2008-08-24 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So I got a kick out of my boss's column last week, in which he noted that some readers who usually use this page to line the bird cage actually find themselves … well, if not exactly agreeing with me, thinking that maybe I sound a little less evil and lib'rul than usual these days....
2008-08-17 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Her tone was all but panicked, and if you've discussed the issue, you've heard the same thing: "We've got to drill!" It's the debate du jour this summer, what to do about high gasoline prices — prices, it must be noted, that are coming down even as ......
2008-08-10 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So here's a question for you: Let's say that, given the continued high price of oil and gasoline, we begin drilling in either the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, or on the continental shelf. John McCain wants to do this, of course. Increasingly, so does Barack Obama. And in one r......
2008-08-03 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
It was only Tuesday, but already I'd found my quote of the week: "The common thinking among Americans is comparable to wearing a string bikini on a polar ice fishing expedition: look good until you perish." That's from one of the several bearish economic blogs I've taken to reading in rece......
2008-07-27 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The story ran in The New York Times, a tale of usury — though the writers never used the term. They detailed how moneylenders have come up with new and creative ways of separating consumers from their cash. As a case in point they used a 47-year-old Philadelphia woman hit by so many fees ......
2008-07-20 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The fall was amazing. It began Tuesday and seemed to snowball as the week wore on. By Thursday, oil prices had dropped below $130 for the first time in a month. Friday the descent steepened further. And everyone was asking: What's going on? Has the bubble finally burst? And if so, what happ......
2008-07-13 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
And now, a question about Iraq. By almost all accounts, the "surge" has made progress. The decision to commit more troops has helped pacify some areas, and that has helped clear the way for political progress. I was skeptical about the surge, though not outright opposed to it, be......
2008-07-06 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
I've wanted to do this now the past couple Fourths of July but never got around to it. The latest conservative nonsense always seemed to take precedence; but now, maybe, it's time to do it. It's time to talk about how a liberal thinks about patriotism. Understand that I'm n......
2008-06-29 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The National Public Radio interview was with James Howard Kunstler, author and frequent critic of what we might call the suburban idyll — the notion that we can all have our quarter-acre of paradise with the wrought iron and two-story foyers, half a state away from where we actually work....
2008-06-22 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So how many hours a day does your average Lancaster County conservative spend cringing beneath the bed, quaking in fear over how Mighty Iran might destroy us? A lot, probably. If your average Lancaster County conservative watches Fox News — which of course they do — they hear things......
2008-06-15 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
I tried not to laugh, but did anyway. Because I have this image of John McCain as an old man — hey you kids, get off my lawn! And his remarks last week to a group in Richmond, Va., just sort of underscored the impression that the prospective leader of the free world is, shall we say, a bit beh...
2008-06-08 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The speech was amazing. Wasn't it? After nearly eight years of The Decider, it's gratifying to have a major presidential candidate who can, you know, talk. I'm not talking about John McCain, whom I'm beginning to feel sorry for. Just before Barack Obama's address, McCai......
2008-06-01 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The story was from Allentown's Morning Call, about how the Lehigh Valley region has become a mecca for New York City-bound commuters who move to northeastern Pennsylvania because they can get so much more home for their money. They bought "McMansions" — defined in the story ......
2008-05-25 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So I'm at the dentist getting so much heavy work done they might as well have called PennDOT, and out of the corner of my eye I'm watching CNN, where Barack Obama is responding to the latest foolishness from John McCain. Obama, see, gave a speech last weekend in which he said that yes, ......
2008-05-18 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The video was fascinating and sad and enraging and hilarious, all at the same time. Taken by ABC News on the day of the West Virginia primary, it showed an older woman — a Hillary Clinton supporter — explaining why she can't vote for Barack Obama: "He's a Muslim.&q......
2008-05-11 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
It was a beautiful day and the afternoon was free, so we packed the little girl into the vehicle and visited a dairy south of town to buy some milk — and, of course, to look at the "moo cows." Off to the one side of the little dairy store were several calves in pens; the beasts ......
2008-05-04 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So there was a piece on the front page of Tuesday's Intelligencer Journal about rising coal prices. Demand is up; production hasn't been able to keep pace. And so while you're already paying $3.59 per gallon at the pump, while the cost of heating oil and natural gas has risen, while PPL ...
2008-04-27 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
I suppose I should have expected it, and in a way I did expect it. Last week in this space we asked: Do you really think lapel pins are as important as the war in Iraq, or the cost of gasoline? And a lot of people said: Of course not. Others seemed offended by the question. Of ...
2008-04-20 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
I'd forgotten the debate was on, actually. The boy had baseball practice and I coach, and that soaks up most of my extra brain cells on Wednesday nights; by the time I flipped on ABC News, around 8:20 p.m., moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous were well into the "bitter"...
2008-04-13 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr. sits down with BeliefNet last week to talk about the race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and who gets the edge among religious voters, particularly Catholics. Casey, who's endorsed Obama, had some interesting things to say. He also said a couple of thin......
2008-04-06 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Well, that didn't take long. Last week I wrote that if Hillary Clinton is going to use right-wing tactics in her primary battle with Barack Obama, I might just vote for John McCain instead. The e-mails saying "C'mon, you can't possibly be serious" began about five min......
2008-03-30 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The photo last week was the last straw. In it, Hillary Clinton is sitting at a table next to a guy who is listening intently to what she has to say. The photo came from an editorial meeting at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper. The guy was one Richard Mellon Scaife. If you follow politics......
2008-03-23 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Last week was the fifth anniversary of the most dishonest thing I've ever seen my country do. That would be the war in Iraq. And I use the term "dishonest" not to reflect any particular "lie" or even to suggest that there were intentional lies at any stage of the process......
2008-03-16 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
And so it's about six weeks until Pennsylvania gets to play its big role in the Democratic primary, and already I'm thinking: Dear God, make it stop. Last week there was a rally for Hillary Clinton in Harrisburg. Local Democats are hoping to get a bigwig in town, and who knows! May......
2008-03-09 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
One of the most interesting aspects of the gay marriage debate is the degree to which it demonstrates conservatives' embrace of big government. Conservatism has always been founded on a bedrock belief in smaller government, in less governmental intrusion into individual lives. And arguably,......
