Today, John F. Kennedy would have been 95 years old. Speaking at the University of Wyoming fieldhouse I heard him speak at the University of Wyoming when I was in second grade. Here is that speech, from 1963. He was assassinated fifty-eight days later in Dallas, Texas. I had met Senator Gale McGee on a few occasions, by that time. Here is what I heard:

Friday, something unprecedented happened. The Right/Red blogs banded together to destroy ONE person (a blogger claims he feels “threatened”). The entire front page of Memeorandum is dominated by this coordinated attack and smear. That OUGHT to scare hell out of everybody else, but I see virtually no commentary whatsoever. The entire blogosphere has been coopted into the narrow agenda of a few individuals...

…you crybabies!

Blogger Patrick Frey has recently revealed details of how he was nearly murdered for being Conservative While Blogging. As I read this story, I had a creeping sense of horror. And my oft-stated sentiment that maybe I made a mistake ten years ago by blogging under my own real name became a genuinely fearful reaction. Really, this should be called terrorism. I’ve been known to call some people who comment...

Lessons of Lugar and Specter: Only Pure Need Apply by Scott Crass Over the course of the past two elections, voters in Democratic and Republican primaries have shown the door to two of the most senior and influential members of the body. They include the man who was arguably among the Senate’s few Constitutional and legal scholars, Arlen Specter, as well as one of the body’s leading Foreign Affairs scholar,...

Guest post by Richard K. Barry Richard K. Barry, a New Yorker now living in Toronto, is the Associate Editor of The Reaction. You can also find him at Lippmann’s Ghost. Both amateurs and professionals who write about politics struggle every day with what to write next. I have to say that an article yesterday at Politico was both an exercise in the obvious and a little kowtowing to political spin from the right....

Jessica Crispin writes: Okay, so this is what I want: I want, when someone changes their mind about something, for them not to go ideologically swinging to the far other side. I was reading some reviews of Mark Simpson’s Male Impersonators: Men Performing Masculinity, and there are some of former feminists writing about it. And when I say “former” I mean “anti.” We’re taking...

California’s 30th District: Race Between Consensus Builders Berman and Sherman is the Most Fascinating Redistricted House Battle by Scott Crass This redistricting year is forcing numerous pairings of one House member against another. Some are Democratic vs. Republican matchups. Others involve incumbents whose party affiliations are the same, but whose styles are different. But the most fascinating contest...

While it may be that the Fat Lady has not yet sung–we do have an entire Summer and Fall to get through after all–it does look like the “Occupy” movement is sputtering badly and may soon be completely extinguished, having done little of significance except add a few barely-coherent ideas into our political discourse. I find this both a bit of a relief and disappointing at the same time....

Carol Marin brings up a perennial favorite in Democratic circles: that Obama should ask Hillary Clinton to be his running-mate, and offer Joe Biden the Secretary of State position. The main problem with this being, Clinton has repeatedly said she doesn’t want the job, and not in particularly coy terms either. This begins to remind me of the Bush years wherein so many people wishfully speculated speculated...

We’re going to have to jam here. So much new information, so little time. G. Dubya Bush assuring residents of The Big Easy that nothing bad actually happened in Katrina, and even if it did, everything would be hunky dory. The square was lit by emergency generators : virtually the only electricity IN New Orleans that night… I wrote this to the Eugene Register-Guard in 2003:

Guest Post By Richard K. Barry Richard K. Barry, a New Yorker now living in Toronto, is the Associate Editor of The Reaction. You can also find him at Lippmann’s Ghost. A couple of conservative commentators are very excited about a recent poll (published May 11) by Rasmussen Reports that finds Mitt Romney ahead of President Obama by a seven-point margin, 50% to 43%, which is actually based on what they call...

Six years ago, I found a group of Koch intimates running stealth initiative campaigns in a dozen states and more. They poured millions of anonymous dollars — seemingly coming from just three anonymous contributors — into pushing their Frankenstein legislation on the unwitting citizens of said states. When the story came to light, the national media ignored it. (The New York Times, at best, rather...

What Capitalists Don’t Know: Without Democracy, Capitalism Dies by Craig Barnes In the 1990s renowned political scientist and author Ben Barber wrote in Jihad vs McWorld that global capitalism was at war with democracy. He was right, of course, and the intensity of that war has only increased since then. Global corporations are battling democracy’s environmental regulations, taxation, labor laws, legislation...

“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.” –Rebecca West I have long been alternately amused and irritated by that famous quote. Why? Because I find myself relating to it in divided fashion: For my part, I have never been able to find out precisely what...

By Ali Ezzatyar I feel like it is difficult to be a casual follower of the Iranian nuclear issue. All related news items are generally tagged with a derivation of one of the following themes: a) Israel is going to attack Iran; or b) the parties are set for nuclear talks. Particularly with respect to the nuclear talks, it is even frustrating for me, an IR nerd of sorts, to see this title every once in a while,...

It appears that there may be a serious safety problem for pilots of F-22 Raptors, and it looks like there’s some butt-covering by the brass over it. A full PDF of the official Air Force report on the crash of Capt. Jeffrey Haney is available here. The most chilling note, to me, is in the conclusion: “By clear and convincing evidence, I find the cause of the mishap was the MP’s failure to...

While working today, a show came on the radio about how cruel and nonsensical the new Voter ID law is and I just had to stop and do a movie. PS – If you want to see the follow up movie to “Little Stuff” I posted earlier on TMV, here’s the link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNkT3aQtqkM

[* Thurston Howell III's kid.] Seems that Mitt Romney tired of abusing dogs and turned his attentions to boating. Buzz Feed reports [emphasis added]: Mitt Romney Was Arrested For Disorderly Conduct In 1981 According to what Romney told the Boston Globe in 1994, he had taken his family off to Wayland, Mass.’s Lake Cochituate, about an hour outside Boston, for a summer excursion. As Romney prepared to put...

Time Magazine has a fascinating look at the campaign to re-elect the President. Their basic mantra: “Be confident, but take nothing for granted.” The President has fairly good reason to be confident. That said, Romney has not yet truly begun the general election campaign. While he is the presumptive Republican nominee, he doesn’t have the nomination quite yet, and cannot afford to take it for...