This Week in God

First up from the God machine this week is a strange fight over dating. Not the kind where two people go out for dinner and a movie, which might seem more likely to generate some kind of religious controversy, but literally how best to assign dates to historical periods of time. A bill in the […]

Please go away, Alan Keyes

Guest Post by Morbo You might have noticed that Alan Keyes did not win the Iowa caucuses. I was pretty surprised. After all, in late December I received a special message from Keyes himself assuring me that his campaign was on fire. It looked like a lock. Why I am I getting messages from Alan […]

Most scientists believe the Earth is round

Guest Post by Morbo The United States entered World War II after Pearl Harbor was attacked on Dec. 7, 1941. Victory in Europe Day was celebrated in May of 1945, and Victory in Japan Day occurred the following August. We can safely say that World War II, at least as far as the United States’ […]

Friday’s Mini-Report

Today’s edition of quick hits. * Economic news is more than just a little discouraging: “With the latest numbers on jobs growth showing the U.S. economy deteriorating more rapidly than expected, the threat of a recession – and the measures needed to revive growth – has taken on a larger political profile. Friday’s jobs report […]

Can Obamaism work?

One of the questions surrounding Barack Obama’s style is whether it actually works to “bring people together.” Charles Peters, founder of the Washington Monthly, takes a closer look at how Obama operated as a state legislator, seeing how his tack is applied to real-life example. Consider a bill into which Obama clearly put his heart […]

Has the media picked its man?

Last year, Fred Barnes, the prominent conservative pundit and executive editor of The Weekly Standard, noted, “In 2000, his aides joked that McCain’s base was the media. In truth, it was.” I rarely agree with Barnes, but he’s unfortunately right about this. Back in 2000, McCain was an outsider insurgent candidate taking on a party […]

Swift Boat Liars aren’t gone, they’ve just changed candidates

Over the last three years, the group of organized, well-financed liars ironically named the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” have come to be synonymous with vicious smears and mendacity. Most honorable people, who have any decency at all, look back at the group’s bogus attacks with disgust and disappointment. These clowns smeared a war hero […]

The limits of faith-based politics

As impressive as Mike Huckabee’s nine-point win in the Iowa caucuses was last night, in the minds of most of the political world, it seems to come with something of an asterisk — he won because religious right voters have a huge influence in Iowa, an influence that doesn’t exist everywhere else. Huckabee succeeded, but […]

What does Clinton do to become the ‘comeback kid’?

This morning, Bill Clinton told ABC News that New Hampshire can make Hillary Clinton the “comeback kid,” just as it did for him 16 years ago. He sounded an optimistic note: “She’s got a better profile here. They know more about her now than they did about me then. And I think she’ll be fine. […]

He has us right where he wants us

We’ve finally reached a point in the nominating process in which we can stop talking about Rudy Giuliani, right? After all, he came in a distant sixth in Iowa — after having led the field as recently as the summer — and Ron Paul nearly tripled his support. For a candidate who was once labeled […]