2008-03-02 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Walk into my son's school and saunter down the hallway to the left and you run into a picture of state Sen. Mike Brubaker. It's a small picture in which he's standing with a student. Which is appropriate, I suppose, as Brubaker is the legislator representing this neck of the woods. ......
2008-02-24 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Let this be a lesson: the perils of working too far ahead. I'd had a piece all set to go this week on how the marriage between John McCain and the more conservative elements of his party was a rocky one at best. Conservatives don't like McCain because McCain isn't doctrinaire enough......
2008-02-17 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So Gov. Ed Rendell created a minor stir last week when, during a meeting with the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, he said he wasn't sure that Barack Obama would do so well in Pennsylvania, because, "You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites w...
2008-02-10 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
In my old age, I get more and more suspicious of big government. Which may sound like a strange thing for an evil lib'rul to say. For liberalism is, or at least has been, wedded to the notion of big government, of using the apparatus of the state to achieve the common good. For more than a ......
2008-02-03 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So last week there was this front page story in the Lancaster New Era about women who are advertising "erotic services" on Craigslist, an Internet service, that, according to the report, "accepts free ads for just about anything." And then some. It was a good story and an am......
2008-01-27 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So occasionally I hear from people who say sure, they read this space and all, but what they really like are the letters in response to this space. I get a kick out of them, too, but some of the best letters I get are never featured a few pages over. Invariably, they're from p......
2008-01-20 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
I've had a hard time disliking Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee as much as I probably should. But Huckabee is working overtime to remedy this: "I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution," Huckabee told an audience in Michigan on M......
2008-01-13 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Turned on the TV first thing Wednesday morning and groaned. Hillary had won the New Hampshire primary. And away we go. I am not, as so many conservative readers seem to think, a Hillary Clinton fan. Indeed, if Hillary Clinton winds up the eventual Democratic nominee, I think it will be a v......
2008-01-06 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. … No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
&mda......
2007-12-30 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So there was this item in my colleague Helen Colwell Adams' column about local politics last Sunday, announcing that a "Unity Prayer Breakfast" hosted by the Lancaster County Council of Churches and sponsored by the county Republican and Democratic committees was set for Jan. 4. T......
2007-12-23 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The boy is right on the cusp. Downtown last weekend, we went to see "Santa" over at the Heritage Center Museum, and the boy wouldn't sit on his lap. He was embarrassed; at age 6, maybe that's normal. But it made me sad to think that maybe, already, the whole thing may be winding do...
2007-12-16 00:02:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Reader JM sent me a link last week to a blog on The New York Times Web site written by one Stanley Fish — a widely respected academic who (nonetheless?) approached his subject with a good deal of conservatism. Or rather, what used to pass for conservatism. In the piece, titled "Integ......
2007-12-09 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The news early in the week was good, or should have been good. A new National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. For a country on the edge of hysteria over the prospect of Islamists with nukes, it should have made for a very merry Christmas......
2007-12-02 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So. Who's up for a little war on Christmas? The Fox News crowd hasn't been pounding this particular drum as loudly as in previous years, but I'm sure it's on the way. The whole thing's become a joke amongst us evil lib'ruls, who actually have nothing against Christmas. I......
2007-11-25 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Thanksgiving, and I'm thankfully not amongst the millions who will hit the road or fly the unfriendly skies. My family, parents and brother and sister, are here. I am not, as seems to be commonly assumed, "from" Pittsburgh, though I went to school there and lived in the city's nort...
2007-11-18 00:02:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
I like the idea that I'm not the only outspoken evil lib'rul in town. Last week on this page a gentleman named Rick Straub wrote an excellent essay that touched on what we might call the evangelical impulse inherent in our occupation of Iraq. It was itself a response to a column that ap......
2007-11-11 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
"What should the U.S. be doing right now?" asked Wolf Blitzer. The same question about the same subject, Pakistan, was being asked on the other networks. The president of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, has instituted something very close to martial law — though it's not being c......
2007-11-04 00:02:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The e-mail was titled, "MESSAGE FROM PATTON'S GHOST." It was the usual right-wing thing. In it Patton's ghost, as imagined by some random right-winger, tells Americans to get their heads out of their collective posterior because Muslims are on the loose: "If they manage t......
2007-10-28 00:02:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The pictures of the fire were mesmerizing. It was as if you were staring into the very face of creation, or its polar opposite, and it was hard to look away. For most of the past week, the nation didn't. As the wildfires of Southern California blazed away, we caught our collective breath; thous......
2007-10-21 00:02:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The discussion was about Abraham Lincoln, and specifically, briefly, the Gettysburg Address. It's always impressed me not just because it captured the pathos of the moment so eloquently and succinctly, but because this, perhaps the greatest of American speeches, was written by the president hims...
2007-10-14 00:02:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The juxtaposition was amusing. But I suppose at this point, it shouldn't be startling. In our local Lancaster New Era last Tuesday was an editorial commenting on the situation at Warwick High School. Earlier this month, 12 kids — some of whom pride themselves as "rednecks," ......
2007-10-07 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
"Are you going to see the president?" I must have been asked that about 30 times. I did not go to see the president, though I suppose I could have made arrangements. But why? What was I going to do, count the number of times he invoked 9/11 or the terrorists who "hate our fr......
2007-09-30 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
You heard the laughter, I assume If you watched the Iranian president's speech at Columbia University last week, you probably heard the laughter — particularly the guffaws that greeted his assertion that there are no homosexuals in Iran. Right. Although it strikes me that conservative......
2007-09-23 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The usual suspects choked on last week's bit about Iran. Don't I know Iran is bad? If we let evildoers alone they might do evil to us! I have absolutely no doubt that were we to bomb Iran tomorrow, the 28 percenters would be fully on board. They buy the rhetoric of this being a clash of......
2007-09-16 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Think back about 25 years or so — A Flock of Seagulls and Duran Duran, "Dallas" and "Magnum, P.I.," Reagan in the White House and air traffic controllers on the street — and consider what might have happened if the Soviet Union had invaded Mexico. We wouldn't......
