang seems serious about it. I don’t have a philosophical problem with the tool, but I think it’s rather amusing that this president — who has increased federal spending more than […]
Voters in Tom DeLay’s district will vote today in a four-way Republican primary, the most serious primary challenge of DeLay’s career. The recently-indicted former House Majority Leader still has a solid base of far-right support, but his primary rivals have reminded voters repeatedly in recent months that DeLay has lost sight of responsibilities and has […]
I’m not quite sure why this hasn’t generated broader media attention, but the Senate Intelligence Committee will decide today whether (and how) to investigate the president’s warrantless-search program. Republicans in Congress are trying to limit the scope of any investigation into how President Bush’s secret domestic-surveillance program has operated. Some key lawmakers are also working […]
George Will devoted his most recent column to deriding John Edwards’ approach to tackling poverty. In just a couple of paragraphs, Will managed to highlight most of what conservatives get wrong about low-income families. In a speech shortly after Hurricane Katrina, [Edwards] rightly stressed the correlation of family disintegration — especially out-of-wedlock births — with […]
The Wall Street Journal reported today that progressive activists and groups like ImpeachPAC are gearing up to make Bush’s possible impeachment a major campaign issue in 2006, but party leaders see no upside to this message. The $60,000 that ImpeachPAC has raised so far isn’t much, but has kept the Internet-based organization afloat…. The movement […]
Last week, we learned that the Department of Homeland Security can’t distribute electronic announcements of new watchdog reports because the inspector general’s office says it “lacks capacity to create a mass email list.” As if that wasn’t enough cause for concern about the agency that helps keep us safe on U.S. soil, the private security […]