According to some parents and the assistant superintendent of Smith-Cotton High School in Missouri, the t-shirt “promotes evolution.” The shirts feature the common graphic of a monkey taking an increasingly more sophisticated form until he resembles a man. The shirt was designed for the band’s “Brass Evolutions,” concert and all the evolutionary figures are holding trumpets. After...

Sometimes calling people on their craziness puts the accuser at risk of sounding crazy him or herself, but I think it is time to stop ignoring the evidence put before us nearly every day and acknowledge the truth: Glenn Beck hopes to ignite armed revolution against the United States government. To that end, he established the 9-12 project, which has networked people who, like Beck, desire the overthrow of this...

As if picking Sarah Palin were not enough to disappoint many of John McCain’s former admirers (of which I am not one), ever since losing the election, McCain has unleashed a string of disappointments. His bitterness at losing the prize he felt entitled to as a reward for his service has been evident at every turn as he continues to hammer President Obama like it was peak campaign season. What he said Sunday,...

As far as I can tell, this blog is the first to post about Lynn Jenkins and the vote on the Jack Johnson Resolution, for which Jenkins was present. It was posted here, and I referred to it on a couple of other progressive blogs. The next day, a Canadian newspaper picked up the story. I guess I should be flattered that a mainstream newspaper thinks it was a worthy discovery, but it also would have been nice to...

Just for fun, here is a list of some of the movies that Cole and I have watched recently (for the first or second time) that we think are worth seeing: District 9 Inglourious Basterds Burn After Reading Star Trek (not perfect but worth seeing) The Dark Knight No Country for Old Men There Will Be Blood (Cole’s vote) The Departed The Prestige Transformers I & II (Cole’s vote) Behind the Mask:...

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has a tragic story of one couple’s experience with dementia and the healthcare system. The woman’s husband developed early signs of dementia, and the hospital advised her to divorce him because his long-term healthcare would eat up everything they had accumulated together in their life, including her 401K and money left from her first husband’s death....

Lynn Jenkins, a republican representative from Kansas, recently commiserated with constituents disillusioned with republican leadership on how the party was “struggling to find its great white hope.” When the remark captured media attention, she attempted to distance herself from it: Later, at another event,  Jenkins pleaded ignorance: “I was unaware of any negative connotation,” she said. ...

Self-proclaimed former drug addict and alcoholic Glenn Beck never went to college and completed a degree program, and it is becoming increasingly clear that he is someone who might benefit from additional education. It is not just because he cannot spell O-L-I-G-A-R-C-H-Y (too bad for Beck that chalkboards lack built-in spellcheckers) or that he cannot understand why 46 advertisers have stopped sponsoring his...

At a recent town hall in Oklahoma, hosted by republican Senator Tom Coburn, a distraught constituent begged him to help her husband: Senator Coburn, we need help. My husband has traumatic brain injury, and his health insurance will not cover him to eat and drink. And what I need to know is are you going to help him, where he can eat and drink? We left the nursing home and they told us we were on our own. He...

Edward Kennedy, 1932-2009 Senator Ted Kennedy succumbed to his brain cancer this evening. It is sad that he did not live to see healthcare reform passed, one of his major goals in the past few decades. Senator Kennedy’s vast accomplishments far outweigh the controversies attached to his name. Although he came from great wealth, he worked tirelessly for the causes of the poor. That voice, with its distinctive...