By now, everyone is talking about the White House vegetable garden. The White House has published the official garden plan, which is heavily slanted towards salad greens and peas. There are also small plantings of broccoli (no doubt for state visits by George H. W. Bush), onions, shallots, carrots, r… Read full post »

Now, don't get me wrong.  I support fuel economy standards, electric car technology, and anything else we can do to decrease the environmental footprint of the cars we're driving.  But if you ask me, realistically, how we can make our transportation sustainable, it has less to do with how w… Read full post »

The 2008 Slow Food Almanac arrived in my mailbox today.  There were some interesting articles, but I'll leave it to others to review the content.  Suffice it to say that if you're not a member, you should sign up regardless of whether the articles are your cup of tea.  What made t… Read full post »

News outlets are reporting today on a new study that forests in the western United States are dying due to the effects of global warming.  This is no surprise to home gardeners, who have been learning for years that the plants they can grow successfully, and the way they need… Read full post »

Like many Americans lucky enough to have health insurance, my insurer provides an "after hours" service number.  The idea is, you call this number if someone is taken ill at night, and the nurse will talk through your symptoms and advise you whether you should go to the emergency room, make… Read full post »

On the day after Thanksgiving this year, I got a lesson in history from General Motors--and it wasn't pretty.

GM is the sponsor of the General Motors Hall of Transportation, at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.  And it shows.  Not just in what the museum tells us, but i… Read full post »

This Thursday, Americans will eat more than forty million broad-breasted white turkeys.  And for turkey lovers, that's a shame.

The broad-breasted white turkey is the only kind of turkey most people have ever tasted.  It was created in the 1950s by selective breeding.  Bred to be… Read full post »

There's been a lot of hand-wringing on Salon and Open Salon about the Congressional Democrats allowing Joe Lieberman to keep his committee chairmanship.  Mike Madden called Lieberman an "ideal candidate[] for some knind of harsh punishment" and his "slap on the wrist" a "sneering middl… Read full post »

George W. Bush may be a lame duck, but he has one more job as President that no Democratic congress can take away from him.  Let the speculation begin.

Under the Constitution, the President has the power "to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States" -- in other… Read full post »

Barack Obama has been called America's first black president.  But a better term might be "America's blackest president."

"Black," in the United States, is a social construct rather than a biological determination, as pointed out recently in Salon's review of Ariella Gross' "What Blood… Read full post »

There's been a lot of talk about Sarah Palin's possible future in national politics, and a lot of speculation that she may "appoint herself" to Ted Stevens' seat if he is expelled from the Senate, to give herself a national platform.  But Palin's path to Washington isn't quite so clear.

There… Read full post »

This morning, every media outlet in America is congratulating Barack Obama and offering condolences to John McCain.

But few of them spare a word for the other names on the ballot, except perhaps to note that Ralph Nader and Bob Barr, the two highest-profile third-party candidates in most states,… Read full post »

Once again, voters in three states this year are going to face ballot propositions about gay marriage.  In Arizona (Prop 102) and Florida (Prop 2) will once again cast mostly symbolic votes to maintain the status quo in states that already do not recognize gay marriage.  California has gott… Read full post »

All over America, people are rediscovering flavor.  People are remembering that local, homemade and homegrown food has something to offer that mass-produced, processed, shelf-stable products can't always offer.  But there is one day that still belongs completely to processed food.

Only… Read full post »

First of all: No, he didn't.  Of course not.  The idea that John McCain deliberately caused ACORN volunteers to register thousands of fake Democratic voters is not just totally unsupported, but extremely implausible.

What's surprising, though, is that it's less implausible than the case for… Read full post »

Our text today is from  a Republican consultant quoted in today's New York Times:

“No one would blink if this was a male candidate buying Brooks Brothers suits.”

I've been hearing a lot of this meme recently.  I've also heard some pundits (including Salon staffers) question… Read full post »

On October 7, Dana Milbank wrote in the Washington Post about an angry crowd at a Sarah Palin rally.  The sentence that got the most attention among commenters and bloggers was probably this one:

One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and… Read full post »