Long-time readers know that I take a certain amount of pleasure in mocking South Florida, where I was born and raised. There’s just something uniquely ridiculous about Miami and its surrounding communities that makes the area prone to outlandish, not to mention absurd, circumstances. It’s been particularly over the top lately, This week, Miami’s own […]
In 1997, shortly after I finished grad school, I started working at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. My very first project, literally in my first week, dealt with a Republican member of South Carolina’s Board of Education, who wanted to impose Christianity on public school students. When one of his colleagues on […]
Freshman Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), one of the more embarrassing members of Congress, became a bit of a punchline a month ago when, after the State of the Union, she put her hand on the president’s shoulder as he was exiting the chamber — but wouldn’t let go. This came after bizarre ideas from Bachmann […]
The God Machine worked overtime this week, with more religion-related news items than it could handle. First up, an item brought to my attention by several readers, about the year’s most interesting religious court case. Annie Laurie Gaylor speaks with a soft voice, but her message catches attention: Keep God out of government. Gaylor has […]
Guest Post by Morbo Members of a band of chimpanzees living in West Africa have been observed fashioning weapons. As The Washington Post reported recently, this isn’t just a simple case of a chimp picking up a stick and using it as a tool. In this case, the chimps had more work to do. Reported […]
Guest Post by Morbo Librarians all over the country are throwing a fit over a work of children’s literature that contains the word “scrotum.” The word, which has horrified religious conservatives and prudes everywhere, appears in the recently published novel “The Higher Power of Lucky,” by Susan Patron. This tome is part of a popular […]
Today’s edition of quick hits. * John McCain is still taking some heat for appearing at an event in Seattle tomorrow, co-sponsored by the Discovery Institute, the nation’s largest advocate of intelligent-design creationism. (For those who want some background on the group, I wrote a piece on the Discovery Institute in 2002.) * Remember Ahmed […]
At first, I thought the “Conservapedia” was some kind of joke. Billed as a conservative rival to Wikipedia, Conservapedia would be an ideologically pure, right-wing online collaborative encyclopedia. Except the site was so laughably right-wing, and so intentionally devoid of diversity of thought, it seemed obvious that this was some Onion-like parody. No such luck. […]
Shortly after the first Gulf War, then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney was a little sensitive to charges that he failed to “finish the job” against Iraq. More than a few hawks thought that Cheney and the other Bush administration dropped the ball when it had the opportunity to take out Saddam but chose not to. In […]
Of all the political issues that I cover here, I’ve always had a soft spot for the White House’s “bubble-boy” policies. It simply amazes me the extent to which the Bush gang will shield the president, not only from dissent, from anyone who might ask a question Bush is unwilling (unable?) to answer. It’s a […]