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Amid all the false media hubub about Sarah Palin being an alleged "book banner" comes much more serious news about the British publisher of "Jewel of Medina," a book about the child-bride of Islamic prophet Mohammed has been set afire:Three men arrested in north London on suspicion of terrorism continue to be questioned by police. They are suspected of attempting to set fire to a publisher's…

Writing in today's Washington Post, ombudsman Deborah Howell focuses on political cartoons and how in many cases they can cause offense. I was struck in particular by a few of Howell's offhand admissions most. The first is that the top editorial cartoonists across the country are mostly liberal. That concession came after Howell had briefly profiled Pat Oliphant, one of America's best-known…

Last week, the Detroit Free Press's Web site posted "Which books would Palin want to ban?," a column by syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts Jr.  Pitts begins with a series of possible questions for Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  Then he makes his point:My first question, though, would not be one of those. I'd simply ask which books she wants to ban -- and why.Yes, there's a…

Although this thread is dedicated to today's NFL lineup, we certainly can talk about some of yesterday's surprising upsets in college football...even if it does stir up some trouble. :-)That said, last week's introductory Pigskins and Politics column by Joe Concha was very well-received. As such, below the fold are Joe's views on last week's surprises, as well as a preview of today's festivities…

Barack Obama's desultory debate performance has left Maureen Dowd in the dumps.  Her weekend column is a laundry list of Sunday-morning quarterbacking.  Dowd's biggest beef is Obama's failure to have goaded McCain into a damaging display of ill-temper.  Just for fun, let's meander through Maureen's musings.The president . . . is so insecure that he could only choose a vice president he knew would…

**UPDATE - 09/28/08 PM** Barack Obama played the "me too" game during the Friday debates on September 26 after Senator John McCain mentioned that he was wearing a bracelet with the name of Cpl. Matthew Stanley, a resident of New Hampshire and a soldier that lost his life in Iraq in 2006. Obama said that he too had a bracelet. After fumbling and straining to remember the name, he revealed that his…

When the latest installment of Saturday Night Live parodied Friday’s presidential debate, the NBC comedy program gave attention to Barack Obama’s connections to convicted criminal Tony Rezko, corrupt Chicago politics, and Obama’s recent attempts at "playing the race card," which notably are all matters that the mainstream news media have given little attention to. While the show also took a…

During a phone interview with FNC anchor Megyn Kelly, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who already voiced disapproval of Barack Obama's attempt to suggest that Kissinger would agree with his intention to meet personally with Iranian President Ahmadinejad, on Saturday elaborated on his disagreement with Obama, and clarified his views on how America should negotiate with Iran. The segment…

We have to mark this down in the "this is news?" category, but the Washington Post has decided that it would be newsworthy to report on some guy who has already painted a "President Obama" painting to hang in the White House upon coronation... er, I mean election. No, seriously. This really is news! Heck, why else would they report this if it wasn't real news? Do ya think they're in the tank er…

Since Friday’s presidential debate, all three major broadcast networks have highlighted one of Barack Obama’s more commanding moments when he charged that John McCain was wrong in some of his pre-Iraq war predictions, but the media have so far ignored Obama’s incorrect assertion that "there was no Al-Qaeda" presence in Iraq before America’s invasion in 2003. Before the 2003 invasion, various news…

With all the mainstream media emphasis on poll numbers that supposedly show strong leads for Barack Obama I was wondering if there should be any analysis of an AOL straw poll that shows John McCain solidly beating Barack Obama in a random sample of hundreds of thousands of readers. A major difference between the AOL straw poll and that of other polls is that the AOL poll does not consist of…