Arthur Goldwag

Yesterday the interwebs were abuzz with stories about Obama's "composite girlfriend" -- the supposed bombshell that the story in Dreams From My Father about the white woman he had an affair with wasn't strictly true. The Atlantic has a really good corrective piece on how the meme began.

Most newly published authors spend a lot of time Googling themselves and I'm no exception. The other day Google directed me to a blog called Watering Good Seeds, where I found a mention of The New Hate. Scrolling up, I saw a snippet from Haaretz about Holocaust...

Last week, there were more stories about posthumous Mormon baptisms -- this time it was Daniel Pearl. Pearl's parents sent an email to the Boston Globe, in which they responded to the LDS:

We appreciate your good intentions but rest assured that Danny's soul was redeemed through the life...

Reading the New York Times' account of Limbaugh's devolution this past week is a little like watching a train wreck:

On the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday editions of his talk show, Mr. Limbaugh attacked Ms. Fluke as sexually promiscuous and politically motivated -- "an anti-Catholic plant," he said at...

At a time when birth control has become so much a part of the fabric of daily life that there are commercials for contraceptives on TV, why have so many Republicans vested their hopes in Rick Santorum? Santorum believes that non-procreative sex is "deeply, morally wrong"; he is...

No, all Republicans aren't racists--there are any number of reasons that a principled person might oppose Obama that have nothing whatever to do with race. But as the contest for the Republican nomination tightens, the clamor of racial, McCarthyist and conspiratorial dog whistles--what I have come to call "the New...

I've been to Israel: I'm well aware that there are Jews who both pack and use heat. I used to live down the street from the 76th Precinct in Brooklyn, where they had a beat cop who wore a beard and tzitzis. But I have to tell you, I hadn't...

"Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona has constituted a special law enforcement posse to investigate allegations brought by members of the Surprise, Ariz., Tea Party that the birth certificate Barack Obama released to the public April 27 might be a forgery," WorldNetDaily recently reported.

Partly because I...

"Now that it's been documented that a clear majority of New Yorkers prefer the site of the Islamic center to be moved,"a letter in today's New York Times reads, "it's time for its planners to seriously consider alternative locations. Such an act would not be seen as weakness, but a...

From Tom Vilsack's press conference yesterday:

I've learned a lot of lessons from this experience in the last couple of days. And one of the lessons I learned is that these types of decisions require time. I didn't take the time. I should have. And as a result, a...

This week the New York Times caught the Democratic front runner for Chris Dodd's Senate seat lying about his non-existent service in Vietnam. It reminds me a little of the fake firemen that you'd hear about haunting pick up bars in the days after 9/11.

Editorializing for Fox News...

I wasn't suprised when Rush Limbaugh noted the suspicious timing of the explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, occurring as it did on the eve of Earth Day and an expected Cap and Trade announcement and just after Obama's reluctant OK to new drilling leases. Limbaugh suspects "environmental whackos"...

This has nothing to do with cults, conspiracies, and secret societies, but just for the record, I was absolutely bowled over by the Tiger Woods Nike ad that debuted this week. For sheer bad taste, I have never seen anything quite like it. Screwing cocktail waitresses on the sly while...

Last month, I ran down some of the rumors about HAARP that emerged after the Haiti earthquake and posted about them on Boing Boing and on my own blog .

A joint civilian/military project, HAARP (High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) is an array of antennas,...

A high-ranking official in the Obama administration has come under fire in the past few weeks for suggesting that it would be a good idea to deploy federal agents to "cognitively infiltrate" political groups that believe in conspiracy theories. "Cognitive infiltration" may just be a fancy way to describe what...