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Category Archives: Politics

A Conservative for Obama

Wick Allison

I have long thought that the Republicans in power do not act like true conservatives.
“Conservatives,” posits Wick Allison, owner and editor-in-chief of Dallas’ D Magazine and former publisher of National Review, “are skeptical of abstract theories and utopian schemes, doubtful that government is wiser than its citizens, and always ready to test any political [...]

Vote Today Ohio–A Grassroots Effort

My wife and I are going to Ohio to register voters.
Ohio recently changed its voting laws in a way that creates an extraordinary opportunity to register new voters.  For one week only (Sept 30—Oct 6), Ohio residents may register and vote early in all of Ohio’s 88 counties. They need make only one trip to [...]

“If You Don’t Vote, You’re a Moron!”

On September 10, CBS Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson, a Scotland-born, recently naturalized American citizen, delivered an impassioned rant about the importance of voting. Airing immediately after Obama appeared on Letterman’s show, Ferguson’s screed was trenchant, funny, and exactly right.
“If you don’t vote, you’re a moron!”
At the end of this month, I’m heading to [...]

Vetting the Candidates

“Has she been thoroughly vetted?” they ask. It’s an apt question. But do they know what the word actually means?

Calvin Coolidge, Lyndon Johnson, and George W. Bush

An event like this occurs every 40 years, just about as often as it rains in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

Silent Cal

LBJ

In 1928, after making his famous statement (”I do not choose to run for president”), Calvin Coolidge skipped the Republican convention in Kansas City. In 1968, with much of the country agitated about the Vietnam War, [...]

Sarah Palin: The Hits Just Keep on Coming!

First there was Troopergate (re Palin’s sister’s ex-husband)…followed quickly by Abstinence Problems (Palin’s 17-year-old daughter’s pregnancy).
Now, up pop allegations that Palin and her husband are secessionists.  As yet entirely unconfirmed, the head of the Alaskan Independence Party (a legally authorized party in the state that historically receives about 3% of the vote), is on the [...]

Is Sarah Palin a Harry Truman or a Dan Quayle?

She certainly has the form. Does she have the substance?
With the televising of the Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960, image as a selector of electability began rising in importance. In our video-deluged world, how one comes across on the screen is critical.  It’s what the broadcast industry used to call TVQ:  (television quotient—personality popularity ratings, typically [...]

What is the Definition of Abortion?

The Health & Human Service’s published ruling entitled “Ensuring that Department of Health and Human Services Funds Do Not Support Coercive or Discriminatory Policies or Practices In Violation of Federal Law” (HHS 45 CFR Part 88) is now open for comment from interested citizens. (I discussed this ruling in two previous posts: [...]

Bush Administration: Abortion Definition Removed

After several weeks of negative comment throughout the blogosphere, and embarrassingly scant notice in the traditional media, a leaked Department of Health and Human Services draft ruling (HHS-45-CFR) that defined contraception as abortion (see my previous post on this subject) has been finalized.
The text of the final ruling (HHS 45 CFR Part 88) is here.
HHS [...]

Bush Administration: Contraception = Abortion

HHS Secy. Mike Leavitt

In mid-July, a draft ruling (HHS-45-CFR) defining contraception as abortion leaked out of the Department of Health and Human Services. Considering its import, the ruling, which would not require congressional approval to become operative, was given remarkably little notice in the press until the Houston Chronicle editorialized on it this week (“Redefining [...]