Politics

Tillie Fowler Left an Impression

When I moved to Jacksonville in 1997, my representative in Congress was Tillie Fowler, a Republican elected five years earlier during the term-limits craze, when numerous candidates pledged to serve a finite number of years. These pledges, part of the GOP's Contract with America, were a terrific hammer to drop on incumbents, making them look like entrenched career politicians out of touch with the concerns of real Americans. Fowler campaigned on an "eight is enough" pledge, vowing to leave the ... (read more)

2005/03/02

Remembering Samuel Francis

Samuel Francis, the syndicated newspaper columnist who may be the last to ever take a stand against race mixing, died Feb. 15 at age 57 of complications related to heart surgery. Reading the Washington Times obituary and a loving tribute by friend and fellow columnist Joseph Sobran, you'd have no idea that Francis was fired by the Times and lost favor with most conservatives for explicitly racist commentary. Francis was so outspoken in his views that it was amazing he still had Creators ... (read more)

2005/03/01

I Am the Ideal Mother

In an attack on gay marriage in National Review, David Frum complains that it undermines the gender roles of husbands and wives: ... one effect of this revolution -- and for many proponents, one of the revolution's aims -- is to make forever unthinkable the idea that husbands and wives each have special duties to one another, and that a husband's duties to his wife -- while equally binding and equally supreme -- are not the same as a wife's duties to her husband. Once we lose that knowledge, we ... (read more)

2005/03/01

Child On Board with Bush

A Republican lobbying group spending $20 million to help President Bush derail Social Security is sending a nine-year-old child around the country to stump for the effort. "What I want to tell people about Social Security is to not be afraid of the new plan. It may be a change, but it's a good change." -- Noah McCullough, a fourth-grader from Katy, Texas. I don't shock easily where politics is concerned, but trotting this kid around the country to explicitly endorse policy -- an idea hatched by ... (read more)

2005/02/28

Democratic Podcast: Return of Deficits and Debt

Saturday's Democratic response to the presidential radio address was delivered by Terry McAuliffe, the outgoing chairman of the Democratic National Committee. McAuliffe's tenure ends on Saturday, when the DNC will meet and choose Howard Dean to replace him. The transcript of McAuliffe's remarks: I'm Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. This week, President George W. Bush delivered his State of the Union address, and though he claimed our nation is strong, he did not ... (read more)

2005/02/08

The Meek Shall Inherit the Press

From the New York Times: The White House official who briefed reporters on the speech said Mr. Bush would take detailed positions on Social Security in coming weeks and months, but only to the extent that doing so would help Congress move forward. The official, who spoke before an auditorium full of journalists, insisted on not being quoted by name. Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said the goal in not allowing the use of the official's name was to keep the focus on Mr. Bush. ... (read more)

2005/02/02

The Revolution Will Be Podcasted

Philippe Boucher: Thank you for providing a podcast of the weekly Democratic address. Where do you pick up the MP3? I asked the governor's staff where I could find it and they were unable to tell me. I started this project after fruitlessly looking for an official source. As far as I can tell, my podcast is the first attempt to distribute and archive the opposition party's weekly response on the Web. I pick up the audio from one of several streaming radio stations that run the speech each ... (read more)

2005/01/31

Democratic Podcast: Long Road Ahead in Iraq

This week's Democratic response to the presidential radio address was delivered by Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri. Skelton's a good choice to speak on the weekend that elections occur in Iraq, because he was one of the first in Congress to recognize that the Bush administration's planning for post-war Iraq was not sufficient to the extreme difficulty we would face. He wrote letters to President Bush in September 2002 and a few days before the war began, and in the first warned of many problems ... (read more)

2005/01/30

Democratic Podcast: Make Bush Pay

Newly elected Gov. Christine Gregoire of Washington delivered the Democratic response to the presidential radio address today. Gregoire, whose 129-vote margin of victory was determined by a recount, took office Jan. 12. Her opponent, Republican Dino Rossi, is asking courts to overturn the result and call a new election. Selected by the Democratic Governors' Association to give the speech, Gregoire criticized President Bush for shortchanging state funding on expensive federal programs in ... (read more)

2005/01/22

Bush Clock Down for the Count

Four years ago today, I marked the inauguration by publishing a Java applet counting down the seconds "until the U.S. has an elected president again." I'm taking a beating in e-mail this morning from random strangers who remembered the clock and came back to taunt me. I'm not one to shy away from abuse (I'm a Democrat, after all), but there's a point I'd like to make to fuck@you.com and the other people who were kind enough to write. In 2 minutes and 13 seconds, the U.S. will have an elected ... (read more)

2005/01/20