Politics

ANTI-WAR PROTESTS….The warhawks are in full-court mockery mode over the anti-war protests. As Tom Spencer puts it: You sure can tell the pro-war folks are getting a bit desperate, aren’t they? And Kieran Healy suggests that conservatives ought to be a little more trusting of all those people who, under other circumstances, make the free […]

THOSE EURO-LOVING BUSHIES….I’ve been meaning to congratulate Windy City bloggers Jacob Levy and Dan Drezner for landing monthly columns at The New Republic Online, so let me take the opportunity right now. It’s good to see smart bloggers get recognized, although I hope this doesn’t mean that we will be losing Dan to the insidious […]

GARY HART AND “HOMELAND LOYALTIES”….I don’t get it. Both Jacob Jevy and Matt Yglesias are unhappy with Gary Hart’s statement from last week: We must not let our role in the world be dictated by ideologues with their special biases and agendas, by militarists who long for the clarity of Cold War confrontation, by think-tank […]

ARE WE FEELING A LITTLE RUSHED THESE DAYS?….Josh Marshall says: When the budgeteers on the Hill started working their way through the president’s new budget they discovered there was no money, not even a line item, for humanitarian or reconstruction funds for Afghanistan. In other words, the 2004 budget contained nothing for Afghanistan. Josh Clayborn […]

FAITH-BASED INITIATIVES….You ever wonder what those “faith-based initiatives” that George Bush keeps praising are like? You ever wonder if, just maybe, there’s a risk that they could end up mixing government money with religious proselytizing? Well, wonder no more. One of the most popular of these faith-based programs is Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship Ministries, which […]

THE BLIX REPORT….The UN news was pretty anticlimactic. Hans Blix said this: Earlier this week UNMOVIC missile experts met for two days with experts from a number of member states to discuss these items. The experts concluded unanimously that based on the data provided by Iraq, the two declared variants of the Al-Samoud 2 missile […]

REPUBLICAN MONEY….DEMOCRATIC MONEY….Daily KOS reports the grim news that Republicans are expected to raise 5x more in “hard money” funds than the Democrats for the 2004 race. On the other hand, he also thinks things might not be quite as bad as they seem on the surface. I hope he’s right.

GENETIC TAILORING REDUX….Both Ampersand and Very Very Happy have responded to my post about genetic tailoring yesterday. Ampersand also has a lively discussion going on in the comments section, so check it out. This is a big subject and there’s a lot to talk about, but I think a large part of the reason I […]

THE REAL GEORGE W. BUSH….I just saw Bush’s speech to a group of FBI agents on CNN and it highlights the personal aversion that I have to the man. Just as he did in the State of the Union speech, he made smirking references to the fact that thousands of al-Qaeda members “would no longer […]

YET MORE V-DAY LEVITY….Single guy Matt Yglesias says: Valentine’s Day was always a very high-pressure occassion ? gifts to buy, romantic plans to make, etc. ? that didn’t feel like much fun. That, combined with the intolerable cold, has always made me feel like Eliot had it wrong and February is the cruelest month, which […]