The Carpetbagger Report

First up from The God Machine this week is an important report from Media Matters that didn’t get quite the attention it deserved. It would surprise few people, conservative or progressive, to learn that coverage of the intersection of religion and politics tends to oversimplify both. If this oversimplification occurred to the benefit or detriment […]

Guest Post by Morbo It’s that time of year again — time for rude, obnoxious, fanatical teenagers to exploit a captive audience by spending 20 minutes sermonizing for Jesus. Yes, it’s high school graduation time. In Duval County, Fla., valedictorian Shannon Spaulding of Wolfson High School in Jacksonville decided to spend her time at the […]

Guest Post by Morbo Las Vegas and its environs are considered the fastest-growing metropolitan area of the United States. A 2003 article on the area by the United States Geological Survey noted that the region’s population may double by 2015. That’s a lot of roads, schools, libraries, community centers and other forms of infrastructure. How […]

Guest Post by Morbo Let me apologize at the outset for linking to a piece on World Net Daily, a kook right site, but it seems to be the only place out there following an interesting story out of Albemarle County, Va. Some public school teachers there are throwing a fit because they have been […]

Guest Post by Morbo I was glad to see the Carpetbagger’s piece this week about Lou Dobbs, CNN’s resident anti-illegal immigrant hysteria monger. We should keep an eye on Dobbs for a couple of reasons. For starters, his appeal cuts across partisan lines. People aren’t sure where to put Dobbs politically. Last November, I was […]

Today’s edition of quick hits. * Presidential Counselor Dan Bartlett, a key Bush insider for more than 13 years, announced this morning he will resign effective July 4. Bartlett has always struck me as a rather unimpressive hack, but my all-time favorite Bartlett moment was when he insisted, last October, that the White House had […]

I’m afraid this is about the saddest news I’ve seen today. Fort Lewis, which this month has suffered its worst losses of the war, will no longer conduct individual memorial ceremonies for soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, the post will hold one ceremony for all soldiers killed each month, the Fort Lewis acting […]

Roll Call Executive Editor and Fox News contributor Mort Kondracke agrees that the U.S. policy in Iraq is a disaster, and is ready to assign blame … to everyone. (via TPM) Barring a miracle, the United States faces a catastrophic defeat in Iraq, with President Bush and both Republicans and Democrats in Congress sharing in […]

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Bill Keller, host of the Florida-based Live Prayer TV program as well as LivePrayer.com, wrote in his daily devotional, “If you vote for Mitt Romney, you are voting for Satan!” Keller, a fairly prominent televangelist in religious right circles and a graduate of Jerry Falwell’s college, distributed […]

We learned a couple of weeks ago that the Bush administration is in the midst of building the biggest, most expensive embassy on earth, right in the heart of Baghdad. It’s slated to be a 104-acre compound — roughly 80 football fields — that will be one of the few major projects the administration has […]