How the American right managed to convince itself that the programs to alleviate poverty are responsible for the consequences of poverty will someday be studied as a notorious mass illusion.

You could probably prove, by judicious use of logarithms and congruent triangles, that real life is a lot more like soap opera than most people will admit.

The thing is this: You got to have fun while you're fightin' for freedom, 'cause you don't always win.

I think of Texas as the laboratory for bad government.

Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom that you can decide you don't much care for.

There are two kinds of humor. One kind that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity -- like what Garrison Keillor does. The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule -- that's what I do. Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel -- it's vulgar.

I often plagiarize from myself. I like to think of this as ecological journalism: I recycle.