Opinion

As Will Rogers once observed, “This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.” This Congress is especially terrifying because the Republican majority has decided that 2005 is payback time for their big-business backers, and they’ve turned Washington into an assembly line […]

A U.S. senator, campaigning for re-election, visited a nursing home, where he approached an old fellow who was watching TV and asked, “Do you know who I am?” The old man replied, “No, but if you go to front desk they’ll tell you.” Luckily for us, if we forget who we are, we can go […]

At 4 a.m. in the homeless shelter, we make the notation “Quiet” in the logbook, though it hardly is. There is a racket of snoring in the basement of the Contact Ministries building, but it’s a good sound. Some 40 troubled souls are stretched out on the bunks here. Some are on medicines; some are […]

What you’re about to read is a true story. I’m stating that promise here at the top, because a few inches into this, you may start to wonder whether I’m making this stuff up, and I want you to know that I’m not. So here goes: Guy goes to a union meeting. There’s beer available; […]

How far would you let a boss push you? Perhaps your boss keeps refusing to raise your pay and also cuts your health-care coverage. Still, good jobs are hard to find, so you stick it out. But what if the boss then has surveillance cameras installed to keep an eye on you and also requires […]

Well, it’s finally come to this: The Bush administration has now been caught in so many covert campaigns to propagandize the public, using tax dollars for the brainwashing, that Congress has to pass a law to stop them. The revelations just keep coming. There are the fake “video news releases” from various government agencies to […]

Thanks to Sen. Hillary Clinton for her recent attempt to reopen and reframe the abortion discussion. As a strong pro-choice advocate, she is looking for common ground with those who campaign against abortion rights. Both sides, she said, want to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies, promote adoption, and, in general, to reduce the number […]

Republicans who saw the November elections as a mandate for easing environmental laws are once again attempting to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. This time, with no meaningful political opposition, it’s quite likely that they will finally succeed. Americans interested in the kind of world their children will inherit should pay […]

Normal is whatever feels familiar to you, whatever seems plausible, perpetual, and permanent. Sometimes what seems normal isn’t, really; instead, it’s just your life, and you don’t know any better. What’s normal to you might not be normal to me, and vice versa. Here’s an example: Adoption seems abnormal to most people, but it feels […]

Just when you think you’ve bottomed out on the cynicism it’s possible to feel in response to Washington’s constant kowtowing to the monied interests, along comes the American Jobs Creation Act. These days, whenever the White House and Congress put a positive-sounding title on legislation, you can bet it does the exact opposite of what […]

President George W. Bush, inhaling the fumes of his own hubris, has been claiming that he not only won the election but also won a mandate for his policies, including his war in Iraq and his plan to undo our Social Security program. “We had an accountability moment, and that’s called the 2004 elections,” Bush […]