2007-09-09 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the bathroom... As of this writing Idaho Sen. Larry Craig may not be resigning. He's hired a high-powered "crisis management team" which includes Michael Vick's lawyer; they've argued that the Senate can't mount ......
2007-09-02 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The little boy went back to school last week. And so did I. Tuesday marked the beginning of what I hope will eventually be a master's degree in history. It's something I'd been thinking about for some time, and finally got up off my duff to do. I wasn't much interested in histor......
2007-08-26 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The week at Lewes was warm and relaxing, with two exceptions. First, the little girl passed her cold along to the rest of us. Worse was the fact that the Delaware Department of Transportation, in its infinite wisdom, had deemed late August an ideal time to block off several lanes of Route 1 between ...
2007-08-19 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
You may have noticed that this space has turned inward, toward matters of family and of faith, and away from the headlines, away from the war in Iraq. There are a number of reasons for that. When you have young kids, as I do, they tend to dominate your time and your consciousness. They are your......
2007-08-12 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Whenever I write about cultural conservatives and morality, I get two types of reactions. The first is from those who want to debate not the points I've made, but their own points, chief among them their assertion that without God, without a literalist interpretation of the Bible, there can be n...
2007-08-05 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Ah, right-wingers. There are times you can predict exactly how right-wingers will react to something, and last week's bit was a case in point. I lamented that my Star Wars-loving son wants to see "Revenge of the Sith" but that my wife and I have deemed it too violent for a 6-year-......
2007-07-29 00:03:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The boy has turned into a major Star Wars fan, and our house has become home to an ever-growing array of action figures, Lego clones and droids, video games and more. It's as if Chewbacca has learned how to reproduce. The funny thing is that I'd only seen the original movie when the boy......
2007-07-22 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Associate editor
Flipped on the Weather Channel to see what the morning weather babes had to say and encountered one of those annoying "HeadOn" commercials. So I surfed over to CNN, where I found something infinitely worse. At the bottom of the screen was the red-bannered headline, "Scuba terror ......
2007-07-15 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The news, early in the week, was hardly surprising. "D.C. Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey had, as promised, released her telephone records, and one of the first prominent names to show up, ostensibly for calling about arranging the services of a pricey call girl, was Louisiana Sen. David Vitt...
2007-07-08 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Just hours after the Leader commuted Scooter Libby's prison sentence, Matt Drudge helpfully posted a list of all the people Bill Clinton pardoned during his tenure. See? Clinton did it too! And so it's just fine for the Leader to determine that Libby's sentence was "excess......
2007-07-01 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
I started smoking in college, mostly because a fraternity brother did. By the time I got my degree, I'd graduated to about a pack of Camel Lights a day. It was slightly rebellious, which appealed to me, and especially once I got my first journalism job, it seemed somehow appropriate. My co-......
2007-06-24 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
I was 18 and she was blond, a Southern girl from northern Virginia who happened to be spending senior week at Ocean City, Md., just like me. I fell so hard so fast I didn't know what hit me. I'd never experienced anything like that before. And when the week ended, I watched her drive aw......
2007-06-17 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The setting was Lancaster Christian School, an auditorium stage where a group of 11th- and 12th-graders were arrayed as an orchestra might have been, with me in the conductor's chair, the hot seat. I was not there to conduct them but challenge them. A teacher at the school reads the strange......
2007-06-10 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Another week, another shooting. This time, last Sunday, it was Mark Q. Galloway. Apparently enraged at the disintegration of his relationship with his girlfriend, he whipped out a 9mm semi-automatic and shot her and four others - including a 2-year-old boy. Then he turned himself in. S......
2007-06-03 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
You've heard the term "the best and brightest." Call this one "the dim and the mediocre." Monica Goodling is a nice Christian girl from York County who got her law degree at the school founded by Pat Robertson, Regent University. Upon graduation she found work as an oppo......
2007-05-27 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
It was 1997 and there was a rash of car thefts in Lancaster County. But we're not talking jimmy-the-door, hotwire-the-ignition type of car thefts; the thieves were more like opportunists, stealing cars that people left running in Turkey Hill parking lots, or "warming up" in their own d...
2007-05-20 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The Republican debate last Tuesday night was telling in more ways than one, especially when it came to issue of torture. Or "enhanced interrogation techniques," as moderator Brit Hume, by way of George Orwell, put it. Hume's scenario was this: Three shopping centers near majo......
2007-05-13 00:02:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Our old friend Bill O'Reilly is at it again. Well, I suppose he wouldn't be Bill O'Reilly if he wasn't. This time he's all bent out of shape over liberal financier George Soros, who has been "buying political power" by giving money to left-wing organizations i......
2007-05-06 00:02:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So I see where Our Leader vetoed the spending bill that would have mapped a way out of Iraq. The Leader had to veto it, he said, because it was a "prescription for chaos and confusion." What's happening now in Iraq, see, constitutes something else. And now that this meddlesome bill has been dis......
2007-04-29 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Every time I get into an argument with a right-winger about the mess in Iraq, I can count on it: At some point they're going to bring up World War II. In World War II we bombed Dresden and Hamburg and didn't sit around worrying about civilian casualties. In World War II we didn'......
2007-04-21 22:45:00
GIL SMART, Associate editor
Cho Seung-Hui and his victims hadn't been dead 24 hours when the first e-mail showed up from a partisan group, proclaiming that the massacre proved its point. In this case it was Gun Owners of America, asserting that had there been some good, old-fashioned gun owners on campus at Virginia Tech ......
2007-04-15 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Associate Editor
Growing up a conservative teenager in Manheim Township, God help me, I thought Ronald Reagan was infallible. Not that I and my "conservative" high school buddies had any idea what it meant to actually be conservative. Conservative was simply what our parents were, conservatism was &qu......
2007-04-08 14:18:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
See, this is what I love about Republicans.If you watch Fox News or cruise the right-wing blogs, first, my condolences. Second, you're probably aware of Nancy Pelosi's trip to Syria, which undercut Our Leader and proved that she hates America.Syria, of course, is The Enemy, ......
