Jonah Goldberg

501 days ago - Huge numbers of Americans don’t know jack about their government or politics. According to a Pew Research Center survey released last week, 31 percent of Americans don’t know who the vice president is, fewer than half are aware that Nancy Pelosi is the speaker of the House, a mere 29 percent can identify “Scooter” Libby as the convicted former chief of staff of the vice president, and only 15 percent can name Harry Reid when asked who the Senate majority leader is.

508 days ago - Everything worth saying about the Don Imus thing — which isn’t much — has been said already. We’ve now moved beyond Imus to the “national dialogue” phase of this familiar cycle. This is where we’re supposed to tackle hard questions and deep truths about our society.

515 days ago - In 1960 Barry Goldwater, the patron saint of modern conservatism, gave some famous advice to conservative Republicans who were angry with their shabby treatment at the hands of the Nixonites. Get over it, Goldwater told them.

522 days ago - Renowned metallurgist Rosie O’Donnell proclaimed on TV last Thursday that Sept. 11, 2001, was a more significant date than most of us realized. It was, in her words, “the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel.”

529 days ago - As fate would have it, the same week Al Gore was testifying before Congress, I was doing a little testifying myself. Admittedly, there were a tad fewer paparazzi in the Madison, Wis., classroom where I was giving a talk on global warming, sponsored by Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow.

536 days ago - It’s ironic. Republicans by most accounts got trounced in the last election because they “lost their way.” The latest cover of Time even has a picture of Ronald Reagan crying like that American Indian from the old anti-pollution ads of the 1970s. Instead of roadside litter, the Gipper is supposedly looking at the GOP’s mess.

543 days ago - Because we’re at the start of the electoral roller coaster, the part where the car slowly chugs upward, building anticipation for the gut-wrenching plunges and loop-the-loops ahead, I’d like to hand out a little political Dramamine.

550 days ago - Maybe I’m remembering this wrong. But I could have sworn we spent the last seven years talking about how the Republican Party is the party of backward red states — where hate is a family value, fluffy animals are shot, and God is everyone’s co-pilot — and how the Democratic Party is the avant-garde of the peace-loving, Europe-copycatting blue states, where Christianity is a troubling “lifestyle choice,” animals are for hugging, and hate is never, ever a family value.

564 days ago - What is it Tommy Lee Jones says in “Men in Black”? “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it.” Similarly, the American electorate is an odd beast, distinct from the American voter. Political scientists, the large-animal vets of this already strained metaphor, find all sorts of odd explanations for the electorate’s behavior.

571 days ago - The most interesting political matchup right now is between former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani because they’re running for the same voters.

578 days ago - Wesley Clark, the retired general and once — and no doubt future — presidential candidate, says the United States is going to attack Iran. How does he know? Well, it’s obvious, he told Arianna Huffington.

585 days ago - A weird thing happened in Iowa this week. Hillary Clinton was campaigning for president — no, that’s not the weird thing — and she paraphrased a question from the audience about what in her experience prepared her to deal with “evil and bad men.” Before she could answer, the audience burst into laughter, and Clinton joined in.

592 days ago - In her first appearance as a presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton spoke at a community center while holding the hand of a small child. Nancy Pelosi has said that when she took the speaker’s gavel, she took it “from the hands of the special interests and [put it] into the hands of America’s children.”