Don’t expect the Bush administration’s embrace of Nazi-like torture techniques to be a talking point as the presidential campaign heads into the home stretch. As despicable as the practice has been — and made worse by the cover-ups, obfuscations and junk-law opinions justifying its use — torture simply isn’t on the radar screen of most voters. That so noted, and overlooking any mental torture that previous presidents may have suffered at the hands of their First Ladies,...

He got invited to the convention because he had pre-marital sex with her. John McCain proclaims that he is for open government. Palin, meanwhile, is for closed government. Palin’s handlers say she and her family have nothing to hide. But fisherman husband Todd Palin’s former business partner filed an emergency motion to have his divorce papers sealed, surely a coincidence in light of the National Enquirer chasing a report that Sarah and the partner did the do-si-do. (The motion was denied,...

Any blog with an audience as diverse as The Moderate Voice is sure to have a few right-of-center trolls lurking under the bridge who rush out and kneecap any commentator with whom they disagree before rushing back to hide in the shadows and nibble on their stash of Gramm crackers. In a spare moment, I reviewed the comments from this crowd — they know who they are, eh AR? — over the past four days and was shocked, just shocked, to discover that of the 67 comments from trolls in response...

(13.) The U.S. has moved so far to the right during the past eight years that people who would have been considered moderates in 2000 are viewed today as liberals and liberals are viewed as leftists. (12.) That’s okay, because thanks to Bush-Cheney we live in a time of prosperity with stable energy prices and diminished dependence on imported oil, there is peace abroad and except for pesky community organizers, America is the envy of the world. (11.) Where does this leave conservatives? If...

It has now been confirmed that Sarah Palin can bite. But can she chew and digest? In a Republican National Convention appearance that was 95 percent theater and 5 percent substance, the Alaska governor broke her silence with an Exxon Valdez of a speech laden with empty rhetoric that was received with roaring adulation by delegates already fired up by the demagogic Rudy Giuliani, whom we can truly thank God is not on the ticket. And oh the quips! “The difference between a hockey mom and a pit...

I would normally defer to Barack Obama’s view that candidates’ families are off limits, something that right-wing bloviators have not afforded his wife. But Sarah Palin deserves no such consideration because this gun-packing, gay-bashing hypocrite of a mommy has made so-called family values a centerpiece of her politics, inevitably shining a harsh light on wayward daughter Bristol, a precocious 17-year-old whose hormones answered the siren call of premarital sex. The mere thought that...

If John McCain’s Trainwreck Express can make it through the next few days without going off the rails, then running mate Sarah Palin probably will survive. But if the revelations continue to roll in — from Palin’s thuggery as a small-town mayor and big-state governor, that she couldn’t even operate a car wash without running afoul of the law, her problematic religious affiliations, to the lack of vetting until after the fact to perhaps the most important determinant, Barack...

Look long and hard at this photograph, America. I mean really long and hard. Because when all is said and done, this is what selecting a vice presidential running mate is all about. Look long and hard at this photograph, America. I mean really long and hard. Now, squint a little and picture Joe Biden raising his right hand to take the oath of office as a stunned Michelle Obama stands at his left side and Jill Biden at his right. A disturbing thought, but at the same time comforting. Because Biden...

There are those, I know, who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American dream. — ARCHIBALD MacLEISH In exactly nine weeks, America will go to the polls in the most important election of my lifetime and, I daresay, for anyone who wasn’t old enough to vote for Franklin Roosevelt or Herbert Hoover in 1932. Why is it the most important? Because even before factoring in the excesses, amorality and criminality...

Given the historic vitriol of this presidential campaign, it has been pretty easy to overlook something else historic that makes my heart nearly burst with pride: It was 53 years ago, six years before Barack Obama was born, that Rosa Parks was ordered to get out of her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, because of the color of her skin, and today a man of color — the embodiment of Martin Luther King’s dream — stands on the threshold of the presidency. This could have not happened...

If the Bush Years were plotted on a fever chart, the key turning point triggering the descent to the Great Abyss of Unpopularity was Hurricane Katrina. While the war in Iraq remained pretty much an abstraction, albeit an increasingly unpleasant one, when the Category 5 storm made landfall three year ago today, people were incredulous, incensed and finally angered that the White House’s response was an indifference that put the final nail in the coffin of compassionate conservatism. As a great...

