Tag Archives: Senate

When Jesus Attacks! Why don’t we care that the Catholic Church is officially whipping Congress?

Part 2 of 2. (Read part 1…) It’s Time to Separate Church and State, Once and for All If you recall, anti-Catholic prejudice was once a problem for Catholic politicians in the US. John F. Kennedy went so far as to address the issue head-on in his 1960 campaign – probably because he didn’t feel he had much choice. Here’s

Read more

Jesus Gone Wild! It’s time to separate church and state, once and for all

church-and-state

Part 1 of 2. I tripped across a provocative headline in the Wall Street Journal the other day: “They Need to be Liberated from Their God.” Turns out the story was about Mosab Hassan Yousef and his spying on Hamas. Which was a little disappointing. There’s no doubt that Palestinian Muslims need to be liberated from their god, but given

Read more

“You’re screwed”: GOP plan for America right on schedule

In Mike’s most recent Nota Bene, he points us to a disturbing, if not altogether surprising little vignette from Capitol Hill. When House Democrats gathered on Friday for their end-of-the week caucus meeting in the basement of the Capitol, caucus chairman John Larson (D-Conn.) told the group he wanted them to hear first from Rep. Michael Capuano, who’d just returned

Read more

Mark Udall helps hold the Constitution down while Bush and his corporate buddies drive the bus over it

Yesterday we here in Colorado learned a little more about our Democratic candidate for Senate, Congressman Mark Udall. And what we learned wasn’t pretty. Udall, along with 104 other collaborationist Dems, voted in favor of Bush’s latest Constitution-gutting initiative, a FISA “compromise” that makes all our talk about freedom in the US ring even hollower than it did already. Russ

Read more

The Reyes Doctrine: speak loudly and cower like a whipped cur

On February 14 Silvestre Reyes, Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, crawled up in Dubya’s grille and dropped some righteous nard-stomping pro-democracy rhetoric on his punk ass. We were as happy as we were stunned to see a Democratic leader swinging an actual set of cojones in the face of Mr. President’s fragrantly anti-liberty pro-corporate full-monty assault

Read more

“We will not fear George W. Bush”

President Bush yesterday took as harsh a one-two beatdown as he has endured in the entire seven cynical, corrupt years of his doomed presidency. First Silvestre Reyes, Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, sent him a damning letter on his stubborn and hypocritical position on FISA. The letter not only outlines the facts of the law and

Read more

Telecom immunity: how stupid do you think we are?

It’s FISA Day in your Senate – amazing how this was scheduled for Potomac Primary Day, huh? – and Matt Browner Hamlin has the agenda up at Holdfast. My big issue is item #4: retroactive immunity for telecoms. Verizon and AT&T have done all they can to pretend that they had no idea that their participation in warrantless wiretapping might

Read more

2007 in Review, pt. 5: Politicians, whores and the media who love them…

Welcome to the fifth and final installment of the Scholars & Rogues year-end wrap-up. Today we tackle the dirty, but oddly riveting world of politics. We’ll take a couple shots at the even dirtier world of media that makes it all possible. Let’s start at the top, shall we? George Walker Bush: I’ve been telling my Republican friends for five

Read more

There is no opposition party in Washington

In describing the Democratic response to Bush’s sabre-rattling toward Iran, Power of Narrative’s Arthur Silber summed things up neatly: They don’t object because — they don’t object. The only thing wrong with Silber’s assessment is that it was limited to Iran. In truth, you could just as easily use those seven succinct words to characterize the Democratic Party in general.

Read more