She’s the world’s newest country, population 28.5 million.  Composed of the former states of Texas and Alaska plus the ex-Canadian province of Alberta, it’s where the hair’s big, the water’s mercurial and you can’t get an abortion unless it’s shot right out of you.  A fetus is a person, but for the sake of parliamentary [...]

Anyone who knows me knows I loathe mayonnaise more than just about anything in the world.  It’s repulsive. I don’t understand why anyone thinks a sandwich is improved by spreadable fat-surrogate that goes bad if left in the sun for sixty seconds.  When we were HS freshmen, my best friend was dared/hazed to eat [...]

It’s crap!
First of all, Ross Douthat is 29?  I honestly think I look 28, and he looks like 40 compared to me.

What’s with the youth-minister goatee?  Gross.
Anyhoo, Douthat’s column reminds me of David Brooks’ debut in 2003.  Both of them essentially position themselves as sharp critics of their own side, and then Brooks went on [...]

Or so it would seem.  On the issue of Arlen Specter’s defection, he said
I would rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who really believe in principles of limited government, free markets, free people, than to have 60 that don’t have a set of beliefs.
Assuming he believes that from that rump party of 30 a [...]

OK, so Arlen Specter has gone from the best-or-second-best Republican to being the worst-or-second-worst Democrat.  Since his switch was motivated by cold calculation re his dim 2010 prospects for re-election, and had absolutely nothing to do with his positions, it’s at best a mixed bag.
As a sidenote, it means that there are no longer any [...]

This is interesting.  I’m especially impressed that the Times refrained from a pseudo-intellectual aside about why people who profess nonbelief need to band together.
There is a strong tension in this article between the (a)political yearnings for community among isolated nonbelievers in South Carolina and the swelling need to function as legal counterweights against Christian [...]

Cover the mirrors and sit around in sackcloth, because Bea Arthur died yesterday.  I would have blogged about this sooner but I was out of town, getting very, very drunk. I made a sort of punch (which I stole from a friend who made it on Easter) involving vodka, kiwis, lime, mint and cucumbers. [...]

The Pulitzers were announced and the NYT scooped up five of them (collectively in International Reporting, for Afghanistan and Pakistan and in Breaking News Reporting, for l’affaire Eliot Spitzer; individuals also won in Feature Photography and (Art) Criticism.  David Barstow won the top coconut, Investigative Reporting, for the amazing documentation of the military-industrial complex wherein [...]

Scary to think, but in a mere 2 weeks we’ll be 1/4 the way to the 2010 midterm elections.  Once Al Franken gets seated, the Senate will include a mere 41 Republicans against the 57+2=59 Democratic caucus.  The majority in the House is, obviously, even more commanding, at ~255-to-178.
Now is the time to focus on [...]