While I was effusive in my praise for Hillary Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention the other night and was willing to let pass the fact that she didn’t give Barack Obama a big wet smooch in urging her supporters to get with the program, it was with trepidation that I surfed away from the Phillies-Mets post-game show to see what Bill “Famously Hurt Feelings” Clinton had to offer when it was his turn on the Denver dais. In the run-up to the second most most...

While no one would confuse the Democratic National Convention with “Comedy Central,” there have been some boffo jibes and great lines: “John McCain calls himself a maverick, but he votes with George Bush 90 percent of the time. That’s not a maverick. That’s a sidekick.” – BOB CASEY Jr. “I spent 20 years in business. If you ran a company whose only strategy was to tear down the competition, it wouldn’t last long.” – MARK WARNER “You...

PLEASE! BUT BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN STAYS, OKAY?

I’m no actor and I have sixty four films to prove it. – VICTOR MATURE If you want to see the girl next door, go next door. – JOAN CRAWFORD There is a marvelous scene in the 1956 hit High Society that distills the greatness of Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby not as terrific singers, which they of course were, but as consummate movie stars. It is their rendition of Cole Porter’s swingingly whimsical “Did Ya Evah,” which as film historian Jeanine Basinger writes,...

UH OH.

I’m more or less with Jazz on the political spouses thing, but wild horses wouldn’t have been able to drag me away from Senator Ted Kennedy’s valedictory last night. For some people of a certain age, Kennedy will always be the rich drunk who drove off the Chappaquiddick Bridge and sent Mary Jo Kopechne to her watery death. For others like myself, he will always be the scandal-tarnished baby brother who would never follow in the footsteps of Jack or Bobby but nevertheless did great...

While Joe Biden brings a fair amount of baggage to the Barack Obama ticket, he was the best choice as a vice presidential running mate because of the balance he offers. Pity poor John McCain, because his choices will be exceedingly limited if he hopes to balance his ticket. My tears are of the crocodile variety, of course, and McCain has no one to blame but that guy looking back at him from the mirrors in those how many homes. He made the decision to market himself as a faux maverick but of course...

(12.) Anyone scratching the surface of Joe Biden’s financial history will become acquainted with Delaware’s growth industry — usury in the form of credit card-bank-friendly state laws written for some of his biggest contributors. (11.) Too much will be made in the coming weeks of Biden’s humble roots, but he can connect with blue collar Americans and help shore up Obama with Catholic and elderly voters. (10.) His wife Jill’s first marriage, like millions of Americans,...

THE ANSWER IS HERE.

Brandon Friedman at Vet Voice nails it: “The fact is, John McCain’s service during Vietnam was honorable and he sacrificed a great deal. But his service to the country carries no more weight than that of any other POW. Likewise, while McCain has given so much to his country, thousands of veterans–past and present–have given as much or more. In this war alone, thousands of troops have lost limbs, been paralyzed, and been burned beyond recognition. So to see McCain resort to...

2008: The Dream Team; 1972: Biden celebrates his 30th birthday with his sons and wife, who was killed a month later While Delaware has its charms, notably its great beaches, it is mostly a place to go through to get to somewhere else, and its mark on American politics since it became the first signatory to the Constitution 225 years ago has been as negligible as the state is small. An exception was Senator John J. “Honest John” Williams, a chicken farmer and Republican who earned the...

Senator Joseph R. Biden is the first Delawarean to appear on a major-party presidential slate although several residents of the tiny state have run for president under (very) minor party banners. Delaware’s representation in the upper reaches of national government also is on the thin side: One state senator became Senate president pro-tem and another secretary of state, but that’s about it. Biden, who is running for a seventh term, is expected to remain on the November ballot. If Barack...

THE BASS VOICE OF MY YOUTH (FAR RIGHT) HAS PASSED

Forget about Barack Obama’s travails — real or imagined — for a moment. What does it say about the state of the Republican Party that the speakers on the opening night of its national convention are a president widely considered to be one of the worst in history, a vice president who may be culpable for war crimes, a serial adulterer who used public funds on his mistress, and a Uriah Heep-ish Democratic turncoat? Oh, yeah. And the guy being nominated is an addled septuagenarian,...