Volume 266 | No. 12

Mon, Feb 28

2003—An ex-gay male escort begins attending White House press briefings with an official pass issued to him under the pseudonym “Jeff Gannon.” 1997—That blue dress gets soiled. 1993—The ATF tries to serve a warrant on a religious community in Waco. It does not go well. 1986—Ronald Reagan calls reporters “sons-of-bitches” for asking questions during a photo-op; press aide Larry Speakes explains he really said, “It’s sunny and you’re rich.” 1958—In New York, a first batch of 27 people die after drinking “King Kong” moonshine. 1947—Hooligans in Taiwan riot over routine government corruption. Koumintang troops—brave anti-Communists—justly massacre thousands. 1933­—On Hitler’s say-so, Hindenberg sets the pattern, curtailing …

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Sun, Feb 27

2019—“I fear that if [Trump] loses the election in 2020,” says his ex-lawyer Michael Cohen, “there will never be a peaceful transition of power.” 2014—Senate Republicans block a bill to fund veterans health care because it would cost too much. 2001—Rep. David B. Vitter [R-La.] skips a House vote honoring 28 Desert Storm KIAs to take a call from Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the D.C. Madam. 1975—The FDA recalls a batch of 1,241 GE pacemakers—after they’ve all been implanted. 1973—The American Indian Movement occupies Wounded Knee. 1970—The New York Times reports that the U.S. Army no longer conducts illegal domestic surveillance; untrue then, and now. 1968—Walter …

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Propaganda 101 : The Art of Creative Lying

by W.D. Ehrhart Recently, I was stopped dead in my tracks by a news report saying law students at Georgetown University were so upset by a professor criticizing President Biden’s determination to appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court that they demanded “an office they can go to . . . if they want to cry, if they need to break down.”  They are demanding a Crying Room. Seriously? I dutifully wrote up an irate essay excoriating the “Snowflake” sensibilities of many of my Left Progressive fellow travelers, whose sometimes frivolous and inane demands make it so easy for the Radical Reactionary Right to …

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Some Good-Ish News For a Change

A bipartisan bill passed the House last week by a vote of 342 to 92. Yeah, you read that right. Congress passed a bill, and by a very healthy margin. All 222 Democrats voted “yea” on the Postal Service Reform Act, and 120 Republicans voted “yea” with them; 92 Republicans chose instead to meet our low expectations. Among other things, H.R. 3076 “repeals the requirement that the USPS annually prepay future retirement health benefits.” That means $57 billion just got subtracted from the Postal Service’s $200 billion in liabilities. As the Washington Post opined, though, “This overhaul is not a panacea for all the Postal …

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Is Stochastic Homicide A Crime?

The good news is that everybody’s worried. They should be. The bad news is that a third of the country is having a coniption over fictional problems. That would be all right if those people would stick to tradition by sitting back and doing nothing. Our rule of thumb here in the office is that half of all real problems solve themselves without intervention.* You can’t say it doesn’t work—we’re still here in our 266th year. But noo—millions of people are so cranked up that they’re bound and determined to fix what ain’t broke—and many of them think guns are the right tool for the …

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