2007-04-01 00:04:00
GIL SMART, Associate editor
So I do this occasional dog-and-pony show where I get up and speak for 45 minutes or so and people pretend to be interested, or maybe they really are. Usually we talk about the events of the day, what it's like to be a loudmouth liberal in parochial old Lancaster County, things like that. But a......
2007-03-25 00:03:00
GIL SMART, Associate Editor
Last election season I had an idea for a campaign commercial. It would have begun simply with a single individual, an average American who looked into the camera and said something like this: "We live in the most powerful and benevolent nation in the history of the world, but we do have......
2007-03-18 00:09:00
GIL SMART, Associate Editor
When you talk about the most dangerous person in the world, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might figure pretty prominently. Moqtada al-Sadr might make the list. How about Dick Cheney? I'm not talking about his hunting trips but rather his war-mongering ways. Cheney, more than......
2007-03-11 00:04:00
GIL SMART, Associate Editor
One of these days I'm going to write a column consisting of nothing more than paraphrases of things Ann Coulter has written or said over the years. For example, I might write that it's too bad Timothy McVeigh didn't detonat......
2007-03-04 00:09:00
GIL SMART, Associate Editor
America is now tasked with bringing the dark side to submission. But of course we have neither the means nor the will to do so. The Great Muslim War will keep us locked in, so the more we thrash within our story, the more we will undo ourselves. Our narrative has blocked every exit. Escape of......
2007-02-25 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Associate Editor
Occasionally I'm asked why I keep referring to that guy in the White House as "Our Leader." It's not that I'm trying to suggest he's like the North Korean strongman. Frankly, Our Leader doesn't have the hair for it. Instead, I use the term for two reasons. ......
2007-02-18 00:00:00
GIL SMART, Associate Editor
You've seen the stories. Our Leader looks to be ginning up reasons for war with Iran. And so we've had the claim that Iran is providing the IEDs being used to kill and maim our troops in Iraq, even though Iran would logically be giving the IEDs to Sh'ia militias, while most of th......
2007-02-11 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Associate Editor
So the fundamentalists are mad at me. In other news, grass is green, water wet; film at 11. This time it was last week's bit, where I laid into a Seattle-area dad who demanded his daughter's school refrain from "An Inconvenient Truth" by noted pinko Al Gore, because gl......
2007-02-04 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Associate Editor
The story is out of suburban Seattle, of a middle-school class that was going to see Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth," as part of a discussion about global climate change. I realize there's disagreement over whether global warming is real, or whether we are causing it......
2007-01-28 00:01:00
Gil Smart, Associate Editor
Every time I write about the religious right, the notion comes up. If only uppity liberals like me would shut our yaps and open our Good Books, we might return to that golden era when this was a “Christian” nation and the unimaginable crime and depravity of our times would once a......
2007-01-20 23:31:06
Gil Smart
If anything, the piece is even more incendiary than the title suggests. For Hedges, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, son of a Presbyterian minister and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times, has written a book titled “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on Ameri...
2007-01-13 23:26:34
Gil Smart
And away we go.
The president’s speech Wednesday night was thin rhetorical gruel. The real news came near the end, in the announcement that an additional carrier strike group had been deployed to the Gulf, and the threats directed at Syria and Iran — words which were followed by action, w...
2007-01-06 23:45:36
Gil Smart
Yes, there was a slapdash barbarism to it all. You might have hoped that after 3,000 American dead and untold Iraqi sacrifice, Saddam’s execution could have been handled with a measure of decorum. Instead we got a lynching, one in which the only person who comported himself with any dign...
2006-12-31 20:01:10
Gil Smart
Don’t get me wrong, here at this feature we’re used to our share of monkey mail, but the past few weeks have been above and beyond.
As noted by my boss Marv Adams last week, some guy actually called to ask if I was a satanist.
I know I’ve got an inverted pentagram around......
2006-12-23 23:02:45
Gil Smart
Don’t get me wrong, we love holding the baby; it’s just difficult to decorate, wrap gifts, scribble out all the Christmas cards and bake cookies with one hand, while holding the swaddled child with the other.
The boy, though, keeps it all in perspective. Like any proper 5-year...
2006-12-16 23:31:07
Gil Smart
I’m not the gambling type, having been to Atlantic City exactly once in my life, and Vegas never.
Which is probably a good thing. Because in those few hours I did spend in Atlantic City, I got a quick glimpse into how the gambling impulse works. My wife and I — this was before the kids ca...
2006-12-09 23:27:47
Gil Smart
There was more than a little schadenfreude on this side of the fence because Haggard had spouted the usual fundamentalist line on homosexuality. A movie called “Jesus Camp” caught him saying, “We don’t have to debate about what we should think about homosexual activity. It’s written in the Bible.” B...
2006-12-03 00:02:08
Gil Smart
Obvious, right? To all, that is, but those who got us into this mess in the first place. They refuse to call Iraq a “civil war,” not because they don’t think it qualifies as one, but because they realize that to use the term is to admit failure.
And they have failed. Indeed, it alm......
2006-11-25 23:51:47
Gil Smart
And to those who have voted for that distinction, I wanted to say thanks.
I’ve always thought it funny that this feature, so diametrically opposed to what a supposed majority of Lancaster Countians think, should be so honored. But then, Lancaster County is an extraordinarily f...
2006-11-18 23:53:12
Gil Smart
I’m sure there are those who would tell you, with a straight face, that the insurgent attacks in Iraq since the election are all because the terrorists smelled weakness, whereas the insurgent attacks last month were about ... something else.
Winger logic at its best. Or worst.
...
2006-11-11 23:27:20
Gil Smart
But when it became clear that the electoral wave was more along the lines of a tsunami, I switched over to Fox News, where I spent the remainder of the evening watching Brit Hume’s long face grow longer.
There was, frankly, no spinning this. This was a crushing, humiliating defeat for the...
2006-11-04 23:18:24
Gil Smart
Of course, the polls could be wrong. Incumbent Republican Sen. Rick Santorum could pull off a stunning come-from-behind victory; certainly, we know that Santorum, and many of his most ardent supporters, believe in miracles.
But Santorum may need a miracle to beat Democratic challenger Bob...
