Rick Santorum has laid down the challenge. It’s time someone took on that challenge. About godliness, that is. About who’s more godly. That would be Rick Santorum, he says, in contrast to Barack Obama, who has no coin in said fountain. Before discussing the most recent…
DetailsIn sitcoms, it’s called “Jumping the Shark.” In politics, I’m introducing a term for a political party that loses contact with its essence and forgets its audience. It’s called "passing the ladle." Ladle — as in bearer of a beverage with arsenic sweetener. Suddenly, in the presidential nominating process, it appears…
DetailsWhere have they been? Where will they be tomorrow? Let’s hope they are in the political discussion for the long haul, countering the incessant propaganda that has placed their health — mothers’ health — under the rolling pin of anti-abortion politics. Women who understand the stakes of reproductive…
Details“Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement.” Hands now: How many of you wish that voters had taken President Herbert Hoover up on the words above, shared with Congress in 1930? Matters would become so bleak, that depression earning a capital D, that Hoover’s Republican predecessor,…
Details“I wonder what his ex-wife is thinking, knowing she put him over the top in South Carolina.” My wife, who said this, wasn’t being serious, of course. Who could profit from his ex-wife telling a national audience about him making a teensy weensy request: to mess around on her? This just before…
DetailsThe best line so far in the 2012 presidential derby? This from Joe Klein: “Authenticity is rapidly becoming a euphemism for simple ignorance. (Herman) Cain was authentic; Sarah Palin was authentic. Elitists — people who have actually studied complicated stuff and become experts at it — are phonies. Just ask Rush Limbaugh.” …
DetailsWhenever she sees gratuitous spending, my wife thinks like a dog-cat lover. She thinks of the animal shelters that money could build. Don’t look now, but whole cities of animal shelters are being expended in legal fees by states across the country to promote and defend something Americans least need: noncompetitive, lock-cinch, party-rigged…
DetailsLet’s say your neighbor spent his working hours cooking methamphetamine. Let’s say that instead of cooking it in the basement, confining lethal fumes to his home-sweet four walls and his two incinerated lungs, your neighbor cooked meth as one would a backyard brisket: over your fence. Let’s say that, nauseated by the…
DetailsThe subject here is destructive education policies. But first: Have you heard of the Capital One Cup? It goes to the two Division I NCAA schools that win the most titles each year in men’s and women’s sports. The prize? In addition to the glittering silver keepsake: $400,000 in athletic scholarships. Inspiring,…
DetailsMy wife knew what she was talking about, but her fine instincts were not enough to move me. “Write a Christmas book,” she said. Nothing sells like a Christmas book. It’s short. It’s seasonal. It sells. You get it as a gift, you regift it next Christmas. Sales receipts don’t lie.…
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