One of the great myths promoted and promulgated by the me-first neo-con crowd is not only that the mainstream media is lousy with liberals and liberal bias, but that liberals are inherently “elite” or elitist. We’re not sure where this whole idea comes from, given the well-documented connection between labor and liberalism, as well as … Read more
You have to admire a guy who does something for as many years as Bob Casey did something, and to its credit (and occasionally to its detriment) the Twins’ organization has always rewarded loyalty. Casey was treated like a local treasure, and his career was allowed to run its course on his own timetable. The … Read more
Sometimes editors are assholes. Lots of times. Most of the time. This seems to be a job requirement. But editors should really be assholes for the right reasons, and we certainly try to be an asshole for the right reasons. Still, even if we do it for the right reasons, we’re still being an asshole. … Read more
All last night there was never any doubt that this day was going to drag me into the harsh light and try to kick some words out of me, but I once again tried to convince myself that I was somehow made of sterner stuff than the average fellow. I wasn’t about to cough up … Read more
Well, if you didn’t already believe the people who run the National Rifle Association are crazier than a hummingbird on crack, read this from NRA first vice president, Sandra S. Froman. It seems that if only the teachers at Red Lake had been totin’ heat themselves, they could have protected their students from Jeff Weise’s … Read more
A couple of interesting meditations on the newspaper industry today. Generally, we just feel like we want to disagree on principal with such grandiose pronouncements as Michael Malone makes today over at ABC news, namely that “newspapers are dead.” All you need to do to refute such a silly claim is to look over the … Read more
In Cuba, when they have tornadoes, they kill them. When they see one coming, they start shooting it with their rifles and shotguns, and the explosions make the tornadoes disappear. When I tell people in America that they shoot tornadoes in Cuba, they don’t believe me. But I believe because I’ve seen it happen; I’ve … Read more
The knowledge of evil is an inadequate knowledge. —Spinoza, Ethics But the most important thing is that one can no longer be sure nowadays who is and who is not in a state of temporary insanity. —Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov The Shatterer has come up against you. Man the ramparts; Watch the road. —The Book … Read more
I’ve been thinking a lot about Terri Schiavo, which, I think, puts me in some pretty good company–that of people who believe life is sacred and we shouldn’t allow it to end without good reason. Like the abortion and death penalty debates, poor Terri has become a nexus of American confusion among our nation of … Read more
We had a laugh a few months ago, when there was that little dust-up between the gay fellows over at Powerline and the Star Tribune’s Nick Coleman. They’d all been in a running firefight—liberal this, neo-con that—and while we’ve come to appreciate the deceptively euphonious rhetoric of the full-time bloggers and Rather-slayers, they were far … Read more