Megan McArdle finds it funny that Nancy Pelosi is worried about political violence. I'm not sure which element tickles McArdle's funny bone. Maybe it's Pelosi's request that public officials speak responsibly. Maybe it's Pelosi's embarrassing and uncool emotional sincerity. Perhaps it's that Pelosi is soooo amazingly old that she actually remembers the Mayor of San Francisco's thigh-slappingly funny murder.

John Varvatos is not just a designer. He is a rock-and-roll designer. His ads have featured Franz Ferdinand and ZZ Top. Robert Plant wore three of his suits to the Grammy's.

You've probably heard by now of the videos being promoted by Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com and Fox News that purport to show Acorn employees engaging in some rather unethical behavior.  I don't know to what extent the videos have been edited, because they have clearly been edited, but there certainly seems to be some rotten behavior on display.  The SF chronicle has reported that that these employees have already been fired, although the sa

Less than a quarter-century ago, Americans of all persuasions would nervously gaze to the sky wondering if the end of the world was about to rain down on them. Nuclear holocaust always seemed moments away.

Of course, the Cold War ended and 9/11 happened, meaning Americans now were forced to gaze everywhere to try to catch a terrorist bent on destroying them.

One of Drudge Report's headlines today is "Sarkozy first to admit: Iran working on nukes." (The original was, of course, all-caps; I'll spare you.) It links to a Jerusalem Post article that reads in part:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy maintained that the Islamic republic was still working on a nuclear weapons program.

One of the recurrent themes that contribute to right-wing paranoia is the fantasy that white people suffer from discrimination in Obama's America. This conceit erupted on the talk shows during the Sotomayor hearings and after Henry Louis Gates' arrest, when Rush Limbaugh said, "President Obama is black, and I think he's got a chip on his shoulder," and Glenn Beck exclaimed that Obama "has a deep seated hatred for white people."

Many thanks to the dagblog gang for inviting me to guest-blog here. I'm excited to join the dagblog membership, and hope to make a useful contribution if I can. Anyway, without further ado, here's my first shot:

SOUTH CAROLINA - Desperately trying to distance itself from the outlandish behavior of its Republican politicians, the State Tourism Board has announced an aggressive new campaign to encourage tourism.

“It was time to take the focus off the Republicans and on the state,” said Tourism Board Chairman Tim Tapper. “And we’re willing to go to any lengths to do that.”

Labor unions have been working on resurrecting a controversial bill in an eleventh hour maneuver in Sacramento over the weekend.

Assembly Bill 155 (Mendoza) would authorize the California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission (CDIAC) as a filter for municipalities to go through before filing for bankruptcy, originally created to provide information and technical assistance about debt issuance to public agencies and other public finance professionals.

Today, you can’t walk down the street without being ideologically undressed by an American Patriot. The streets and roads are chock-full of good, hard-working Americans who want their country back from those that stole it from them.

But just being an American Patriot isn’t enough these days. Today, we need LEADERS. We need GREAT American Patriots that not only understand the incalculable importance of writing in all caps, but also understand that this is a time of action.

You may have heard about Glenn Beck's recent paranoid accusations, but if you are a drive-by voyeur of right-wing hysterics, you might not appreciate the method behind the madness. Relying on out-of-context quotes, tenuous associations, and giant leaps of speculation, Beck has meticulously pieced together the most elaborate, nefarious government conspiracy in the history of cable news. His argument consists of four primary elements:

Part 1: The Czars

A few years ago, I met a young millionaire who had made a fortune buying life insurance policies from the elderly and reselling them to investors. He would offer policy owners cash upfront, and when they died, the companies to which he had sold the policies would receive the benefits. Of course, he earned a percentage. It struck me as a clever but shady operation.

There's been much made over the presence or absence of a public option in whatever healthcare bill finally ends up emerging from Washington.  Proponents regard it as the raison d'être in the battle to reform America's healthcare system, noting that it's a far cry from a true, single-payer system.  Opponents have responded by doing everything from branding it socialist to brandishing guns to drawing Hitler's moustache on Obama.  That's cool.  As a buddy of mine recently remarked, "I used to do that in my middle school textbooks."  Did Hitler ever make tepid overtures to being open to