Once again the Supremes are faced with a contentious Eight Amendment case: This time around, they’re charged with deciding whether it’s cruel and unusual to execute murderers who committed their crime at age 16 or 17. We’re in a small and undistinguished club of nations who allow such executions, joined by Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, […]

[Read more →]

I’ve just seen the first episode of SciFi’s Proof Positive, the premise of which is that three mysterious or “paranormal” sounding stories are investigated, two of which will turn out to be nothing so mysterious (odd “rod” creatures captured on film turn out to be motion-blurred insects), the other is (dramatic pause) “proof positive.” It’s […]

[Read more →]

Tales from the Bushiverse

[Read more →]

Oh, cool.Official site here.

[Read more →]

So, Bush is now preparing an ad attacking Kerry for suggesting that our goal, since we can’t eradicate terrorism, is to reduce it to the level of a “nuisance.” And Kerry’s got an ad attacking Bush for saying of the war on terror “I don’t think you can win it.” As far as I can […]

[Read more →]

Back at NYU, I worked briefly for a former New Yorker editor named Gardner Botsford. His mind was clearly still razor sharp, but his eyesight had begun to dull, and he needed someone to read The New York Times (and, of course, The New Yorker). I didn’t get to know him well, but I did […]

[Read more →]

I’m not big on rising early on Sunday mornings, so it’s only recently, thanks to Comcast’s On Demand, that I’ve started watching Meet the Press. U.S. Senate candidates Ken Salazar and Pete Coors from Colorado were on today, and the boldness with which both of them simply refuse to answer even circuitously the questions they’re […]

[Read more →]

I’ll talk about the debates on RightTalk Internet radio around 2:30 or so today. Update: That was fun. The show’s archived on the site for the moment; I come in about halfway through.

[Read more →]

So, the other day I posted a link to Harry Shearer’s “Hard Work” remix of GWB during the first debate. Last night I went out to dinner at a little Italian place down the street and who should come in but a group comprising (among others I didn’t recognize) David Corn, E.J. Dionne, and, yep, […]

[Read more →]

Just heard Wolf Blitzer talking to an expert who relates that to the end, Saddam Hussein had reportedly believed that his regime might enjoy good relations with the U.S. eventually. “Truly,” Wolf opines, he was “living in a dreamworld.” Yeah, that sure is a wacky notion… Saddam and the U.S. on good terms, unheard of. […]

[Read more →]