TweetSomeone brought to my attention this Anderson Cooper interview with an Arizona legislator who supported a bill to require that anyone running for president on the ballot in Arizona produce a birth certificate to establish his bona fides. What interested me about this is not yet another silly argument over the absurd things birthers believe. […]
TweetAs you know, I hate it when politicians — especially ones I like, such as Lindsey Graham — interfere in other people’s elections, which are none of their business. Well, Jim DeMint, in his quest to be Godfather Without Portfolio to the Tea-flavored wing of the Republican Party — or to put it another way, […]
TweetOver the weekend one of my favorite columnists (Tom Friedman) wrote about one of my favorite SC politicians (Lindsey Graham). The subject is the Energy Party-certified energy/climate change compromise that Sens. Graham, Kerry and Lieberman are working on. The result is worth reading. An excerpt: We start with politics. The Republican Party today has a […]
TweetI find myself remembering a scene in “Gettysburg,” the video adaptation of The Killer Angels, in which a couple of Confederate soldiers, asked by a Union officer why in the world they’re fighting, explain with great dignity that they’re fighting for their “rats.” Hearing a reference to rodents, the officer questions them further until it […]
TweetJust in case y’all wanted to talk here about the thing they’re going on and on about on TV and in the more conventional regions of the blogosphere, I provide this post about the rather bland, yet anachronistically off-key, thing that Sen. Harry Reid said about Obama. To quote from the book that caused the […]
TweetA month or so ago, a couple of friends brought my attention to a contest that The Washington Post was having to find America’s Next Great Pundit. There were a lot of reasons not to enter. For one thing, I doubted they wanted an actual professional journalist. For another, the contest rules were reminiscent of […]
TweetYou may recall that I haven’t been too impressed with Mullins McLeod. I’ve generally dismissed his campaign as being… what’s the word… trite, I suppose. His campaign releases have sort of struck a generic populist pose, trying to project him as a regular guy who’s tired, just as you good people out there are, of […]
TweetBoy, am I tired of hearing references to the Tuesday elections in Virginia and New Jersey by the national media as something with national import, the most common intellectually lazy assertion being that they are somehow A Referendum On Barack Obama. How absurd. When people go to the polls in Virginia to elect a governor, […]
TweetSantee offered a nice, quick review of S.C. history back on this post: Santee says: October 1, 2009 at 9:00 am (Edit) South Carolina always has been an interesting place. The Lords Proprietors decided we were too much of a pain in the neck to keep, for good reasons; they dumped us back on the […]
TweetFolks who routinely travel beyond state lines return shaking their heads at the image of South Carolina that those from elsewhere hold in their heads. You know the drill: Mark Sanford in Argentina, Joe Wilson shouting “You lie!,” the Confederate flag flying on the lawn of our State House, etc. If only there were some […]
TweetWe haven’t spoken much about the Energy Party lately, what with being obsessed with the economy and all (see, I told y’all this wouldn’t be fun before we started). Thank goodness, Tom Friedman took the time earlier this week to get us back on track by touting a key plank of the Party platform, in […]
TweetSo when did we start speaking of Afghanistan as though it were Iraq? I seem to recall that the people who wanted us out of Iraq, until very recently were saying: Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan is the must-win war. Afghanistan is the place that harbored Osama bin Laden and others responsible for 9/11. It’s horrible the […]
TweetAs you know, I appreciate politicians who run against type, who defy the boxes that the idiots who guide the incessant partisan wars demand that they stay within. For instance, I like Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania for the simple fact that he’s a pro-life Democrat. He refuses to fit in the narrow little box. […]
TweetHere’s Mark Sanford’s second-ever public schedule. Still no actual public events, but there’s no news in that — he never has been much of one for such events. One of the minor complaints I’ve gotten about this guy since Day One was that he has a tendency not to go to the kind of schoozing […]
TweetThis morning, The State wrote about how politicians were backing away from calling for Mark Sanford’s resignation. But that was before he, for whatever bizarre reasons (I can’t imagine what possessed him), decided to give interviews in which he: Said he met with his inamorata five times, not three, in the past year. Said she […]
TweetSorry not to have blogged in the last few days; I worked all weekend on a consulting project, and I’m still finishing it. But as I waited for someone to send me back something related to that, I checked my e-mail, and found this at the top: June 30, 2009 News Release – For Immediate […]
TweetWalt McLeod’s nephew the gubernatorial candidate took aim at populist sentiment among Democrats with this release a few moments ago: McLeod Pushes Election Reform: Vows to Fight for Early Voting in SC Today, Democratic candidate for Governor Mullins McLeod pushed to reform our election laws by making it easier for South Carolinians to exercise their […]
TweetBy the way, on the subject of Dems running for governor, I got this release today from Mullins McLeod, which says in part: In order to clamp down on politics-as-usual in the governor’s office, Mullins McLeod has made the following pledge to the people of South Carolina. (1) No PAC Money. Corporations and special interests […]
TweetAnother Democrat has openly expressed interest in next year’s race for governor: Calling for Change, Mullins McLeod Announces Run for Governor “We Deserve a Governor Who Focuses on Creating Jobs — For a Change,” says McLeod In a letter to delegates to this weekend’s South Carolina Democratic Convention, Charleston attorney and successful small businessman Mullins […]
Tweet By BRAD WARTHENEDITORIAL PAGE EDITORONCE, NOT so long ago, serious people decried the reduction and trivialization of political ideas to the level of a bumper sticker. Some days, I long for the coherence, the relevance, the completeness of bumper stickers. Let’s knit together a few of the unraveled threads that have frayed my mind […]