David Gans

Republicans and their “principles”

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E.J. Dionne’s Washington Post column today points out the crushing hypocrisy of the Republicans vis-a-vis Supreme Counrt nominations and just about everything else. Bush single-handedly undercut the conservatives’ long-standing claim that the Senate and the rest of us owed great deference to a president’s choice for the court. Conservatives displayed absolutely no deference to Bush … Read more

Grandchildren: more powerful than wives

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Jon Carroll has written about his granddaughter quite wonderfully over the years. He recently abandoned the “WPMG” ( World’s Most Perfect Grandchild) sobriquet and gave her the pseudonym “Alice.” Last month he wrote about taking her to the do-it-yourself coin-op car wash. Today, they’re back at the Car Wash: Now, here’s the confession I must … Read more

Debra Saunders on the failure of anti-pot laws

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San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra J. Saunders, who is usually a really annoying right-wing snotrag, does okay on a few issues. To wit: The failed war on pot users IN 2004, law enforcement officials arrested 771,605 people for marijuana violations, according to federal statistics. Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project was so alarmed he … Read more

Hotel-room coffee

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How is it possible to make something as vile as this material they call “Smart Roast Coffee” in my room at the Holiday Inn Express? Does no one complain that it tastes nothing like coffee, manages somehow to be both bland and bitter, and seems to offer very little in the way of that caffeine … Read more

Stunning words from The WELL

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My online home is The WELL. It was one of the first online communities, formed long before the World Wide Web and the Internet made communication instantaneous and broadband. it’s just words – no pictures, no movies, no animated emoticons. Everyone is there under his or her own name, so we are not plagued with … Read more

Bush reserves the right to torture

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From Molly Ivins – Outrage of the Week Sen. John McCain proposed an amendment to the military appropriations bill that would prohibit “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment of prisoners in the custody of the U.S. military. This may strike you as a “goes without saying” proposition — the amendment passed the Senate 90 to nine. … Read more

Richard Thompson in Portland 10/7/05

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I’ve been a fan of Richard Thompson for years, but never saw him live until last night at the Aladdin Theater in Portland. A bit of good luck got us in the door ahead of most of the crowd, so we had seats about three rows back. It was just Richard w/ Danny Thompson on … Read more

What a marriage needs

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This is another excerpt from Jon Carroll’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle. Sometimes Jon just nails something really important in a single sentence. Like this: Maybe that’s what a marriage needs — both parties figuring they married up. It’s from his column of December 17, 2004. Marriage is one of the subjects he does … Read more

Changing minds, one at a time

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Rich Simon, a writer friend who teaches at a community college here in the East Bay, posted this story on his blog: I had a student yesterday — a Bush supporter, a member of the campus Christian prayer group, a Vietnamese immigrant and a good, smart kid — pretty much have a meltdown. I had … Read more