Jim Derych

It's funny, but here we are 42 months into the 2008 presidential election season, and no one has asked the single most important question of any presidential race -- Would I have a beer with this person? At least I assume that's the most important question of the...

Rush was full of hope this morning. He'd read AP reports that jurors on the 10th day were asking questions like "What is this guy accused of again?," and he had to be thinking Libby was going to walk. Suddenly, tragedy (or for the rest of us "justice") struck just...

Failure always inspires naval-gazing. So I expected to hear the conservative media talking-heads do a little introspection after last night's lopsided loss. What I didn't expect was for Rush Limbaugh to come right out and say "I'm full of crap." Check out the top of the third hour...

Did something happen with Rush Limbaugh in the news recently? Hmm...I must've missed it. Oh wait...there it is. Wow! That can't be good. That brings up a whole host of questions, none of which the mainstream media are going to ask. The one question they will ask is "what...

I have witnessed some pretty remarkable feats of mental gymnastics in my adult political life. Some of them I performed myself, where I could accept family values advice from Rush "Fourth Time's the Charm" Limbaugh or Newt "Till Some Kind of Really Bad Illness Do Us Part" Gingrich....

Maybe everyone already knows this or has talked about it and I just missed it. Maybe I don't pay enough attention to the blogs, but in this whole immigration debate this was the first time I'd heard the following fact--one of the first U.S. fatality in Iraq was an illegal...

I don't mean to name drop, but I'm friends with Jon Swift. No, seriously! Check it out! Nice guy. Reasonable conservative. Great with children. Anyway, he and I have great conversations, and as a result of our witty banter I've solved the problem in Iraq. We will soon be...

I watched Bob Roberts this weekend for the first time. If you've never seen it, go rent it. It tells the story of a right-wing folk singer and his ascension to Senator of Pennsylvania using a smear campaign, some powerful defense connections, and jingoism. I probably wouldn't have...

This weekend the Huffington Post ran a 'Breaking News' piece in which Arlen Specter asked the President to come clean on his role in the Valerie Plame leak scandal. Like most folks, I wanted to be excited about this news. Surely I'm not the only rat to leave the...

When I first started blogging a little over a year ago I was...well, I was a little bitter. The election was contentious, the campaign chippy, and the rhetoric nasty. There was a lot of name calling, which at the time I was happy to join. Freepers and the like seem...

One of the first and least surprising criticisms of my beliefs as a Democrat is the idea that I want government to be "my mommy." It's an absurd simplification of the basic doctrine that the legitimate role of government is to protect those who can't protect themselves. Much though they...

The incredibly quick rise and equally quick fall of Ben Domenech from the Washington Post payroll is an odd place to find a parallel to one of the lessons I learned as a dittohead. But find it there I did.

A quick note about Ben in case you missed...

So I'm walking through the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis on my way to the Flying Saucer, where I like to go to write my blog stuff during my lunch hour. I pass by the fountain and the ducks (it's a Peabody thing. They have indoor ducks), and...

Back in the early 90's during the 'Gays in the Military' debate, Rush defined for his audience what the role of the military was. As with most things Rush, he put it in pretty simple terms. "The purpose of the military is to kill people and break things." And across...

We Memphians call our intrepid little corner of Tennessee "Roundtown," and it isn't because we're officially the most obese city in the nation. No, it's because Memphis is a basketball town, and I (very fortunately) am a huge basketball fan. As an alumnus of the University of Memphis, I am,...

Hi everyone. I'm the new guy here, and I figured I should probably introduce myself. My name's Jim, and I'm a former dittohead.

...

This is the part where you all go "Hi Jim!"

I guess that means I'm at about step 8 in the 12-step recovery process. I...