Their claim was self-defense, sir. Just don’t believe your eyes. It’s our blood and bones And these whistles and phones Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies – Bruce Springsteen, “The Streets of Minneapolis” Stephen Miller went to Washington seeking fame. Now he has immortality — in a new anthem’s stinging verse. He’s made it. He’s…
DetailsOnce again Republican leaders tell us we didn’t see what we saw. We saw a punk squadron with badges pepper-spray a man for helping a woman. Then the lawmen Rodney King-ed him on a Minneapolis sidewalk. Then they shot him dead. Following, as before, administration officials stepped to the microphone, a bird-call contest of farcical…
Details“Enough is enough,” he wrote in his veto message. At least we must assume he wrote it. “My Administration is committed to preventing American taxpayers from funding expensive and unreliable policies.” Oh, he did write it — he who dodged grade-school capitalization. It was his first veto of the term, and for what? To kill…
DetailsTo the tune of “Ohio” by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young: Tin soldiers and Kristi coming Discretion they’ve put on hold All year we’ve heard the drumming Masked men who lock and load I saw Kent State on my TV screen the other day, and not in retrospect. In blood. In horror. In real time.…
DetailsRead these words slowly: Invading Venezuela “falls within the president’s inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to protect U.S. personnel from an actual or imminent attack.” Read that again: “. . . protect U.S. personnel from actual or imminent attack.” Wow. This statement, via Politico, came from Secretary of State Marco Rubio per…
DetailsIt’s that time of year when news outlets across the country admit they’ve had enough of it. They’ve run out of words. They’ve run out of gas. So they engage in what editors since time immemorial have called “filler” – with useless things like “top stories of the year,” “person of the year,” “sports person…
DetailsWhat does the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 have to do with who runs Venezuela? Everything. What does a fee by the International Maritime Organization have to do with the fate of the National Center for Atmospheric Research? Everything. Everything — that is — desired by oil, gas and coal interests from the man…
DetailsThey stood in a starchy semicircle, posing, preening behind their role model. They — Republican bigwigs including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy — awash with pride and affirmation as the man they admired most said some of the vilest things ever uttered in the Oval Office. It was…
DetailsIn the craft of propaganda, one of the slyest techniques is euphemism — soft words for hammer blows. “Enhanced interrogation” for torture. “Downsized” for vaporized careers. “Alternative facts” for one who lies with each breath. Out in the Caribbean among the shards of an outboard-motor craft, make that several, we have “collateral damage” — another…
DetailsThe immense irony about what this president has done with the economy is that only the Supreme Court can save him — from himself. He says a ruling by the Supremes against his willy-nilly, go-it-alone-meaning-by-me-myself-and-I tariffs would be “disaster for the economy.” Run that assertion past shoppers, retailers, importers, manufacturers, farmers and just about any…
Details