I happened to catch a couple of minutes of the Rush Limbaugh program, in which he was playing some snippets from an interview of Kurt Anderson and Charlie Rose on PBS, on the subject of Anderson’s new book, Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire. The theme of the books seems to center on how conservative talk […]
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I have refrained from writing about health care recently until I could get a better handle on what would happen. It seems I now have a better handle–for now at least. The Senate bill or its iterations was likely doomed to failure for this reason: There were and are at least three factions at cross-purposes: […]
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Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!
20 Jul 2017
How has US culture become so coarse, so quickly? I subscribe to an email list from the White House “1600 Daily”. I periodically receive news alerts and “what is going on” messages from the Administration. At 9:01 am eastern on 7/20/17 I received an email that said: Yesterday, I met with Republican Senators at the White House […]
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Spectre: Russia Investigation Hovers Over Trump
13 Jul 2017
Baby Driver, written and directed by Edgar Wright, is a cinematic marvel. Though ostensibly a heist film from the wheel man’s perspective, it is really a soundtrack with a movie layered on top. Gunshots punctuate the percussion. Disembarkations are done in musical time as precisely as a ballerina’s twirl. Music is not a background element, […]
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In Search of the Ties that Bind
15 Jun 2017
As all our readers know, a deranged gunman opened fire on a group of Republicans in Alexandria, VA this morning. The partisans were preparing for a charity baseball game. As of now, five people were shot, including U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), and the gunman was killed by Capitol Hill Police officers. Nothing I’m about […]
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President Trump has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement. I will say at the outset that I support this move. Let’s settle the “legal” issues first. The agreement was not a treaty, and was not ratified by the Senate. It might be classified as an executive agreement or as a simple presidential agreement. The courts […]
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Memorial Day and Patriotism
28 May 2017
On Memorial Day we take time to remember the sacrifices made by those who have served and currently served in the United States military, especially those who have made the ultimate sacrifice. It is right that we should do so. This commemoration is intended to be neither overly sentimental nor falsely patriotic to the point […]
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A reader asked me to post something on President Trump’s proposed budget to Congress. Opinions have varied as to whether this budget is the apocalypse on one end or the second coming on the other, and pretty much every nuance in between. As with most budgets–though you may not remember the last one, since it […]
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Trump’s Follies: Ethical? Legal? Impeachable?
18 May 2017
My Bereans colleague Mark Smith wrote a blog post the other day that has irritated some people and made others quite happy. In this post, I hope to irritate both sides of the Donald Trump “crisis.” By now, we have all read or heard about President Trump’s misdeeds, or alleged misdeeds, depending on your perspective: […]
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Trump and the Consciousness of Guilt
17 May 2017
Vincent Bugliosi was a famed criminal attorney. He prosecuted Charles Manson and defended a handful of clients accused of murder. He documented his exploits in Helter Skelter, And the Sea Will Tell, and other true crime tales. In his book Outrage, Bugliosi turned his gaze toward the O.J. Simpson trial, particularly the failure of the […]