Toilet-stall rhetoric

  Jeb. Jim. Ned. Fred. Chip. Jobe. Flip. Flop. Whatever your name, Mr. Well-Combed Congressman from Texas, you got schooled.   President Obama got one thing wrong in his televised face-off with House Republicans. His last accuser was named Jeb — Jeb Hensarling — not Jim, as Obama mis-IDed him.    Beyond that, a newly and truly combative…

Live the fantasy

Not to be sexist regarding my own sex, but every man is a Homer Simpson — he whose every thought process can be stopped dead by the word “donut.” No exception. Even the guy I most identify with “eat to live; don’t live to eat” will stop all philosophizing at the mere mention of pie.…

Tom DeLay likes it

     “My rackets,” Al Capone once told an interviewer, “are run on strictly American lines and they're going to stay that way.”      That’s the line Tom DeLay will try on a judge now that five members of the U.S. Supreme Court have ruled that previously illegal corporate campaign contributions are protected free speech.…

Quest to hijack history

    Perhaps we should redirect the words of the smashingly succinct Joseph Welch toward the controlling clique on the Texas State Board of Education: “Have you no sense of decency?”    The answer is no, and none is required. All that is required, apparently, is seven votes to say that up is down and Joseph…

‘And on Earth . . .’

   It was March 20, 2003. After “shock and awe,” American forces had rolled tanks into Iraq. I drove by a church whose marquee read, “Pray for peace.” I shook my head. Maybe some worshippers inside wanted that. The rest didn’t mean it at all. They wanted to crush perceived enemies.    Now it’s December 2009.…