2006-11-04 23:09:08
Gil Smart
Of course, the polls could be wrong. Incumbent Republican Sen. Rick Santorum could pull off a stunning come-from-behind victory; certainly, we know that Santorum, and many of his most ardent supporters, believe in miracles.
But Santorum may need a miracle to beat Democratic ch...
2006-10-28 23:29:44
Gil Smart
Idiots.
For three years, the mendacious conservatives who got us into this Iraq mess have insisted that we “stay the course.” Our Leader himself invoked the phrase over and over again; “We will stay the course,” he said in Salt Lake City in August. “We will win in Iraq so long...
2006-10-14 23:26:48
Gil Smart
The rationale given by one guy in particular stuck with me. “Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11,” he said. “I can feel it in my bones.”
In other words: No, I have no evidence. But it doesn’t matter, for I “feel” it to be true. And therefore, it must be.
As we now know, it wasn...
2006-10-08 00:09:17
Gil Smart
The CBS Evening News turned its “Free Speech” segment over to one Brian Rohrbaugh, whose son was killed at Columbine High School in 1999. As such, he knows something about the heartache of losing a child to senseless violence.
He then proceeded to demonstrate that he knew absolutely nothi...
2006-10-01 00:12:12
Gil Smart
The response, from a right-wing reader was:
“We’re fighting for our lives.”
There’s obviously something to that. Portions of the National Intelligence Report declassified last week made it clear that the war in Iraq, in particular, has fueled the spread of jihadism, which may l...
2006-09-23 23:35:08
Gil Smart, Associate Editor
That’s not quite how it turned out, though Thursday’s agreement was murky enough for both sides to claim victory. The “mavericks” could say that the administration won’t “reinterpret” the Geneva Conventions, even though the compromise specifically gives the president “the authority for the United St...
2006-09-16 23:52:58
Gil Smart, Associate Editor
The first week of kindergarten, and I think I was more nervous than he was.
Two weeks later, he still seems impossibly, well, little for all of this. But he’s done fine; as always, his resilience amazes me.
But then, to have kids is to be constantly amazed. I’m happy to say tha...
2006-09-09 23:35:10
Gil Smart, Associate Editor
And when are we going to be safe, Mr. President?
When we wipe out every last terrorist? Has anyone ever asked, and have you ever wondered, whether that’s actually possible?
Is the United States going to intimidate or kill everyone on the planet who hates us and would act upon t...
2006-09-02 23:26:28
Gil Smart, Associate Editor
Rick Santorum and I actually agree on something.
The snowball-in-you-know-where moment came at the Pennsylvania Press Club last week, where Santorum called for “a major federal commitment to promoting alternative fuel technology, such as converting coal into low-sulfur jet fuel for milita...
2006-08-26 23:40:37
Gil Smart
President Bush admitted last week that Iraq had nothing to do with Sept. 11. That’s a rather important bit of trivia, as the idea that Saddam was behind the attacks permeated our culture before the war — in part because the likes of Darth Cheney continually insinuated he was.
It was, of c...
2006-08-19 23:40:52
Gil Smart
Swann is something of a lost cause. Down 20 points in the polls and down 4-1 to Gov. Ed Rendell in terms of money raised, he is forced to court a president who other Republicans in tighter races treat as Superman treats Kryptonite.
And so the president came and did his thing, giving a spe...
2006-08-12 23:35:56
Gil Smart
His offense: challenging the idea that God is necessarily Republican.
To be sure, the Rev. Gregory A. Boyd of Woodland Hills Church in suburban St. Paul is no liberal, opposed to abortion, firm in his belief that homosexuality is not God’s ideal. But he grew disconcerted, he said, when at...
2006-08-05 23:32:10
Gil Smart, Associate Editor
Green Party candidate Carl Romanelli of Wilkes-Barre collected a whopping 100,000 voter signatures, qualifying for the Senate race. That’s 33,000 more than required, and more than twice what Ralph Nader collected in Pennsylvania when he ran for president in 2004.
You might even call it am...
2006-07-29 23:42:47
Gil Smart, Associate Editor
No, not that one.
“A Good Samaritan Hospital emergency room doctor refused to give a rape victim a morning-after pill because he said it was against his Mennonite religion,” read the story in Tuesday’s Patriot-News.
“Rebuffed by the doctor, the woman called her gynecologist, wh...
2006-07-22 23:31:35
Gil Smart, Associate Editor
Some of it’s fairly amusing, such as the unsigned postcards, scribbled front and back, trying to make some sort of intelligible point about my evil lib’rul ways. I used to try and decipher these notes, but these days they find their way into the circular file real fast. I figure, if the author doesn...
2006-07-15 23:38:56
Gil Smart, Associate Editor
As we ponder how we managed to turn Iraq into a charnel house rather than a gleaming palace of democracy, I wonder if it will occur to us that the whole enterprise was probably doomed from the start.
Neoconservatives and administration apologists want to attribute the failure of their pet...
2006-07-08 23:40:32
Gil Smart, Associate Editor
Whatever the reason, June was like one long, late-night commercial for “Conservatives Gone Wild” (no flashing, Mr. Hastert). And if we gave a prize for Looniest Conservative Moment, I wouldn’t know where to start.
We could begin with the Supreme Court’s decision that Our Leader’s plan to ...
2006-07-01 23:50:03
Gil Smart, Associate Editor
-----
Jefferson would have recognized last week’s frothing right-wing lynch mob.
The mob had gathered its pitchforks and torches in response to a story in the New York Times, and other outlets, disclosing the existence of another secretive Bush administrative program designed t...
2006-06-24 23:26:17
Gil Smart
Hmmm.
Do I detect a pattern here?
Aren’t leaders supposed to anticipate that things might not go according to plan? Isn’t that an integral aspect of leadership, thinking the unthinkable and then being prepared for it?
Not with this crowd.
Democrats share t...
2006-06-17 23:39:23
Gil Smart, Associate News Editor
Looks like state Rep. Scott Boyd’s Hate the Gay bill may wind up on the trash heap, where it belongs.
