Tag Archives: John McCain

“My Hot Little Hand”

It was an evening in the mid-1970s and I was riding with my dad in his pickup. The AM radio was tuned to 1180 WHAM and Ed Hasbrouck’s talk show was on. The topic was the American economy, which at that moment wasn’t doing very well.
Ed was recalling the bank failures of the [...]

State of the Race

The front page of today’s New York Times says George W. Bush in July gave orders for American forces in Pakistan to carry out operations without notifying the Pakistani government.
Nearly a year ago, in a Democratic debate, Sen. Barack Obama said that if he is elected president and has a chance to capture or kill [...]

Off Limits

One of the classiest moments of Bill Clinton’s political career occurred in the middle of the 1992 general election. After weeks of battling “bimbo eruptions,” the press was starting to pick up on rumors about George H. W. Bush’s mistress. In response, Mr. Clinton said, “I didn’t like it when people said it [...]

General Wheeler’s War

On the morning of June 24, 1898, American forces advanced toward Las Guasimas, Cuba under the command of Brigadier General Joseph “Fighting Joe” Wheeler. The aged general was a cavalry commander who’d fought for the Confederates in the Civil War. Heavy fire from Spanish troops halted the advance and battle ensued. Gen. [...]

Learning to Pay Attention

The walls are closing in or, if not the walls, then the groundwood sheets of newsprint, the pixilated screens of the news that never stops. Maybe this is the way we should feel at the end of eight years of presidency/puberty. It’s bad enough having teenagers in the house, but when the house [...]

Follow-Up Questions

Before the New Hampshire primary, John McCain had his now-famous colloquy with a voter in which he said he doesn’t care if American troops are in Iraq for 100 years, provided those troops are not getting killed or wounded.
There are a number of Republicans running around now, saying Mr. McCain never said that, but he [...]

Blood and Treasure

Less than a week later, Adrienne and I headed back out for the vigil. The half-dozen senior citizens and nuns who have been there every day for nearly seven years were happy to have us back, even if it meant one of our infrequent thresholds – in this case, the 4,000th American death in [...]