Eric Wilson

5 Reasons Why Facebook Isn't a Fad

Thu, 17 May 2012 09:13:29 -0400

Visit RedAlertPolitics.com to check out my latest piece over there. In response to a recent poll that found nearly half of Americans think Facebook will fade away, I outline five reasons why it’s here to stay.

1. A lot of people use the site…a lot.

With over 900 million users worldwide, Facebook has amassed a user base unrivaled by any other platform. Think about it: even your mom is on Facebook. But more importantly, 526 million of those users are active on the site on a given day and 40% of American adults use the site at least once a week.

On Spreecast, I offer analysis about the President’s...

Thu, 10 May 2012 13:32:16 -0400

On Spreecast, I offer analysis about the President’s decision to support gay marriage.

new favorite gif

Thu, 10 May 2012 13:28:44 -0400

new favorite gif

POLITICO’s Anna Palmer joined me on Spreecast to discuss...

Wed, 09 May 2012 13:05:49 -0400

POLITICO’s Anna Palmer joined me on Spreecast to discuss the efforts by political organizations to court NASCAR fans during the 2012 election.

Twilight for Moderates: The Necessity of Polarization in Politics

Wed, 09 May 2012 12:58:46 -0400

My latest for Red Alert Politics:

The writing is on the wall. There is no room for moderates in our current political landscape.

In the House, the moderate Blue Dog Democrats are on the brink of extinction after suffering two major electoral defeats in Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary on April 24. In the Senate, two senior Republicans, Dick Lugar (Indiana) and Orrin Hatch (Utah) face credible challenges from the right.

Conventional wisdom says that the polarization of our politics is bad for governing. Pundits and journalists pine for the days when compromises were made across party lines and backroom deals were common.

The 24-hour news cycle and the rise of new media makes an easy scapegoat, but the fact is, our country is finding itself at a critical point in history where compromises are no longer sufficient to address the challenges we face.

Click here to continue reading the rest.

George Clooney’s Hollywood fundraiser for Obama is...

Mon, 07 May 2012 16:27:00 -0400

George Clooney’s Hollywood fundraiser for Obama is expected to break the record for highest grossing single event.

House GOP New Media Challenge Heats Up

Wed, 02 May 2012 16:40:00 -0400

House GOP New Media Challenge Heats Up:

My latest for RedAlertPolitics.com. I take a look at the House Republicans’ contest to add new followers on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Spreecast on the Obama campaign’s bin Laden ad. We also...

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Spreecast on the Obama campaign’s bin Laden ad. We also talk about controversial campaign ads through history.

Great chat with Anna and Jordan Sekulow of the American Center...

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:43:47 -0400

Great chat with Anna and Jordan Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justic yesterday about Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, an Iranian Christian in jail for the crime of apostasy.

Spreecast: Fighting for Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 10:07:52 -0400

Today on Spreecast.com at 2 pm EDT, Anna & Jordan Sekulow from the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) will be joining me on the show to discuss their efforts to support Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, a Christian pastor in Iran, who has now spent more than 900 days in jail simply for being a Christian.

We’ll also discuss what this means for the larger issue of religious freedom around the world and the US relationship with Iran.

Tomorrow night at 8:30pm ET I’m chatting with Mike...

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 16:31:00 -0400

Tomorrow night at 8:30pm ET I’m chatting with Mike Wakefield about the Supreme Court’s Obamacare Week.

The difference between conservatives and liberals

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 13:28:33 -0500

In his latest column, Timothy Carney highlights the key difference between conservatives and liberals when it comes to the Culture War:

For many of today’s liberals, if something is bad — like the traditional light bulb, a very high health-insurance deductible, a gas-guzzling car, or a lack of racial diversity — the government ought to outlaw it.

Maybe they can’t comprehend the mind-set of many of today’s conservatives, who revere both individual liberty and traditional morality as the necessary conditions for human happiness and thus say that certain behaviors are immoral but shouldn’t be illegal. Not only are traditional morality and limited government totally compatible, today they are intimately linked, as the Left uses big government to subsidize abortion providers and force all employers to pay for their employees’ contraceptives.

Never take a win for granted

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 13:22:49 -0500

I’ll have an extra spring in my step this week.

My favorite NASCAR driver, Denny Hamlin, won yesterday’s race in Phoenix. As a fan, there’s nothing more rewarding than seeing “your driver” in Victory Lane.

It’s something you never take for granted. You never know how long it will be until a driver wins again — if he wins again. It’s a plight fans of Dale Earnhardt, Jr. know too well. He hasn’t won a race since 2008.

Unlike basketball, baseball, football, or hockey, where you start (in theory) with a 50-50 shot at winning, NASCAR drivers are just one out of 43 in the field. That’s why fans learn to live with a top ten or top five finish in the hopes that the win will come.

Remembering our purpose

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 22:34:00 -0500

There’s a lot to be said about “the Incident at St. John Neumann.” Canon lawyer Ed Peters brings his scholarly analysis to bear at his blog and Deacon Greg pulls a number of sources together at his bench.

