SCOTUS made one of their periodic announcement of the schedule of arguments for upcoming cases for which they had granted a hearing, and I could not help but hear God laughing in the background. Let me draw your attention to this portion of the announcement, via SCOTUSblog…

I watch this every year, because I’ve always loved this story.

This time of year, I’ve written before, is about grace from unlikely beginnings and light in dark times. The older I get, the less interested I am in the war on Christmas, the war over Christmas, the endless back and forth. It’s exhausting, and it isn’t the point.

Shepard Fairey pleaded guilty to one count of criminal contempt for manufacturing evidence, destroying documents, and other misconduct in his case involving his “Hope” poster of Barack Obama. Reprehensible that he did behave so badly. It makes him look like a spoiled little rich kid who was trying to cover his ass when he got caught doing something wrong.

Why should it be surprising that people who really really want to get married are crazy in love with each other?

No President with Obama’s record or failure and betrayal should be rewarded with another term. And if we have to put up with a moral chameleon like Mitt Romney, indistinguishable from Obama, in order to demolish Obamism and what it has done to a once proud Democratic Party, then so be it.

There is a difference between technical improvements in the economy and what it feels like to the average citizen. When you are an incumbent facing reelection it is the latter that you need to focus on, if you want to be reelected that is.

Beth Murphy’s warm and uplifting documentary Beyond Belief follows two women’s ability to transform the shattering events of 9/11 into a message of hope. Susan Retik and Patti Quigley, upper middle class, pregnant New England soccer moms lost their husbands in 9/11. Introduced by mutual friends, they formed a fast friendship and through their conversations [...]

When the votes were tallied on the night of November 2, 2008, I was at a bar in Moab, Utah – the one rabid Democratic stronghold in a rabidly Republican state – to enjoy the hysteria as Barack Obama was summoned to lead the country out of the disaster of eight years of George W. Bush. People shook hands, hooted, clinked glasses, got drunk, raised fists, wept. The good liberals had elected a visionary Democrat to the presidency, who, blessed with a Democratic majority in Congress, would fashion “hope” and “change” into a palpable policy. I was told that in parts of Brooklyn, my hometown, voters ran through the streets banging pots and pans. The feeling was of religious jubilee – the new dispensation was upon us, and 2009 would mark the emancipation from the old rottenness. Corruption and fraud and deceit and war and oligarchy would be washed from the body politic. It was the beginning of the restoration of the republic.

It has become fashionable on the Left to feign a world-weary cynicism. The “Audacity of Hope” is often considered a utopian conceit, and a New Fatalism has descended upon the Left. We must not be afraid of the inspiration that we got from the Audacity of Hope, even if our prophet seems to have feet of clay.

I’m suffering from a dashing of hope these days, and Paul Roget Loeb’s book Soul of a Citizen just might help me recover.

President Obama and Democrats in Congress have accomplished some truly amazing things. The economic recovery package, health reform, Wall Street reform – all of these things are big f*cking deals. And yet, I and many others are still feeling betrayed – the economic recovery wasn’t big enough, health care reform by all rights should have been much more progressive, and Wall Street reform doesn’t nearly go far enough. Why the feeling of betrayal? Because we were promised so much more than just “reform.” President Obama promised this country transformational change. And we have not been given transformational change.