Liberal Talk Radio

“Oops!” That’s how a former girlfriend of mine used to annotate the moment of, er, “crossing the threshold” as it were. Which gives me an opening to talk about a book reviewed by Slate. Sociologist Mark Regnerus’ new book Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers finally answers the age-old question: [...]

One of the world’s top spammers, who happens to live in Seattle, is under arrest: SEATTLE (AP) — A 27-year-old man described as one of the world’s most prolific spammers was arrested Wednesday, and federal authorities said computer users across the Web could notice a decrease in the amount of junk e-mail. Robert Alan Soloway [...]

Right-wing think tanks — of the kind that are funded by corporations to promote a specific agenda — usually have suspiciously antiseptic or innocuous names, like “Freedom Policy Institute” or some such. The trick is to throw the words “institute” or “policy” in there as often as possible to throw people off the scent. (Case [...]

Chinese justice reaches Libyan levels of theatricality: The former director of China’s top food and drug safety agency was sentenced to death on Tuesday after pleading guilty to corruption and accepting bribes, the state-controlled news media reported. Zheng Xiaoyu was the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration from its founding in 1998 until mid-2005, [...]

When Sam Brownback raised his hand to indicate that he doesn’t believe in evolution, what he meant to say was: If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true. If, [...]

If Fred Thompson is, in fact, running for President, does that mean that NBC will have to stop showing Law & Order reruns that feature the actor-turned-Senator-turned-actor? Apparently so. The Terminator movies were off-limits when Gov. Schwarzenegger ran for office. All the candidates have to get “equal time” on broadcast TV (but not cable). Of [...]

History Channel Star Wars “story behind the film” piece breaks little new ground — oh, the reason for the film’s success was its deep-rooted narrative classicism? Really? Except in one regard: the show features many new “learned observer” interviews, including some surprises. Notably, both Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi are called upon to give their [...]

Boy, there sure are some complicated-ass ways to increase energy efficiency out there. Apparently you can create a public corporation tasked with finding efficiency, you can have the public utilities buy people more efficient air conditioners. You can do all this cool stuff… but it’s all way complicated and probably doesn’t work because no one [...]

Bill Richardson on Meet the Press, the immigration bill loses support on the Left, and finally: the US sits for talks with Iran and shockingly, the world doesn’t come to an end.

Good op-ed in the Times this weekend on reforming the farm bill. The farm bill is one of those famous pieces of pork(!) that no one likes except big agriculture. It’s a travesty, but — and this is the ultra-cynic in me coming out — it will never get any attention so long as Archer [...]