What do mountaintop removal mining and the fate of the University of Texas Cactus Cafe have in common? This: The former looks at a mountain only as what riches it can yield. No value is assigned to the mountain itself, nothing intrinsic. It is but an obstacle to wealth. If a…
I once heard from a tenure-seeking professor at Baylor University who said officials sought information about her churchgoing and whether or not she’d signed up for church committees. They were probing for evidence of what then-Baylor President Robert Sloan called “intentional Christianity.” Now heading the probe: President Kenneth Starr? Years…
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…
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.…
Sometimes the sirens of the social right say so much about a certain subject that their words circle around and bite them in the posterior. Such was the case the other day when a spokesperson for Focus on the Family was asked about a bill to extend anti-discrimination, anti-harassment protections in public…
“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.…
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…
The year was 1993, and I was being besieged by experts. I never knew so many people knew so much until that year — when a raid on the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco went so seriously afoul that the standoff ended up a nightly fixation on CNN and the networks. …
If self-interest alone were to guide one’s politics, I’d be writing my congressman to support the HAPPY Act. As would my seven cats, my three dogs, my three rabbits. Well, I’m not. And I’ve told the pets to put their quills in their ink wells, and slowly walk away. The…
And so we say farewell to the Decade of Levi Johnston, he who impregnated a vice presidential candidate’s teen daughter, paraded before the nation as a picture of family values, had his affections alienated, did an armpit- bearing fold-out photo session and appeared on enough talk shows to become a household face. That…