Guest Post by Morbo A few years ago, my daughter and I read “The Golden Compass,” the first volume of British author Philip Pullman’s trilogy titled “His Dark Materials.” We moved on to the second book but never finished it. Now I’m thinking we made a mistake. A movie version of the first book opens […]
Guest Post by Morbo I get press releases from the Libertarian Party in my spam folder. I’m not sure why. One that arrived this week was typical: Party official bragging about how 2008 will be their breakthrough year. “I believe 2008 will be a special year for Libertarians everywhere,” says Wayne Allyn Root, the party’s […]
Today’s edition of quick hits. * Bloodshed in Baghdad: “Two bombs exploded hours apart Friday in a central Baghdad pet market and a police checkpoint in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, killing 26 people and wounding dozens, officials said…. The blast in the capital’s popular weekly al-Ghazl animal bazaar occurred just before 9 a.m., […]
McClatchy has a good item today about the odd nature of the fight among Republican presidential hopefuls over immigration — we’re watching candidates who embraced relatively progressive policies attack each other while moving to the hard-right. [Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney] each ran a jurisdiction that’s arguably among the nation’s most tolerant, where cracking down […]
We’ve learned quite a bit the last few years about the Bush administration tapping Americans’ phones. And reading their emails. And accessing private information, including medical and library records. But we didn’t know cellphone-tracking powers were on the list, too. The Justice Department’s own internal recommendation say that officials seek warrants based on probable cause […]
When a presidential candidate misspeaks and commits a dreaded “gaffe,” it’s embarrassing. When a candidate commits a gaffe that feeds into existing concerns, it tends to have a far greater impact. So, in 1992, when Bill Clinton said he “didn’t inhale,” it reinforced the narrative that he liked to try and have things both ways […]
Today’s shorter-than-usual installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers: * The AP noted today that Rudy Giuliani prefers restaurants to town-hall meetings: “The diner tour lets Giuliani play to his popularity and celebrity. It also lets him avoid tough questions in […]
Lately, presidential candidates have been fielding some odd questions when it comes to space — space travel, space invaders, space conspiracies, etc. Bill Richardson talked recently about his intention, if elected, to open the classified files on the weather-balloon incident in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. Rudy Giuliani was asked a town-hall meeting whether he […]
The bad news is, over 30,000 American troops have been seriously injured during service in Iraq and Afghanistan, including over 4,000 soldiers and Marines with brain injuries. The far worse news is that those numbers aren’t even close to the actual casualty numbers. At least 20,000 U.S. troops who were not classified as wounded during […]
The Alternative Minimum Tax was created in the ’60s to prevent a handful of wealthy taxpayers from exploiting loopholes and not paying income taxes. It was not, however, indexed for inflation, which means the AMT is poised to hurt the middle-class. Everyone says they want to fix the AMT, but it’s expensive — costing up […]