Dear Senator,
So, I see that you tinkering with your campaign after getting reports that you aren’t raising so much money as your GOP rivals. When I heard about this, I had hoped you were going to announce that you would return to your so-called maverick status in 2000. Alas, what I learned was that you [...]

Now, one can say “Woops” in this type of situation, but how in the hell did he say the exact thing that Castro usually says?
Woops…
People chuckled when presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a Mormon raised in Michigan and elected in Massachusetts, bungled the names of Cuban-American politicians during a recent speech in Miami.
But when he [...]

He was on his bus answering a question about whether our government should spend money to provide condoms in Africa. And then the reporter asked him an excruciatingly simple question.
You will be amazed…
Q: Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?�
Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.�
Q: “I mean, I think you’d probably [...]

Meet Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Nice guy, by all accounts quite smart and hard working.
And stunningly ignorant.
Al Qaeda is what, I asked, Sunni or Shia?
“Al Qaeda, they have both,� Reyes said. “You’re talking about predominately?�
“Sure,� I said, not knowing what else to say.
“Predominantly � probably Shiite,� he ventured.
He [...]

I know I’ll probably get a ton of mail saying I’m an idiot to believe in John McCain or any Republican for that matter. Whatever. But I am sad that McCain wants the Presidency so bad that he would stoop to this:

To quote Andrew Sullivan, it breaks my heart.

First, Claire McCaskill:
Claire McCaskill’s campaign called on Sen. John Kerry to apologize for a “botched joke” he made on Monday.
“[McCaskill] said it’s a dumb thing to say and he should apologize,” said McCaskill spokeswoman Adrainne Marsh.
Then from Harold Ford, Jon Tester and Ben Cardin:
“Whatever the intent, Senator Kerry was wrong to say what he [...]

And please, for everybody’s sake, just shut up.
From Captain Ed come a few sage questions…
Will Ned Lamont repudiate Kerry’s words? Will Bob Casey, Jr dispute his mentor’s characterization of our military as a junkyard for goldbricking idiots? Will Benjamin Cardin affirm that soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines don’t have what it takes to succeed in [...]

Sure enough, Obama is “considering” the presidency.
The only fun thing about that is thinking about the heartburn it must be giving Hillary.

In case any of you despair about the workers who will be supporting you in retirement:
Educational doomsayers are again up in arms at a new adult literacy study showing that less than 5 percent of college graduates can read a complex book and extrapolate from it.
The obsessive measurement of long-form literacy is once more [...]

Listen, I don’t think we should pull out of Iraq, but I realize why more and more people are clamoring for it. And unfortunately, a recent strategy of the administration is to try and group those who want us to leave Iraq with the Nazi appeasers of yesterday.
Not to be outdone, Condi joins the game [...]

Jose Padilla, the alleged “dirty bomber” who was held for three years as an “enemy combatant”, has been given permission to personally view classified documents so he can plan a defense in his upcoming trial.
I was all set to write an interesting post about the tension between security and defendant rights in terrorism cases, until [...]

Do you hear that? It’s the sound of an adult crying over nothing. So yes, the following is exceedingly superficial, but that’s sort of the point.
Lee Seigel just penned one of the most asinine editorials I’ve read in quite some time. The topic? Baseball caps. And I don’t even wear baseball caps!
In particular, note [...]

With no big surprise, the Senate rejected cloture on a vote for a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage. During this whole debate, I keep hearing people who are against the ban that this is a distracting issue and that government should focus on more important issues like immigration or health care.
I’d like [...]

So if John McCain took heat from moderates for going to Liberty University, what punishment ought to be meted out to Howard Dean for his appearance on the “700 Club?”
A natural political step, courting an important segment of the voting population, keeping the party’s doors open to everyone. Yes, yes, but what he said …

Dean [...]

Not. JFK has been sent to the dunce’s stool — again — this time for quoting Thomas Jefferson in praise of dissent — with a quote nobody has ever found in Jefferson’s actual writings.
Eh, I’m willing to give him a pass for this. A great many quotes attributed to the Founders or to Lincoln were [...]

From the Associated Press:

A small Easter display was removed from the City Hall lobby on Wednesday out of concern that it would offend non-Christians.
The display - a cloth Easter bunny, pastel-colored eggs and a sign with the words “Happy Easter’’ - was put up by a City Council secretary. They were not purchased with city [...]

I’m agreeing with Tim F. that the panic over Arabs running our ports is an over-reaction. I’ve said that from the start. It would seem the Bush Administration held the high ground here: Can you imagine the outrage if it had been the federal government that said, “Hey, we can’t let a bunch of A-rabs [...]

I know the title seems to overstate the situation, but it doesn’t. Seriously.
This recent ruling certainly seems like you can’t be sexually liberated in Italy and expect protection from the police and the government.
From CNN:
Sexually abusing a teenager is less serious a crime if the girl is not a virgin, Italy’s higher court said on [...]

First, the NAACP Chairman calls the GOP a bunch of Nazis. Meanwhile, Donald Rumsfeld compares Chavez’s rise to power with Hitler’s rise to power.
Excuse me for a moment…yawwwwwwwwwwwwnnnnnnnnnnnnnn….
In other news, Justin Gardner likens radishes to cauliflower, chaos follows.

Tim Russert asked Barack Obama a question yesterday on Meet The Press, and frankly I thought it was just plain dumb.
The question concerned Harry Belafonte’s ridiculous, recent comments about Bush being the biggest terrorist in the world. After watching the Meet The Press clip (linked above), I can only imagine what Obama was thinking [...]