Back in the fall of 2008, the conservative Christian group the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) organized “Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” a sort-of civil disobedience event for which pastors were encouraged to use their pulpits to endorse John McCain and challenge IRS regulations prohibiting such political activity by tax-exempt institutions. Now, …
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Obama’s Cupcakes
From TIME’s Sophia Yan:
President Obama dropped by the White House briefing room today on his 48th birthday. With cupcakes in hand, a sprightly Obama wished Happy Birthday to another celebrating reveler, White House correspondent Helen Thomas of Hearst newspapers, who turned 89 today.
Grinning broadly, Obama plopped down in the front
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Scott Speicher Comes Home
The identification of the remains of Capt. Michael Scott Speicher, an American Navy pilot shot down in the opening days of the first Gulf War nearly two decades ago, reminds us how much we owe to those who make the ultimate sacrifice, and to their families, who will carry with them a heartache for the rest of their lives. We are also …
The Week That Was
Beer! Tanning beds! Texting truck drivers! Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, Madonna! Paul Slansky indexes it for us here. But Swampland commenters, we suspect, have some ideas of their own.
The Moment Is Beer
Sometimes the Associated Press pulls out one of those leads that just says it all. From Ben Feller’s story just moved on the wire about the Obama/Gates/Crowley Bud Light/Red Stripe/Blue Moon moment:
Offering cold beer and careful words, President Barack Obama is trying to bury a political distraction and show the nation how conversation
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Not So Fast
Just as Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus was heading to the mircophones yesterday to announce that “things are looking good” for his group of six bipartisan negotiators, one of those negotiators, Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi, the top Republican on the HELP Committee, was putting out this statement:
Subject: Enzi: Deal Far From
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Shatner Is Back, With Palin Tweets (So Are The Beats)
[vodpod id=Groupvideo.3077554&w=425&h=350&fv=allowFullScreen%3Dtrue%26]
Let it be known: As fun as these are, the new tweets are not as good as the old beats. After the jump, Jack Kerouac reads “On The Road” on the Steve Allen Show in 1959. (What a host, Steve Allen. Come on Conan, play the piano.)
Latest Column
Why it’s so hard to pass health care legislation.
Obama Health Care Interview (Cont’d.)
We now have the full transcript of my interview with the President posted here. Stay tuned for more coverage from this week’s magazine to be posted on TIME.com over the next few days.
Boehner’s Summer Plans
From TIME’s Sophia Yan:
There’s no dilly-dallying before Congress’s August recess for House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio. At a Christian Science Monitor lunch with reporters today, he brushed aside questions unrelated to health care and the economy, including one on the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s Hawaiian birth
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Lou Dobbs: Public Embarrassment
Lou Dobbs continues to make a fool of himself, of CNN and of Time Warner, which owns this blog and pays my salary. When Jim DeMint, the oh-so-conservative Senator from South Carolina, says that the Obama birth certificate isn’t an issue, and when electronic copies of the birth certificate have been produced–and certified–by the state …
Beer Branding At The White House
Only in America: A white Cambridge police officer arrests of a defiant black Harvard professor on egregious charges that are later dropped. Claims of racial profiling and verbal abuse follow, as does an uncouth presidential intervention, and a requisite presidential near-apology, yielding coast-to-coast water cooler debate. All the most …
Our Israeli Allies
….are upset with Barack Obama, according to Aluf Benn, the editor of Haaretz, which is a major moderate-liberal Israeli newspaper. In a New York Times op-ed today, Benn complains that Obama has been talking to everybody else, but not the Israelis–and he has a point.
Actually, Benn makes several important points. Here’s another: