Thanks to the efforts of Rep. Frank Wolf, a conservative Republican from Virginia, the Justice Department spends $150,000 a year to pay a handful of people to spend their afternoons reviewing sexual websites, to see whether they qualify as obscene material whose purveyors should be prosecuted. How’s that working out for the Bush administration? Not […]
The Philadelphia Daily News’ Stu Bykofsky, one of the city’s most widely-read columnists, caused a bit of a stir with his latest column, which posited a provocative idea: another 9/11-style attack to “help” America. As Bykofsky sees it, “we have forgotten who the enemy is,” and the murder of thousands of Americans would help us […]
First up from The God Machine this week is an issue that I’ve been following for a while: asking voters to cast ballots in local churches. Frequently, it’s about logistical convenience — in many parts of the country, a local church is the only public facility big enough to accommodate the community’s voters. But that […]
I should know better than to be surprised, but when anti-gay animus is this ugly, it’s almost painful. Relatives of a gay Navy veteran who died say they are upset that a megachurch led by Joel Osteen’s brother-in-law canceled his memorial service 24 hours before it was to start. Officials at the nondenominational High Point […]
Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, confirmed by the Senate in June to serve as the president’s war advisor (aka, the “war czar”), has kept a remarkably low profile. NSA Stephen Hadley told reporters a while back that Lute would be “up close to the president” to work “full time, 24/7” on implementing Bush’s war policy, but […]
Today’s edition of quick hits. * Wall Street was not for the faint of heart today: “Stocks trimmed losses, but still ended lower for the second session in a row as investors mulled news that the Federal Reserve has pumped $38 billion into the banking system amid ongoing worries about tightening credit and the subprime […]
Michael Crowley notes an unremarkable human-interest story out of Joplin, Mo., about a middle-aged man who has a home, but prefers to live in his car. Apparently, the man, Steven Graham, is annoying his neighbors quite a bit “disturbing the peace with loud music and obscenity-laced tirades.” A neighbor said, “Every day he’s out there. […]
There’s just something amusing about the president’s penchant for vacations. As governor of Texas, Bush enjoyed an inordinate amount of “down time,” and he brought that style to the White House. When he’s at “work,” Bush leaves plenty of time for exercise and likes to knock off early. More importantly, he likes to get away […]
Frequently, the difference between a campaign controversy that does permanent damage and a campaign controversy that causes a mild stir is one thing: video. If we saw a print account that George Allen called someone “macaca,” it’s nauseating, but when that is captured on video, it goes into heavy rotation. I mentioned earlier reports that […]
Hillary Clinton is out to impress Democratic primary voters, not conservative pundits, but as Bruce Bartlett noted today, Clinton “is rapidly becoming not merely acceptable to many right-wingers but possibly even their candidate of choice.” Listen to Kathryn Lopez, editor of National Review Online, who was blogging live during the AFL-CIO Democratic debate Tuesday in […]