The New Republic

There was probably a time when it would have been considered a debasement of the democratic process for the presidential candidates’ final appeals directed at television audiences before Election Day to appear during halftime of a football broadcast—on cable, no less! (Admittedly, this aforementioned “time” probably came before cable.) READ MORE >>

WILLIAM “PUDGE” HEFFELFINGER was America’s first professional football player, paid $500 to man the line for the Allegheny Athletic Club in Pittsburgh’s Recreation Park. That game, played on November 12, 1892, was just a scrum in the mud, less sport than brawl. You took an elbow, spit some teeth, drove on. But who will be the last pro, the last man to stand in the locker-room line awaiting his greenies, Toradol, and shots of Novocain? READ MORE >>

Politico the other day ran a story about the "Young Eagles," a wing of the Republican Party that seems to have been created in order to fulfill every cultural stereotype of the GOP. It's a fundraising program for young, rich Republicans. The problem is, the cost of becoming an Eagle is very low, and the cost of entertaining an Eagle is very high. So the Young Eagles program, much like the Republican Party's economic agenda, has largely devolved into a subsidy for lavish consumption by the rich: READ MORE >>

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