“A toast — to the Texas Legislature.” The Republican strategists lifted their cocktails high. What a session — a brutal blitzkrieg against a helplessly microscopic segment of constituents who barely have a voice: transexuals. Mass shootings? A fatally flawed electric grid? Schools gasping for funding? Texas Republicans could, in all good conscience, put them aside.…
Vindictive. Vengeful. Vituperative. Vitriolic. Vainglorious. Venal. Volatile. That’s just from the V section for Ron DeSantis. Not “visionary.” Not “virtuous.” Just mean. Tragically, his style of spite sells to some in the age of Trump. As New York Times columnist (and Reagan conservative) Bret Stephens quips, “It takes a creep to beat a bigger creep.”…
Whatever fraud he’s up to now, once upon a time Rudy Giuliani fought crime. A zealous federal prosecutor in the 1980s, one of his key tools was the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act – RICO. The 1970 law gave law enforcement a means of cracking vast criminal organizations and targeting the kingpins. RICO was…
“Why are you so afraid of the word ‘Fascism’? . . . Just a word – just a word. And might not be so bad.” In Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 political novel “It Can’t Happen Here,” it’s just a word — until fascism’s face is painted on America’s streets. The tool for Lewis’ turn of the…
What did he eat while his worshippers ransacked our Capitol? Did he pop bonbons? Chocolate or cherry? Did he order Chinese? Did a noble DoorDash dispatch persist through the haze and bear spray to bring unto the king his Quarter Pounder? Thanks to the Jan. 6 Committee, you and I know what else Donald Trump…
The largest mackerel ever caught tipped the scales at 93 pounds. Imagine one of those across the face. No need for Republicans in Wisconsin. They felt it last month in what was touted as the most important election of 2023. Smack. In the vote for a seat on the state supreme court with abortion rights…
Republicans in the Texas Senate have advanced a bill to post the Ten Commandments in all public classrooms. It has a twist, however. Under the bill, Commandment 8’s “thou shalt not bear false witness” will be amended with “except with elections lost by Donald Trump and attendant baseless claims of rampant voter fraud.” The truth…
Beauty is skin deep, but stupid is to the bone. I didn’t come up with that. The stupidity that today passes for governance in some places, however, inspires me to coin a term. Call it the “One Dumb Person” doctrine. Actually, credit for this thought goes to Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, blasting Florida’s new “parental rights”…
I know you are asking today: “How long will it take?” When Martin Luther King Jr. addressed that question in March of 1965, he wasn’t talking of the intractable national tragedy of gun violence, but it’s a cause he’d lead today. Three years later on an April evening, a high-powered killing device would take him…
Early vote-count results were encouraging, so he planned a victory speech. Then the tally went sour, and so did he. “It was stolen from me,” said Donald Trump. Over the next few weeks Trump pestered state officials alleging irregularities. He threatened to sue. “Fraud,” he declared without a shred of evidence. But Ted Cruz had…