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.…
DetailsSometimes 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…
Details“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.…
DetailsPerhaps 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…
DetailsThe 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. …
DetailsIf 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…
DetailsAnd 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…
DetailsIt 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.…
DetailsThey’re getting it, but they still don’t get it. States are figuring out that it’s not good policy to put so much emphasis on a single standardized test. Not only does it result in miscarriages of assessment, even when students get more than one try. It also warps and crimps…
DetailsMake that $1 million a soldier, $1 million a Marine. Or, one sixth of an elementary school. Or one rural fire station. That’s what it will cost to deploy someone to combat in Afghanistan for a year. Time flies. According to White House estimates in the New York Times, three…
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