Last night, I had the great opportunity of speaking with former Senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyoming), a moderate who often bucked his party on social issues. Simpson, the son of a one-term Republican Senator, served as Wyoming’s Assistant Attorney General and Cody city attorney before being elected to the state House of Representatives in 1964. After 17 years in the chamber, Simpson was elected to the United States Senate in 1978. During his three terms in the Senate, Simpson served as Republican...

Most of our posts will resume after 6 a.m. today San Diego time. So stay tuned…and keep checking back!

There are a lot of them and they’re not quite as heart-warming as the Brady Bunch. But they are also a big family. And they are productive: many of them have gone onto making big bux in bizness (we spell that way because we’re from California, ranked 43rd of the 50th states in terms of smartness according to a survey). Here’s the story, of a man named bin Laden, Who was busy with a few kids of his own. More than 20 of them lived together, And the kids never got stoned. Here’s...

Police in England arrested a student for nagging a horse: Police officers who arrested a student for calling a police horse “gay” have been accused of “absurd heavy-handedness and over-reaction” by a leading campaigner for homosexual rights. Peter Tatchell of the pressure group Outrage! said that the arrest of Sam Brown, a student at Oxford University, “brought the police service into disrepute”. Mr Brown, 21, a student at Balliol College, was arrested for causing...

Yes, Iran, not Iraq, has been rocked by five bomb blasts today, with nine people reported dead. From CBC News: There is no explanation for the attacks, but an Iranian official suggested the bombs were linked to the presidential elections set for Friday. Former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani, a pragmatic conservative, is expected to win, beating a group of mainly religious hardliners. Bombings are unusual in Iran. The attacks were the most serious in more than 10 years. Eight people died when...

So where do YOU live and how dumb is it? A new study has just come out that ranks the 50 states from the smartest to dumbest — which is of interest to me since I live in a state called California but have many friends and relatives in a state called inebriation. The smartest state for the second year in a row is Massachusetts. Take that Rush Limbaugh. The dumbest state for the third year in a row is New Mexico. Well, they got it wrong: sounds like they tested all of the rocks out there. And...

Celebrities love to invoke the First Amendment as long as it doesn’t apply to those engaged in keeping their cosmetically-enhanced faces splashed across half a dozen weeklies and dozens more free domestic tabloids, keeping their careers vibrant if not tranquil, as Reason’s Tim Cavanaugh documents: The celebrities saw how effectively the royals managed to pin blame for Princess Di’s drunk-driving death on the press, and they’re trying to get some sort of precautionary principle...

Cups of specially spiced Kool Aid seemed out in force yesterday as the Democratic National Committee in effect gave DNC Chair Howard Dean an enthusiastic go ahead to continue making comments that suck up the media air and focus attention on one main feature of today’s Democratic party: Howard Dean’s comments as party chair. This has long-term implications. Dean is a fascinating, often-peppery speaker who can always get his message across since reporters scurry to cover his every word...

Mike Tyson quit on his stool last night in his highly-touted bout with Kevin McBride — and he immediately said he might quit boxing. Two things on that: (1)Tyson not only jumped the shark a long time ago, he jumped the whale (and probably took a bite of it, too). (2)He has been a truly sad figure, exploited by his associates, a convicted rapist — not exactly the best role model for youth. So you can’t say he’ll be missed if he leaves boxing, a sport that seems to be in a steady...

Here’s yet another example of using weblog technology to the fullest: video blogger Trey Jackson interviewed former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. One of the videos he’s offering shows Gingrich on the phone while being interviewed by Bill O’Reilly. Read the post and see the videos HERE. Increasingly, video bloggers are offering some of the most interesting and must-view sites on the Internet. So far it’s been largely using excerpts from televised shows. Packaging those...

Because the American Family Association says so.

They were protesting oil dependency and rode their bikes in a colorful way. If bystanders heckled them we assume they turned the other cheek.

The White House advisor who reportedly repeatedly edited government climate reports to downplay play down links between such emissions and global warming has resigned. The timing — coming after a huge controversy — suggests that the resignation didn’t just pop into his head. And the White House’s explanation is the kind of stock statement an employer or organization usually gives when it invited someone to leave: Philip A. Cooney, the chief of staff to President Bush’s...

Nothing stops (most) athletes from playing. Nothing. And Young Pundit has a list of them.

