So Barack Obama is planning to become the first African-American president of the United States. The first black president. Or so we’re told. But wait just a second here. How come Obama is black? When someone is tagged “white,” it’s because s/he’s all white. Allegedly. If s/he has one drop of African-American blood, s/he’s black. Of […]

The full quote from Thomas Jefferson reads, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” Your job, dear readers, is to decide, using the frame of reference enjoyed by our elected national leadership and presidential aspirants, what constitutes the tree’s […]

Following on the heels of his courageous stand against the Constitution generally, and specifically the Fourth Amendment, with respect to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and immunity for law-breaking telecommunications firms, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has announced his support for widening the range of felonies subject to the death penalty and discarding […]

The Honorary Consul, by Graham Greene
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (or Notre-Dame de Paris), by Victor Hugo
“He imagined that in this history there was much more of magic than of love, probably a sorceress, perhaps the devil; in short, a comedy, or to use the language of those days, a mystery, of a very disagreeable nature…”
I […]

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has followed the lead of House majority leader Steny Hoyer (D-AT&T) and House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Vichy) and endorsed a “compromise” electronic surveillance bill that legitimates the Nixon-Cheney belief that the presidency confers immunity from any law the current holder of it chooses to ignore. Even better, it offers […]

The more we learn of the Bush administration’s proposed long-term security agreement with Iraq, the less sensible Iraqi acquiescence seems. In essence, it codifies the administration’s desire to turn Iraq into the world’s least seaworthy but largest, by many orders of magnitude, aircraft carrier. Under the Bush plan, the US would have massive, permanent basing […]

Back in 1999, then-Slate political correspondent Jacob Weisberg, now the online journalistic Cream of Wheat site’s editor, penned a story called “Why the Press Loves John McCain“. He opened it with a charmingly self-effacing and abashed confession:
Journalists go weak in the knees around the guy. The few who have attempted to write debunking pieces about […]

A lot of people are facing a tough November. Barack Obama seems certain to be the Democratic candidate for president. He’s a black guy in a country that continues to host a lot of people who don’t like black guys, especially ones that are smarter than they are and can talk rings around them.
John […]