Last week a state Senate panel voted to affirm part of Boyd’s nonsense, agreeing that marriage should be defined as one man and one woman. But in doing so, it rejected the second half of ...
2006-06-11 01:52:50
Gil Smart
Nationally, the bid to ban gay marriage couldn’t even muster a majority in the U.S. Senate, but here in Pennsylvania the state House passed a bill sponsored by state Rep. Scott Boyd by a margin of more than 2-1. Now the state Senate will take up the measure, and I’ve little doubt that senators, too,...
2006-06-03 23:36:10
Gil Smart
And if the story itself wasn’t enough to convey the message, the paper ran a large, black-and-white photo of Jews with the Star of David sewn onto their coats, circa the Warsaw Ghetto, 1942.
The story detonated like a bomb. Online, the Drudge Report’s headline seemed to get bigger by the ...
2006-05-31 09:55:45
Gil Smart
Because I dared question the National Security Agency’s collection of phone records, I want the terrorists to win.
And because I wonder if it’s legal for the president to authorize this, and maybe more, without congressional oversight, I am aiding and abetting our enemies.
Welc...
2006-05-20 23:27:54
Gil Smart
“I was a stranger and you welcomed me,” says Republican Jesus. “I was naked to you, and you clothed me.
“Now, you ask me to do the same for immigrants. I say, *&^%$#@ them.”
Except, the cartoonist actually spells out “*&^%$#@.”
It’s a good metaphor for th...
2006-05-13 23:46:40
Gil Smart
Those of us waiting for the other shoe to drop on the domestic spying issue heard a definitive “clunk” last week, as the National Security Administration’s snooping on Americans was revealed to be, shall we say, a little more comprehensive than initially thought.
As first repo...
2006-05-06 22:59:47
Gil Smart
That intrigues me, because I know people who are making a conscious effort to drive less. Apparently that aesthetic is widespread enough that it is having an effect.
This is the way the market is supposed to work, with high gas prices forcing demand down, causing prices to fall in turn. W...
2006-05-06 22:57:54
Gil Smart
That intrigues me, because I know people who are making a conscious effort to drive less. Apparently that aesthetic is widespread enough that it is having an effect.
This is the way the market is supposed to work, with high gas prices forcing demand down, causing prices to fall in turn. W...
2006-04-29 23:46:55
Gil Smart
If he isn’t indicted first.
Ah, but so long as “Bush’s Brain” hasn’t been perp-walked for his role in the Plame case by that point, I’m sure he’ll enliven the Lancaster County Republican Committee’s May 4 fundraising dinner by addressing the issues real Americans care about: y...
2006-04-22 23:37:38
Gil Smart
“My border collie is smarter than our president.”
And I thought, well, border collies are pretty smart.
But man, we’re just not feeling the love anymore, are we?
The president’s approval ratings are sinking like a stone. Even Fox News pegs him at a measly 33 p......
2006-04-15 23:36:28
Gil Smart
The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given.
— George W. Bush, radio address, Sept......
2006-04-09 00:09:02
Gil Smart
She was a great kid, a science major, a top student. The type of person who could really make a name for herself in the field, except for one thing: She was from a conservative religious family that didn’t want her taking courses where she’d get too good a look at the theory of evolu...
2006-04-01 23:17:50
Gil Smart
And here was Rep. Gib Armstrong’s big chance: Surely Christopher could tell us all about liberal bias at Millersville University.
Except that Christopher was there to tell a different story — and in any case, Armstrong couldn’t even be bothered to pay attention.
Testifying on t...
2006-03-25 23:43:41
Gil Smart
Any time you get a hard-core culture warrior in the hot seat the issue of abortion is bound to come up, and this was no exception. Toomey is something of a standard-bearer for those who want to see abortion outlawed entirely, and he told Matthews as much.
But then the “Hardball” host thre...
2006-03-18 23:39:33
Gil Smart
I want you to imagine, for a moment, that you are Imette St. Guillen.
You might recognize the name. St. Guillen was a college student pursuing her master’s degree at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Friends described her as a “caring, bright, radiant” young woman....
2006-03-18 21:46:07
Gil Smart
Unfortunately, it’s also real — and something you might want to consider before we go any further down our current road.
I want you to imagine, for a moment, that you are Imette St. Guillen.
You might recognize the name. St. Guillen was a college student pursuing her master’s d...
2006-03-11 23:45:06
Gil Smart
The new lie going around is that the war in Iraq isn’t going poorly at all — it’s just the liberal media making it look that way.
Actually, this isn’t a particularly new approach; the pro-war right has always seemed to think that if the press merely pretends to see no evil in ...
2006-03-05 00:04:09
Gil Smart
You can wallow in the outrage on today’s letters-to-the-editor page if you like. Suffice to say many are shocked, shocked that I would do to Bill O’Reilly ... what Bill O’Reilly regularly does to the likes of me.
But first things first. I’m not sure how O’Reilly got ahold of last week’s b...
2006-02-25 23:34:15
Gil Smart
Insurgents blew up a 1,200-year-old Shiite shrine, triggering a wave of sectarian reprisals. While Fox News wondered if there wasn’t an upside to civil war, analysts with a brain, such as University of Michigan Mideast scholar Juan Cole, suggested instead that “the threat of terrorism and attacks on...
2006-02-18 23:40:17
Gil Smart
The woman was outraged. And she wanted something done about it.
“They are violating my rights,” she practically yelled into the phone.
I didn’t get into it with her, because I always try to be polite on the phone. But what I wanted to say was: No, they aren’t.
...
2006-02-11 23:20:15
Gil Smart
My mother watches Fox News. She asks these questions to bait me.
Thing is, I like Lynn Swann. I was 8 years old when he made those circus catches in Super Bowl X, and his performance helped turn me into a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.
He’s a good sideline reporter for AB...
2006-02-04 23:47:42
Gil Smart
Guess they’re not used to being on the receiving end of what they typically dish out. Methinks they’d better get used to it.
At the other end were those who are tired of the cultural right’s bullying, blustering ways. They’ve given a collective cheer, glad to see someone stand up to our w...