Cross-posted at Random Fate. I recently posted on my own concept of honor, and how I feel the honor of my country has been soiled and continues to be soiled by the choice of our government to maintain the extra-legal prison an Guantanamo Bay. In that post, I disagreed with an assertion made by another blogger, someone whom I respect immensely. I want to make it very clear I was not saying that the Average Tobacco Chewing Joe of Cadillac Tight has no sense of honor. ATCJoe and I have had a relatively...

George Bush to Syria: stop interfering in Lebanon’s electoral process and get your intelligence agents out of Lebanon. Subtext (undefined consequence): or else. If you recall, during the last round of this crisis Syria had withdrawn its troops and, amid much journalistic fanfare, reports said it was withdrawing its intelligence agents, too. Few believe that has happened now. CNN reports: President Bush said Friday that he was disturbed by reports that Syria might still have intelligence agents...

A note: this is the personal opinion of the author, Jack Grant, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Joe Gandelman, the proprietor of this weblog. Cross-posted to Random Fate. In an article discussing the move of Apple from PowerPC to Intel based processors I read this of all things: (The Macintosh sycophancy) …reminds me of another self-justifying group of Americans that will approve anything their party does, no matter what (apparently its leadership believes it’s reasonable...

Attention F. James Sensenbrenner Jr.”: far be it for me to lecture you on democracy– you are professional politician— but you and any who defend what you did shouldn’t lecture Iraqis or anyone else about democracy: After repeated criticism of the Bush administration, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee yesterday gaveled a hearing to a close and walked out while Democrats continued to testify — but with their microphones shut off. What adjectives...

The jury in the Michael Jackson case has adjourned for the weekend — leaving a news media camped out in Santa Maria (and elsewhere) drooling in anticipation of a week that’s expected to be one of the biggest ever for celebrity journalism in print, on cable and on the airwaves. You could call this a “media circus” — except modern day circuses aren’t that big and no longer employ freak shows: About 2,200 members of the media have received credentials to cover...

We’ve put in our posts here a statement that Democratic fundraising is lagging under Howard Dean but Media Matters says that is not the case and documented it. Read their whole post where they take the Boston Globe to task for using that assertion here. Here’s the important paragraph for our readers: Media Matters for America documented that, as DNC chairman, Dean raised $14.8 million between February and April 2005 — roughly a 74 percent increase from the same period in 2003, the...

….at Uncorrelated, a really nicely written, tight-weblog that covers a lot of issues — giving you varying writers viewpoints. What’s refreshing is that this weblog does have writers who differ so greatly on how they perceive events. It’s posts are compact, but usually pack a punch. They give you excellent links, often to weblogs that you might not yet know about. This is important because it helps you discover some bloggers out there who may not be getting a lot of attention...

A word to the wise: be warned that you could receive the now infamous Jackson suicide virus in your email. And, no, despite what you might think, the Michael Jackson suicide virus doesn’t encourage you to click on a link where it plays Jackson’s last CD — causing you to commit suicide. Sophos reports it does this: Experts at SophosLabsâ„¢, Sophos’s global network of virus and spam analysis centers, have warned of a spam campaign that claims that Michael Jackson has attempted...

Now they’re going after Big Bird as what’s seemingly shaping up as a multi-fronted war against Public Broadcasting goes on: A House subcommittee voted yesterday to sharply reduce the federal government’s financial support for public broadcasting, including eliminating taxpayer funds that help underwrite such popular children’s educational programs as “Sesame Street,” “Reading Rainbow,” “Arthur” and “Postcards From Buster.” In...

Joe Gandelman has named his weblog The Moderate Voice, I suspect in no small part because he appears to find knee-jerk ideological views damaging to our society in the least and more likely dangerous overall. There are some issues that go beyond politics to some, however, and in my case they are matters of honor, a concept that may not exist to many in this modern world. I have been attempting to define what is a “moderate” and trying to distingish that attitude from the political view...

Cross-posted at The Smoking Room Could the greatest threat to the Syrian regime be an odd coalition of seculars and fundies? In April, the outlawed Islamist organization Muslim Brotherhood issued a statement calling for free and fair elections and an end to the state of emergency, effectively martial law, in place since 1963. The Brotherhood warned the government that it would bear “sole responsibility” for the deterioration of the country if it ignored its call. The declaration from...