Or shrink couches, or X-ray glasses?

It's my fault, I know, for watching the convention on a commercial cable channel, rather than on C-SPAN. But it strikes me that today's level of journalistic derangement exceeds anything I've experienced before.

These MSNBC analysts, you see, and these "strategists" whom no one...

It made me think of my own family.

Having coined "O'Bama" for the Irish working-class values that Joe Biden brings to the Democratic ticket, Chris Matthews called his family in Pennsylvania -- where Scranton-born Biden is known as the state's "third senator" in some quarters -- to ask whether now...

Now that Condi has negotiated the very timetable for withdrawal from Iraq that this administration has been calling treasonous for the past three years, will anyone hold them accountable for the pure political motivations for their turnaround? Or will America be as obscenely forgiving of this attempt to deprive Obama...

Not long ago, a guy I know, a good guy who to all outward appearances seems happy and successful, replied to a birthday e-mail I sent him at work -- "go home and blow out some candles" -- with this:

"I'm 40-f*ing-8, give me a break. They tell me...

People who want Obama to win are heartened by his post-Hawaii willingness to object to McCain's tone, and to deplore McCain's ad hominem attacks on his patriotism and motivation, which Obama continued on Tuesday in his VFW speech. But it ain't enough.

A few Augusts ago, what finally shook...

Last weekend they cooled it to 456.25 F below zero.

Buried 300 feet beneath the border of France and Switzerland, 17 miles long, 14 years in the making, it now begins two months of tests before some 7,000 scientists from around the world come to its grand opening party...

Ever since their diaspora, Jews have been accused of putting something else -- themselves, the dispersed Israelite people, then Israel itself -- ahead of their own country. Jewish citizens of Russia, Germany and America, to pick just a few, have been slandered (and sometimes killed) for allegedly putting their allegiances...

It's not a perfect analogy, I know, but it's an improvement over the Hitler/Sudetenland meme coming from the knee-jerk-o-cons.

Fred Kaplan at Slate lays out how Bush/Cheney egged on the Georgians to believe that they're de facto members of NATO, that America will protect them against the...

Now that every dissident within a hundred miles of Beijing has been intimidated, jailed or internally exiled; now that the Chinese communist party has shut down formerly legal means of citizen redress, like petitioning the government; now that free assembly has been banned, unsightly small businesses have been bulldozed, hotel...

Ron Suskind's new book reports that in 2003, the White House ordered the CIA to forge a letter to "prove" that Iraq had a hand in 9/11 and that Saddam was buying yellowcake uranium from Niger for his WMD program with the help of Al Qaeda.

When this came...

And the people who went to their rallies calling for an end to the war and for social justice were airhead-worshippers.

It took me long enough, but I think I've finally figured out what those McCain ads about Paris and Britney -- and, yes, the Summer of Love -- are...

The e-mail came when I was in Mexico, at a fitness resort that -- in pursuit of wellness -- confines BlackBerry use to guests' rooms.

"Need to chat briefly with you regarding John Edwards and the effects of this scandal on his future political career." It was from a...

That's what former Justice Department counselor Monica M. Goodling and former chief of staff D. Kyle Sampson routinely asked applicants for non-political jobs at DoJ. The question, of course, is against the law, as the just-released report by the department's Inspector General points out.

I wonder what kind of...

"The world is waiting to love America again" ran the title of a recent London Observer editorial anticipating Barack Obama's visit to Europe.

Love may be too strong a word to describe the world's feelings for America when George W. Bush was first sworn in as...

Because this was happening a short taxi ride from the White House, I half expected someone from Dick Cheney's office to burst in at any moment, grab the microphone and proclaim the conference kaput, dissolved like an inconvenient parliament.

"I think this may be the best day of my...

What's the difference between Sam Zell's Los Angeles Times and Sam's Bagels on Los Angeles' Larchmont Boulevard?

None, if you take Mr. Zell's words to heart. He told his Tribune Co. employees in June that "we're in the business of satisfying customers, and we will respond to what they...

It's surprising that 40 years passed between the Nixon-Kennedy debates in 1960, which won the largest viewing audience in television history until then, and the airing of the first season of Survivor, a monster hit that launched the "reality" boom that's dominated television ever since. Those presidential debates were arguably...

I have always been only slightly embarrassed by my avidity for reports of UFOs, ETs, new planetary systems, semantic transmissions across the galaxies and every other kind of disruptive wow.

My embarrassment stems not from a reflexive belief in reports of bright lights flying low and fast over Stephenville,...

The Bush White House has come up with an ingenious new way to take care not to faithfully execute the laws of the land. In what it will no doubt bill as part of its relentless strict-constructionist pursuit of the original intent of the Framers, the White House has refused...

The least popular, most lawless president in American history took to the Rose Garden today to thank congressional Democrats for having unprotected political sex with him. For caving -- not compromising, but totally capitulating -- on war funding and and telecom immunity, Nancy Pelosi, Stenny Hoyer and the blue dogs...