2006-01-28 23:41:19
Gil Smart
Lancaster County representatives are clambering aboard the hate train, hastening to sign up for Rep. Scott Boyd’s crusade to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage. Rep. Tom Creighton issued a press release that typified the “logic” behind the jihad: “We all know that our child...
2006-01-21 23:57:18
Gil Smart
That makes sense, I suppose, though I wouldn’t have pegged Rep. Scott Boyd, chief sponsor of the bill to amend the Pennsylvania Constitution, as the type of guy to head up this particular parade. But I suppose that if you’ve been elected to office in Lancaster County, you need to remember which side...
2006-01-14 23:47:48
Gil Smart
In a town where influence peddling is an art, Abramoff was Michelangelo. And maybe you wondered: Did any of my legislators have their snouts in his trough?
The answer is yes, yes they did. One, in fact, helped build the trough itself.
Earlier this month, the Philadelphia Inquir...
2006-01-07 23:43:45
Gil Smart
Last week’s piece on how we may be stumbling, semi-consciously, down the road toward a police state brought some interesting responses, some of them from conservatives who generally hate what they read in this space, but who, despite the prevailing winds, still believe that too much government power...
2005-12-31 12:39:05
Gil Smart
In the popular imagination, it was impossible to live in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Hussein’s Iraq without constantly fearing for your life. Filmmaker Michael Moore was pilloried for a brief image in his movie “Fahrenheit 911” where he dared show Iraqi children before the war, flying a kite....
2005-12-24 16:08:38
Gil Smart
That prompted a flurry of calls from people saying that if the guy didn’t have anything to hide, he shouldn’t worry about being followed.
Royko responded as he always did every time someone gave him the old “if a person has nothing to hide” routine: By asking them personal que...
2005-12-17 23:34:19
Gil Smart
Wednesday’s headline screamed the news: “$150M casino planned downtown,” and already we’re being regaled with stories about how gambling ruins lives, lures hookers and drug dealers, befouls the very air we breathe.
The usual suspects have already harrumphed their disapproval. Politicians,...
2005-12-10 23:41:04
Gil Smart
I argued with him a bit. What are you talking about, the dumb people?
And he said: The easily manipulated, those who are prone to being motivated by demagoguery.
Well, I was offended by that. Because I don’t think of politics, and especially progressive politics, in...
2005-12-03 23:33:57
Gil Smart
A woman, I’m told, actually stood up at the Lancaster County Republican confab last week and asked this question. With a straight face.
The question came in response to some of the issues raised at the meeting, which was called because Republicans feel rather besieged these da...
2005-11-26 23:34:13
Gil Smart
Murtha doesn’t actually represent Altoona; he represents nearby Johnstown, and indeed, as Dennis Roddy wrote in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Murtha practically embodies the town, “a place where working people expect others to work, are slow to embrace the new, and will happily join up fo...
2005-11-19 23:54:00
Gil Smart
Facetious and crass, to be sure.
But there’s an underlying point, I think, that bears scrutiny.
Last week I found myself in the unlikely position of defending home schooling. That’s because in the wake of the David Ludwig/Kara Borden case, in which 18-year-old Ludwig is alleged...
2005-11-05 18:45:53
Gil Smart
The basic talking point is: Libby who? The idea being that the second-in-command’s right-hand man is somehow unimportant, and Americans are better off just moving along, nothing to see here.
Needless to say, there is. Because while this case might be about the fictitious stories Libby is ...
2005-10-29 23:45:36
Gil Smart
Let’s talk about the smear because everyone’s talking about the smear. The left is rejoicing in the smear because vice presidential aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby might wind up going to jail. The right is grousing about the smear, saying that liberals are trying to “criminalize conservati...
2005-10-22 21:36:59
Gil Smart
For once, I did.
We were in San Antonio visiting my wife’s family. Second time I’ve been, actually; it’s a great place. Though you never quite forget that you’re in one of the reddest of red states.
Along many of the city’s interstate highways are 100-foot lighted signs for Hom...
2005-10-08 23:28:38
Gil Smart
All these years and they’ve been the most loyal foot soldiers in the conservative movement, putting boots on the ground and in the voting booth, giving money, expending boundless amounts of energy.
And their reward is ... Harriet Miers.
And before her, John Roberts.
...
2005-10-01 23:53:53
Gil Smart
I’m not going to waste this space fighting over the scorched earth of what intelligent design is and isn’t. No, it isn’t creationism; but it is indeed viewed by many of its most vocal supporters as a Trojan Horse by which religious dogma might be reintroduced in the schoolhouse.
...
2005-09-24 21:39:17
Gil Smart
Fareed Zakaria, “Leaders Who Won’t Choose,” Newsweek, Sept. 26
“I am not an ideologue.”
U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, Sept. 15
I can’t get all worked up over Roberts. He may indeed be a “stealth” candidate, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to know. And...
2005-09-17 21:16:20
Gil Smart
And as you might guess, I came away underwhelmed — but perhaps a little less so than usual.
For while part of the speech sounded like yet another laundry list, and other parts might have been lifted from a Heritage Foundation pamphlet on “opportunity zones,” in between was an ...
2005-09-10 22:02:15
Gil Smart
Which is pretty much what they say every week. But last week’s column, laying blame at the doorstep of this administration, was grossly inappropriate. Now is not the time to point fingers, they said; now is not the time for the blame game.
Of course, shortly after saying th......
2005-09-10 21:58:11
Gil Smart
Which is pretty much what they say every week.
But last week’s column, laying blame at the doorstep of this administration, was grossly inappropriate. Now is not the time to point fingers, they said; now is not the time for the blame game.
Of course, shortly after saying that, ...
2005-09-04 18:48:14
Gil Smart
Is this America?
And then the ripples. The anger at the gas pump, nationwide. The president called for conservation. There was a widespread feeling of powerlessness, that things were out of control.
It was, wrote Andrew Sullivan on his blog, “Carteresque.”
Which in one respect i...
2005-08-28 00:27:37
Gil Smart
The delegates vowed to use whatever means necessary to “ensure the united backing of the American people to support our troops and the global war on terrorism.”
- Editor and Publisher, Aug. 24
The year was 1991 and I was living in suburban Pittsburgh and working my first news......
