One of my great blogging joys used to be mocking David Brooks.  Now Sir David would have been at home in England a few decades ago.  A rather worthless fellow who was lucky enough to have a title and a stage to to spew nonsense.  An easy target for a desperate blogger.  But all good things must end and David Brooks mocking ended with Charles Pierce. The applause came from deep in the plush leather armchairs...

by WALTER BRASCH “Ola, Amigo! Pack your bags, we’re going to Mexico!” bubbled Dr. Franklin Peterson Comstock III, faux physician and money-maker. “Yeah, I could use a decent vacation,” I replied, figuring he’d pay for both of us since he had just set the world record for the most nose jobs in a 24-hour period. “What vacation?” he said. “I’m setting up practice.” “And give up catering...

The Washington Post: Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich in 1999 asked his second wife for an “open marriage” or a divorce at the same time he was giving speeches around the country on family and religious values, his former wife, Marianne, told The Washington Post on Thursday. Marianne Gingrich said she first heard from the former speaker about the divorce request as she was waiting in the home of her...

Apology is overdue to George W. Romney for my remembering him only as an unsophisticated man whose remarks about being “brainwashed” in Vietnam cost him the 1968 GOP nomination. In Rolling Stone, Rick Pearlstein summons up the elder Romney, with ancient videotape, to recall a time when some politicians still tried to tell the truth, even if it derailed their ambitions. The lessons Mitt Romney drew from his...

I stopped eating meat about 15 years ago not on philosophical grounds or because I embraced a vegetarian or (heaven forbid) vegan diet, but because meat was expensive and I realized that I felt better without it. And so except for the very occasional greasy Philadelphia-style cheese steak with fried onions and mushrooms, I have become a so-called flexitarian with a diet that is substantially meat free. Americans,...

For the Obama re-election campaign, Mitt Romney is the gift that keeps on giving. At least so far. Never mind that the former Massachusetts governor is supposed to be the un-Obama, a man who has the expertise to turn around the economy by creating jobs while reducing the federal budget deficit. Today, three days before the South Carolina primary, which will validate Romney as the Republican presidential nominee,...

GQ’s Top 25 Power People in DC? One and a half women. One and a half. And a whole lotta white guys. Here’s the full list of 50 from Mike Allen’s Politico Playbook: FIRST LOOK – GQ’s “The 50 Most Powerful People in Washington (People with the last names Obama and Biden not included,” by Reid Cherlin, Rob Fischer, Jason Horowitz and Jason Zengerle: 1) Eric Cantor 2) Mitch McConnell 3)...

The same Republican presidential wannabe who would send U.S. troops back into Iraq and thus would most likely again need the use of Turkish land and air space to provide logistics support to our troops there, now labels that nation a country that is being ruled by Islamic terrorists — and worse. During Monday’s GOP presidential candidates debate in South Carolina, Texas governor Rick Perry also...

Does being a CEO of an organization mean you are better qualified to be President of the United States? While I was studying for a masters degree in Political Communications, this was the most interesting question that I came across. It is a question I asked myself when I was studying George W Bush’s candidacy in 2000 and it is a question I have been asking myself as I have watched Mitt Romney’s campaign. As...

The First Lady turns 48 today. I know because an e-mail from the President last week reminded me with two links to a fund-raising site: “The decision to become part of this campaign was deeply personal for a lot of people, and Michelle and I are no exception… “This fall, Michelle and I will have been married 20 years. The next 10 months will be harder than any we’ve experienced together, and...

There was a time not long ago when free speech was guaranteed in America, and if someone had a problem with that the Supreme Court would weigh in with a reminder that the concept is a foundation on which our democracy is built. But a funny thing happened on the way to the second decade of the new millennium. According to a new study, the court led by Chief Justice John Roberts is hearing fewer free speech...

My Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” – Martin Luther King Jr. Doug Bursch blogs and tweets Fairlyspiritual.

When I read this letter for the many-eth time in my life, I see MLK’s spiritual discipline, the knowledge of how to go forward in four steps, the leadership, the clear demands, the efforts at negotiation, the spiritual self-examination so one doesnt go off half-cocked caught up in the yelling… and the non violent protest for clear cut goals. When I read Reverend King’s letter from Birmingham...

Five years ago, in another political world when Barack Obama was getting ready to run for president, I wrote this: West Side residents of Chicago now have a U.S. Senator who looks like them and it may be, in more ways than one, due to the man whose birthday we celebrate tomorrow. Martin Luther King Jr. preached nonviolence to the oppressed. “Our weapon is love,” he told them, and he used it with stunning...

With the primary season underway it is already time for people to speculate the winner in November. Of course this is hardly a new situation; pundits have been trying to predict the outcome of the elections for decades and usually with mixed results at best. In the early 1980′s, a political scientist named Allan Lichtman decided to try and figure out a way to predict the outcome of Presidential elections...

(PORTIONS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN JANUARY 2007) When I was first cutting my teeth in the newspaper business, my editors sent me out on “house ends,” visits to homes where I would interview families of interest because something very bad of interest had happened to them. It was the late 1960s and many of these house ends were the result of the death of a young man, usually an Army or Marine...

It can happen. Miraculous resurrection can sometimes emerge from unspeakable tragedy. On Sept. 11, 2001 Lauren Manning, senior vice president and partner at Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment bank which had several floors of offices in the World Trade Center, was on her way to work and getting ready to enter the elevator at the North Tower when the 9/11 terrorist attack punched the building — and a giant,...

WASHINGTON — This is what progress looks like for a president named Barack Hussein Obama. Not so long ago, many in conservative and Republican ranks were eager to paint him as an alien creature far removed from American life as most Americans understand it. A determined cadre insisted Obama was not even eligible to be president, claiming he was born outside the United States. Obama eventually put...

WASHINGTON — He would be an elder statesman now, a lion in winter, an American hero perhaps impatient with the fuss being made over his birthday. At 83, he’d likely still have his wits and his voice. Surely, if he were able, he would continue to preach, and to pray — and to dream. For the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., dreaming was not optional. It was a requirement of citizenship to...

Your news media at work: first, obtain the authentic photo of the actual story; THEN black out anything in the photo that would actually show anything; THEN slap your video logos and bumperstickers all over it. • You know what I’m talking about. • No army that ever marched didn’t have douchebags like these. You know these guys. And so do I. They were the dumbasses who put the frog on the...