Robert Illes: The very best and the very simplest way of giving I have seen is the Red Cross cell phone text system: text Haiti to 90999. It’s a $10 donation, added to your phone bill. How painless is that? Verizon has already reported $3 million have been donated

Robert Illes: Anyway, I’ll take a kickass Obama for four years than a watery Obama for eight. Yes FDR is a good model, but the real lesson of getting things done may be the obscure guy who came along precisely 100 years earlier.

And perhaps it’s also a “deed” to be assured of what will NOT be done – no more Gitmo, no more Gitmos to follow, no more torture, no more nukes, no more threats, no more whimsical invasions of ancient lands.

It occurred to me that calling somebody you dislike a “Nazi,” especially when they (or their programs) clearly are not, is a pretty Nazi thing to do.

We have seen the reaction to the September 11th attacks, not just in our own souls but also on the part of our “leaders”. “Be afraid, be very afraid”.

There was only one possible explanation.
The bullet entered the president’s neck, bounced off his necktie, made a right turn in midair, entered Governor Connolly’s back, broke a rib, and exited his arm after breaking his …

Johnny Depp and Disney’s blustery Long John Silver, or the erudite Captain Hook have defined “pirates” for us. Romanticized through the fog of time, pirates of 200 years ago – who became famous, Capone-style (Blackbeard …

Dick Cheney initiated secret death squads.
YAWN.
Wait, what? Did I hear that right? It sounded like Seymour Hersh had some information that when he was vice chancellor, er oops, I mean vice president, Dick Cheney’s office …

They are trying so very hard it is almost sad, in a way—were it not for all the broke people, and scared people. And dead people.
It’s the Bush people, including Mr. Bush himself, trying to …

by Robert Illes –
Here’s the thing about racism. If you’re a drowning Klansman, and someone offers you their hand in order to save your life, you don’t — at least I don’t think you do …

When John Kerry ran for President in 2004, and touted his stellar military service as a swift boat commander during the Vietnam War, the Republicans were falling over themselves, trying to diminish it. By the …

They say if you put a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will jump right out. But if you put it into a pot of cozy, lukewarm water, and then slowly turned up …

Imagine these series of events, not necessarily in chronological order:
The President of the United States, to great international applause, signs the Kyoto Accord, the international treaty that agrees to limit carbon emissions. India and China …

by Robert Illes –
Have you noticed? He’s been wearing one. Barack Obama, I mean. He’s been wearing one of those American flag lapel pins.

I thought the best thing John McCain did when he first became the “presumptive Republican nominee” for President was attaching himself to George W. Bush like some bizarre reversal of a Siamese twin separation operation.
I …

Everybody laughs at the Greeks and Romans because they made up all these gods and creatures and fantastic stories to explain their reality. Of course their creations are collectively called mythology, as in making up …