What Pitch Would Jesus Throw

Sports seem to be an absolute magnet for religious people and concepts.  We've all seen the winning athletes credit their success to God's will and God-given talent, while the losers are strangely silent on God's sudden dislike of them and their own sudden lack of God-given talent.

Now there is a report that a major league baseball team, the Colorado Rockies, have embraced "a Christian-based code of conduct they believe will bring them focus and success."

Duck! Here comes the "American Values Agenda"

Having already used up the concept of a "Contract with America," what would a group of unscrupulous, politically ambitious but intellectually bankrupt far right politicians come up with to try to preserve their elected butts?

Say, Betcha Neo-Nazis and Skinheads Would be Good in the Military

Remember the difficulty the U.S. was having filling its military recruitment quotas?  Betcha can't guess one likely reason that they've been doing better lately.

Talk about a lousy week (and maybe a lot longer) for Republicans

For those who think the current Republican Party lacks everything but sleaze, it was a pretty good week.

British didn't think "rebel" colonists were soldiers, either

"Illegal combatants" is the term commonly used to describe those "detainees" in the custody of the U.S. and our allies whom we have determined are not entitled to the protection of the Geneva Conventions.

Two and a quarter centuries ago, the British apparently made the exact same decision as to the American colonists in open rebellion against the Crown, and treated American prisoners about as abysmally as the detainees in the war on terror are being treated.

R.I.P. Mr. Lay

Fill in the blanks sociology:

Quick quiz: how many times have you seen this statement, or something very much like it, in a news story on a famous-turned-infamous figure?

[NAME] rose from a poor [OCCUPATION OF FATHER] son to become a millionaire before being convicted of [FILL IN CRIME].

The reality of Republican and Christian "moral values"

I get outraged at least once a week by some conservative and/or religious and/or Republican distortion about that side's "moral values," and the presumed lack thereof by the "other side."

And since this seems diametrically opposed to what I've witnessed in my own life...

Who makes up (& funds) the "opposition" to global warming?

Many right wing web sites, and rightwingers trolling around other web sites, make much of the "economic interest" of mainstream scientists in finding that global warming exists and is man-made. Missing from their oddly similar (virtually identical) statements environmentalist bias is any concern at all with who makes up the movement opposing man-made global warming, and where they get their money.

July 4, 1776 or July 4, 2006...See Any Differences?

230 years ago, today, a bunch of aggravating, nasty, mean and very liberal men signed a document drafted by one Thomas Jefferson, a liberal (yes!), and soon to be a future president...

Bush's role in the Joe Wilson case

Via Raw Story, I found a piece in today's National Journal about what President Bush admitted to the Fitzgerald investigators.