As I Please has had a pretty good run, but recently I've grown dissatisfied with the format. Take a look at the "Topics" list and you'll see what I mean. With so much going on, AIP has come to suffer from from a decided lack of focus.

Over the next couple of weeks, therefore, I plan to phase out AIP, replacing it with two or three new blogs. Tentatively, one will deal strictly with politics and foreign policy, one will deal with what may broadly be described as the liberal arts, and one will deal with the movies (an abiding interest of mine).

As the new blogs are established, announcements will appear here. The new politics blog will probably be founded first. Watch this space for the link.

Posted by tmg110 at 7:10 AM CDT

Updated: Monday, 19 March 2007 7:22 AM CDT

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Letters to the editor—you have to love them. Here’s a classic from today’s Chicago-Sun Times:

OK for draft, but not a draft

If I can get sent off to war to die for my country at the young age of 18, why shouldn't I be able to drink alcohol? Either the draft age needs to be 21, or the legal drinking age needs to be 18. It's just not fair to those who are under the age of 21 to be shipped off to Iraq to die for the cause, but they can't drink.

Carl Anderson, Winfield

Carl, Carl, Carl. There is no draft, you moron.

Posted by tmg110 at 9:26 AM CST

Updated: Thursday, 15 February 2007 9:51 AM CST

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The US Mint is taking another stab at replacing the $1 bill with a $1 coin. Two previous attempts to do this failed miserably, perhaps because of the politically correct sensibility of the Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea dollar coins. (Women, minorities and American Indians, er, Native Americans are as all progressively minded people know, scandalously excluded from US coin portraiture.)

The new coins, to be released at the rate of four per year, feature portraits of all deceased US presidents. Will this more traditional design approach make them acceptable to the American public? It’ll be interesting to see if people merely disliked the earlier designs, or if they hate the idea of any $1 coin.

Posted by tmg110 at 9:13 AM CST

Updated: Friday, 16 February 2007 12:18 PM CST

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It’s worth noting, incidentally, that the celebrated Ms. Angelou couldn’t be bothered to look up truculence in the dictionary and find out what it means.

Posted by tmg110 at 1:17 PM CST

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Bush-bashing liberal columnist Molly Ivins died yesterday. I always considered her to be a nasty piece of work, politically speaking, but God rest her soul anyway. Besides, any temptation I may have had to mark her passing with a snide post has been quashed by the egregious Maya Angelou, who couldn’t let the occasion pass without making an absolute ass of herself in the pages of the Washington Post:

Up to the walls of Jericho
She marched with a spear in her hand
Go blow them ram horns she cried
For the battle is in my hand

Uh-huh. And it gets better:

The walls of ignorance and prejudice and cruelty, which she railed against valiantly all her public life, have not fallen, but their truculence to do so does not speak against her determination to make them collapse.

Say what? Now I know that Ms. Angelou is a renowned American poet and all that, but for writing such a hideously malformed sentence, she should have her keyboard broken over her head. Even Molly Ivins, left-liberal diva though she was, deserved better.

Posted by tmg110 at 8:34 AM CST

Updated: Wednesday, 7 February 2007 7:32 AM CST

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