Quoth Newt Gingrich, Republican presidential hopeful for 2012, whose unlikely strategy for standing out from the rest of the pack is to portray himself as the reasonable and intellectual historian in a field dominated by raving wingnuts: I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by […]

I’ve been seeing this all over the place the last couple of days, and to be honest, it’s one of the better simple analyses of the whole Wisconsin situation that I’ve seen. Presented here for posterity: A public union employee, a tea party activist, and a CEO are sitting at a table with a plate […]

Courtesy of Thomas Paine, journalist, propagandist, and one of the “Fathers” of the American Revolution: Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it. A valid and worthy thought, and one that goes completely against the context in which Paine tends to be invoked these days. Just because some guy wrote it […]

Dana Milbank at the Washington Post had a brilliant, beautiful idea the other day, that I thought I ought to share here. Starting today, February 1, 2010, Milbank has vowed to, for at least one month, not mention a certain public figure, and encouraging everyone else to do so, in the hope that by the […]

…those measures, of course, being the shot, the fifth, the case, and the keg… In what’s become a tradition in this space, I shall now provide links to several, shall we say, viewing guides for tonight’s State of the Union Address. Said guides are provided as a service to the public (but not necessarily a […]

Senate Passes “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Repeal. It’s long past time we got rid of the whole “gay people can’t serve” business, even if it is the “well, you can serve, as long as you never ever talk about it” variety. I, for one, am glad to see the United States take one step closer […]

I honestly love it when I find a succinct explanation of a problem that’s been bugging the hell out of me for a long time. Today, I found it in this piece from Rick Perlstein in The Daily Beast (by way of a link from Amanda Marcotte at pandagon): When one side breaks the social […]

if this post feels a little disjointed, it’s because I feel a little disjointed right now. There’s lots of stressful and often unpleasant stuff rattling around in the deep dark corners of my brain right now, and it’s got me both totally on edge and wallowing in what may not necessarily a deep well of […]

Just some stuff rattling around in my head; with only a few re-runs from the twitter feed: ♦ – As strange as it sounds, I am coming to believe that LEGO Rock Band is a better game than Rock Band 2. ♦ – My new favorite Southern Colloquial expression is definitely “getting down to the […]

…I experience pangs of great regret that I shall never be as erudite as slacktivist. I wish I could distill topics down to their essence as effectively as this: Tea partiers tend to revere the U.S. Constitution in much the same way that many American evangelicals revere the Bible, which is to say they read […]