Chiasmus, a figure of speech in which two clauses reverse structures to show crossing parallelism.

Liberals believe the best talk shows are liberal, the Courts are conservative, and the media isn’t doing their job.  Conservatives believe the best talk shows are conservative, the Courts are liberal, and the media isn’t doing their job.

It's been another record-breaking year for the poppy growers in Afghanistan. I wouldn’t say that our war-against-drugs is ineffective and led by dim-witted myopic authoritarians. That’s already been established. It’s time for putting new strategies forward.

Does anybody own their own business or have hiring authority at work? What would you do if you hired someone to do a job and, instead of doing what you told them to do, they did what they wanted to do. You would probably fire them, or at least, lose confidence that they would follow your orders in the future.

You've probably seen this story:

The company that makes the narcotic painkiller OxyContin and three current and former executives pleaded guilty today in federal court here to criminal charges that they misled regulators, doctors and patients about the drug’s risk of addiction and its potential to be abused.

Do you have a problem with this?

I was just killing time, waiting for the Super Bowl to start, when I had the thought, "what would happen to football in the future if the scarcity and high cost of oil makes routine, long-distance travel an extravagant business expense?"

I worry that progressives are becoming worn out by all the scandals involving George Bush and his fellow conservatives. While it's clear that we can't compete with the republicans in the Scam and Scandal Hall of Shame, progressives also have moments that demonstrate our darker nature.

Since Reaganomics, American businesses have paid less tax, produced lower quality products, reduced or minimized increases in worker salaries and benefits, and outsourced jobs overseas. Their profits, on the other hand, have skyrocketed and CEO salaries have increased ten times faster than inflation. Rather than being the foundation for economic opportunity and growth, big corporations have been a drain on American society. Just think of WalMart.

Here's the $100,000 question:

What is the most important idea that Americans think should be implemented to improve our country?

Here's a different way to try to get a handle on the size of the budget deficits created by George Bush, our first Harvard MBA president, and his toe-the-line republican congress.

Halloween is usually a time of vampires, devils, ghouls, and other horrors.  With the neo-cons in power, though, monsters don't seem so scary anymore.  But here are some decorations you can make at home to celebrate Halloween and Fitzmas.

Sometimes there are just no words to describe lies told by conservatives. They lie so often and in so many different ways that it's exhausting to always have to explain why their statements are false or misleading. So, I thought it was about time we progressives created terminology that we could use to describe false statements made by conservatives.

So if you want to learn the difference between a bloatedlinbaugh and a limporeilly, take the jump.

2,996 individuals were killed on 9-11-2001 at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and on four airliners. 2,626 victims were at the World Trade Center, 125 victims were at the Pentagon, and 245 victims were aboard airplanes.

When the Bush Administration eased the tax burden on the obscenely wealthy and their children, it created unprecedented budget deficits. With the flagging economy and the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is clear that the government will need to raise more money. So, here are a few ideas for new taxes. Vote for your favorite, after the jump.

Before the death of Chief Justice Rehnquist on Saturday, the nine Supreme Court Justices had worked together for over a decade. The Rehnquist Court has long been considered to be fairly conservative, with soon-to-retire Justice O'Connor being the moderate swing voter. But has she really been a moderate influence and was Chief Justice Rehnquist really the leading conservative on the Court, as everyone believes?

Based on 765 cases decided by the Court between November 1994 and February 2005, I analyzed the voting patterns of the Justices using a statistical technique called multidimensional scaling. The technique estimated the similarities in voting patterns as distances between the Justices. So, it was only natural to equate these distances to the United States, specifically, the distance between Washington, D.C. and San Francisco, CA.

Find out where the Supreme Court Justices land after the jump.

We all have opinions about which well-known progressives we most respect, and in some cases, know personally and like. They may be politicians, academics, religious leaders, writers, or members of the media. My favorite progressive is probably Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, because we seem to agree on many issues. I also have a lot of respect for what Bobby Kennedy, Jim Hightower, Al Franken, and Michael Moore are doing for the progressive cause. You can probably name quite a few more. But did you ever wonder which conservative right-wing bloggers like the most? Is George Bush their godhead or does Rush Limbaugh command their respect?

If you enjoy doing crossword puzzles, here's one that will test your knowledge of some of the right-wingers who are screwing up America.

The Worst Conservatives Crossword

I believe there are two elements that have to be in place to impeach a public official. First, there has to be some legal infraction. This is minor. If you can't find an infraction, you can always get the target to lie about something. That's what Newt Gingrich and Ken Starr did to Bill Clinton. What's more important, IMO, is to have public opinion driving the process.

So how can news about the drive to impeach Bush be elevated to the level of a celebrity trial?

In the 2004 campaign, the Bush administration promised they were going to stop subsidizing tobacco growers. It didn't quite work out that way. They did, however, convince the Supreme Court to let them prosecute people who smoke marijuana for medical reasons. Where's the justice in that?