But what I want to highlight — and what troubles me the most — are two sentences from the Archdiocese of Washington’s official statement on the issue (which, by the way, isn’t available on their website).

Exhibit A:

In matters of faith and morals, the Church has the responsibility of teaching and of bringing the light of the Gospel message to the circumstances of our day.

Exhibit B:

The archdiocese is looking into the incident at a funeral Mass that was celebrated by Father Marcel Guarnizo and will handle this as a personnel issue.

Corporations have “personnel issues.” This is obviously management speak. Does the Church, which “has the responsibility of teaching and of bringing the light of the Gospel message” have personnel issues? Is the Church that mundane?

I’ll confess, when I first read the statement in the Catholic Standard, I thought it said “will handle this as a pastoral issue.”

Are our bishops simply managers, sorting out personnel issues with the HR department? No. They’re the shepherds of Christ’s Church.

The Obama Administration has the worst timing

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:59:14 -0500

Aside from being wrong on a lot of issues, President Obama and his team have THE WORST timing. Case in point:

Exhibit A:

Catholics rally against Obama contraception mandate

NEW ORLEANS — From Maine to Arizona to southern Louisiana, Catholic churches across the country echoed with scorn for a new federal rule requiring faith-based employers to include birth control and other reproductive services in their health care coverage.

Dozens of priests took the rare step of reading letters from the pulpit urging parishioners to reach out to Washington and oppose the rule, enacted Jan 20.

Exhibit B:

Time to Panic: Pfizer Just Recalled 1 Million Packs of Birth Control Pills

If you rely on the female contraceptive pill to avoid having babies, you might want to check the packet: Pfizer just recalled a million packs because a fault means they could increase the chances of getting pregnant. Deep breaths: it’ll probably be fine.

…

Normally contraceptive pills come in ordered sequence, with some containing active hormone and others being plain old placebo. Some of the faulty packs have no active hormone at all, while others don’t have any placebos. Either way, you don’t want to use them, unless you’re keen to gamble on having a kid real soon.

Revenge of the Nerds: How SOPA was killed

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:20:01 -0500

Great post-mortem from POLITICO’s Anna Palmer on how the effort to kill SOPA and PIPA amounted to a disruption of Washington’s traditional lobbying game. Highlights:

>Fights are no longer just about which side has the most — or best — lobbyists. The new world of Washington influence is more diverse:Traditional access lobbying is waged alongside campaigns that use media, grass-roots activism and the Internet — activity often not reported in federal lobbying filings.

…

Several lobbyists pointed to last week’s massive online mobilization that tanked two fast-moving anti-online piracy bills as the perfect example of how the influence game is changing. While clients are still willing to pay for access lobbying, there is more of a focus on nonreportable strategy through social media and other grass-roots initiatives.

And the best nugget from the story:

“A well-resourced content group of people completely got outmaneuvered by the guys in the basement,” Ogilvy Government Relations’ Drew Maloney said of the anti-piracy fight.

You must have friends

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:25:46 -0500

“In this world you will have to make your own way. To do that you must have friends. You can make friends by being honest, and you can keep them by being steadfast. You must keep in mind that friends worth having will in the long run expect as much from you as they give to you. To forget an obligation or be ungrateful for a kindness is a base crime-not merely a fault or a sin, but an actual crime. Men guilty of it sooner or later must suffer the penalty. In personal conduct be always polite but never obsequious. None will respect you more than you respect yourself.”

— Advice to Andrew Jackson from his mother

via Art of Manliness

No amount of honesty...

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 18:09:00 -0400

“It is, of course, not enough that a public official should be honest. No amount of honesty will avail if he is not also brave and wise. The weakling and the coward cannot be saved by honesty alone; but without honesty the brave and able man is merely a civic wild beast who should be hunted down by every lover of righteousness. No man who is corrupt, no man who condones corruption in others, can possibly do his duty by the community. When this truth is accepted as axiomatic in our politics, then, and not till then, shall we see such a moral uplifting of the people as will render…”

— Theodore Roosevelt, 1900, The Strenuous Life

"Vinge asks us to ponder the role of humans in a world where machines are as much smarter than us as..."

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 18:53:00 -0400

“Vinge asks us to ponder the role of humans in a world where machines are as much smarter than us as we are smarter than our pet dogs and cats.”

- Paul Allen, “The Singularity Isn’t Near”

A crab on the altar

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 11:38:55 -0400

“I remember that my own grandmother, a devout Wesleyan, believed to her dying day that at the Roman Catholic mass the priest let a crab loose upon the altar, which it was his mysterious duty to prevent from crawling sideways into the view of the congregation. (Hence the gestures of the celebrant.) How she became possessed of this notion, or what she supposed eventually happened to the crustacean I never discovered. But she affirmed with the utmost sincerity that she had once with her own eyes actually watched this horrible rite in progress; and there could be no doubt of the deplorable effect that solitary visit to a Roman Catholic church had on her estimate of Roman Catholics in general, though she was the soul of charity in all things else.” — Dom Gregory Dix