Doug Ireland

Big Bird gave San Bernardino County Congressman Jerry Lewis a black eye last week. Lewis, who is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, is the conservative obscurantist who has been leading the right-wing Republican effort to slash the budget of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) — which provides funding......

Howard Dean did it again: He touched off a firestorm from within his own Democratic Party with an impolitic, off-the-cuff remark. Last week, talking to a forum of minorities in San Francisco, the Democrats’ national chairman said the Republicans were “pretty much a white Christian party” — a story the......

After Mark Felt outed himself as the legendary Deep Throat in the Watergate case last week, there was a media rush to canonize the FBI’s former Number Two man, and politicians proposed he be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom. But in all this gush to make Felt a hero,......

Illustration by Tra SelthrowSpurred on by a biblical injunction evangelicals call “The Great Commission,” and emboldened by George W. Bush’s re-election, which is perceived as a “mandate from God,” the Christian right has launched a series of boycotts and pressure campaigns aimed at corporate America — and at its sponsorship......

The massive defeat of the new European Constitution by the French in a May 29 referendum means a virtual political revolution in France — a rebellion by the people against the political elites of both left and right. The French rejected the proposed EuroConstitution by a whopping 10 points, despite......

Illustration by Mr. Fish Poor Terri Schiavo, at long last, has been mercifully released from the prison of her lifeless body. But if you think that puts an end to the Republicans’ assault on the right to die with dignity, think again. Another attempt to pass sweeping federal restrictions on......

Just as a TIME magazine poll out this week shows Americans want more TV censorship, a brace of Republican initiatives threatens to extend federal control of what you can see and hear and read to both cable TV and the Internet. Hollywood better wake up. Remember the Hays Office, which......

AP/WideworldLike a dark cloud obscuring the sun, the powerful odor of mendacity hung over Washington after George Bush concluded his State of the Union speech last week. Bush certainly seems to have bamboozled the press (The Boston Globe inexplicably found the speech “soothing,” the L.A. Times decided the speech was......

A ferocious new wave of Christer-driven censorship — much of it anti-gay — is washing over America, with support from the Bush administration that is sometimes overt, sometimes covert. Equally ominous, however, is that in too many instances, the targets of that censorship are buckling under pressure. Here are two......