2005-08-20 23:45:38
Gil Smart
Several readers, including a member of the congressman’s staff, pointed out the 16th District includes all of Lancaster County.
They are right and I was wrong, and I apologize for it. And now, on with the show.
If you follow politics to any degree, you might ......
2005-08-13 23:32:54
Gil Smart
(As opposed to the usual uncomprehending stares from right-wing readers.)
If you don’t know what a blog is by now, you probably should. In short, it’s a Web site where a person or a group of people post commentary, links, photos and more on any given topic, from sports to pets...
2005-08-07 13:07:55
Gil Smart
And after the steaks and a few cold longnecks, the little boy and I ran around the back yard playing Buzz Lightyear, his favorite superhero this week.
At this age, maybe at any age, I simply can’t imagine a more pleasant birthday.
If you do that math you’ll realize ...
2005-07-31 07:32:40
Gil Smart
Knoll’s idiocy was much remarked-upon within the conservative media echo chamber, and I received a few notes about it myself from conservatives trying to goad me into writing about it. Surely, they said, I wouldn’t overlook such a thing just because Knoll was a Democrat, Hmmmm?
...
2005-07-23 23:43:26
Gil Smart
It’s a small tract, the likes of which you might find at the supermarket or maybe a gun show. It was the third time I’ve received this particular tract, and I suspect all three were sent by the same correspondent. The first two obviously didn’t take; maybe they figured the third time wou...
2005-07-16 23:47:43
Gil Smart
Some of them are intelligent and articulate; they want to debate, and I’m always up for that. I put up a pretty good fight, even got one religious conservative to admit the other week that my position boiled down to logic, his to faith.
Which, you know, is fine. When society f...
2005-07-09 23:48:36
Gil Smart
Whoops! Make that wrote a book.
It’s called “It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good,” and it’s quite a two-fer for Pennsylvania’s junior senator, allowing him to both take a whack at Hillary Clinton and gear up for his race against Democratic challenger Robert Cas...
2005-07-02 23:50:11
Gil Smart
I have a cousin whose wife home-schools their four girls, mostly for religious reasons. And I tell you what, those four kids are extraordinarily intelligent and talented, and I tend to think this is specifically because they were home-schooled, because my cousin’s wife was able to lavish a degree of...
2005-06-25 23:33:58
Gil Smart
Let me tell you something, folks; if we are hit again, if we are hit again, we need to hold these people in our country who are undermining our efforts responsible. It ain’t going to be the FBI’s fault next time. It isn’t going to be the CIA’s fault next time. It isn’t going to be some bureaucrac......
2005-06-18 23:48:49
Gil Smart
Right. There’s a first time for everything. As I have the sound down I can’t hear what’s being said, nor can I see who is speaking. But whoever it is, Hannity is on the edge of his seat, absolutely enthralled. And then the camera shifts to the speaker: Vice President Dick Cheney....
2005-06-11 23:51:47
Gil Smart
The homes, this year, start at $259,900. Right, start. And that’s for a residence in the town-home category.
And elsewhere in the glossy publication, included in today’s Sunday News and the subject of a front-page story in this week’s newspaper, are renditions of the other ......
2005-06-04 23:57:50
Gil Smart
As a general rule, I try to avoid banging the same drum two weeks in a row.
But as arguments over stem cells and other “culture of life” issues persist, I wanted to reiterate something that isn’t really being talked about, but which might be one of the most relevant aspects of the debate. ......
2005-05-28 21:51:31
Gil Smart
The issue has been a political football for years; this measure, finally, appears to be a swing pass in the right direction.
For as opponents point out, there is no guarantee that stem cell research will lead to a cure for Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, spinal cord injuries, perhaps even Alzh...
2005-05-14 23:33:36
Gil Smart
It was 9:30 a.m. when I pulled into the parking lot off Cherry Street, let the boy sink the requisite quarters into the meter and went and yanked on the library door. It was locked.
That’s right, I remembered. The library isn’t open until 10 a.m. these days.
Budget woes, of course. You...
2005-04-30 23:46:20
Gil Smart
Now, I probably shouldn’t make fun of Pennsylvania’s junior senator. It’s just too easy - sort of, to steal a line from P.J. O’Rourke, like hunting dairy cattle with a high-powered rifle and scope.
But this one was so odd, and in its own way so telling, that I simply couldn’t...
2005-04-24 00:14:03
Gil Smart
And I asked, Why? I was sort of blunt in my ignorance: Does a corporate logo plastered all over Rusty Wallace’s (or whomever’s) car really make a product better than its competition?
His answer was revolutionary in its simplicity. “No,” he said, “but these companies are subsidizing a sport I ...
2005-04-16 23:45:00
Gil Smart
Take Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Please.
Santorum is widely regarded as one of the more conservative members of the U.S. Senate and is thought to be a major target of Democrats in 2006, the idea being that this red-state senator is too conservative for this blue state. That, of cours...
2005-04-09 23:59:20
Gil Smart Assistant News Editor Gsmart@lnpnews.com
Geez, Bill, you’re really not going to like this one. So maybe you should go check out “Peanuts” instead.
For it strikes me that the more I read, the more I come to believe that the war in Iraq was, indeed, all about oil.
I imagine you’ve seen that the price of oil is setting records, ...
2005-04-02 23:50:26
Gil Smart
In the immediate aftermath of the November election, this newspaper did a story on a curious phenomenon.
President Bush, of course, won Lancaster County by a wide margin. But John Kerry did fairly well, and did very well in some areas that the average observer might have thought a tough sell ...
2005-03-26 17:24:13
Gil Smart
Which brings us, then, to the “culture of life.”
We’ve been hearing about this “culture of life” for more than a week now. And on the surface, it sounds like a grand and perhaps necessary thing.
For the Schiavo case, the week-long scramble by her parents to find some wa...
2005-03-19 21:54:03
Gil Smart
I kind of give him this look. Because he’s using the term “fair and balanced” in all earnestness. I get the creeping feeling that he watches Fox News and actually thinks it is fair and balanced.
It gets worse. Sure, he says, he listens to Rush. Hannity, on occasion. But it’s my little fea...
