It seems this President is destined to make the toughest and most convoluted political arguments of any recent occupant of the office: We had to bail out the bankers in order to save your jobs. Our stimulus package prevented something far worse than the current, limping economy from overwhelming us. And tonight: the war in [...]
A few hours before President Obama’s Oval Office speech on Iraq, Brian Katulis and Larry Korb of the Center for American Progress are out with an interesting take on what’s happened in that country since George W. Bush’s much-debated 2007 troop surge. They argue, as others often do, that it wasn’t a relatively minor boost [...]
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty hasn’t announced he’s running for president, but his recent actions regarding health care reform certainly seem to suggest he is. Today, the governor signed an executive order prohibiting state offices from applying for voluntary federal grant programs created by the Affordable Care Act – unless they get permission from the governor’s [...]
With all due respect to my colleagues, this focus on religion and God isn’t anything new from Glenn Beck. His most recent foray has been a sustained attack this year on churches that preach “social justice,” arguing just a month ago that “Social justice isn’t in the Bible.” Beck had to alter his message slightly [...]
The smart people in the Time.com video department have put together a piece on what some soldiers in the Virginia National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 116th Infantry Regiment have to say about leaving Iraq. (President Obama will give a speech from the Oval Office tonight to mark the end of combat missions there.) The soldiers interviewed [...]
Two slightly belated thoughts about Glenn Beck’s egopalooza on the Mall Saturday. One, it didn’t seem very interesting! I watched the opening of Beck’s show last night, and it seemed to me that he was straining to describe what actually happened. Beck spent about five minutes talking about how Sarah Palin prayed for 10 minutes [...]
Perhaps the only joy to be had from Glenn Beck’s typically noisy turn toward God is the discomfort it seems to be causing the assorted imams of right-wing Christianity in this country. Their presence has been a constant in American society, a consistently sordid one–from the Salem witch trials to Billy Sunday to the grinning, [...]
The Kumbaya that Joe hopes for below is unlikely from Bill Keller, the creator of this 9/11 Christian center campaign. Back in 2007, on a swing through Tampa, I stopped by Keller’s office, which was located in the back of a used car dealership. He struck me as a serious salesman for his version of [...]
Freedom of religion means that these dudes have a right to set up shop near Ground Zero, too. My hope is that once they get here, and start to sample our insidious cosmopolitan mores–and, perhaps, actually get to meet some of their Muslim brothers and sisters–they will commence interfaith Kumbaya-singing festivals. I mean, life in [...]
