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Some weeks, I sit down to write this weekly wrapup, and find that there isn't that much to talk about, because nothing much happened that particular week.
It has been more than a day since the horrific act of terror at the Boston Marathon happened. Nobody knows much of anything, at this point, but it certainly hasn't stopped some from taking their free-floating anger and directing it at their own particular "usual suspects." This is pointless, but it is also hard to ignore, as we all wait for actual proof, real data, and the identification of any possible perpetrator of such a tragedy.
In the midst of all North Korea's saber-rattling, the United States made a major military announcement yesterday which is going to change the future of warfare in significant ways. Not to put too fine a point on it, but America just unveiled the first working phaser weapon. The Pentagon doesn't call it that, they call it a "laser weapon system," but this is merely semantics from a bunch of guys who probably didn't spend a lot of time watching science-fiction as kids. Their loss. But no matter what the big brass wants to call it, the fact is that Captain Kirk's phasers are now a reality.
With that out of the way, we're going to take a quick overview of what the media considers the big stories of the week, and we're going to end up in the Talking Points section with all the stories you may have missed due to the media being distracted by this stuff, just for fun.
Ten years ago this week, America went to war in Iraq for the second time. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, but that certainly didn't stop us from invading. Jingoism ran high in the supposedly-liberal press, and only a few voices were raised against the war in Congress. But plenty of others have been rehashing the whole run-up to the Iraq War, and plenty have been busy this week pointing out all the mistakes that were made along the way. I leave all that to others, though, for now. Instead, what I am left thinking ten years after the initial invasion is how badly America's record is when it comes to cleaning up afterwards.
Since it is indeed budget release week, we'd like to take the opportunity today to shine a spotlight on a budget which doesn't get the same amount of press as, say, what Paul Ryan's trying to peddle. While the Senate Democrats released their budget proposal yesterday, a group of Progressives in the House released their blueprint for a budget as well.
Our column's subtitle this week is a silent homage to guitarist Alvin Lee of the band Ten Years After, who sadly died this past week. Anyone who has seen the movie Woodstock knows of Lee's incredible talent on the electric guitar, and we just wanted to begin by noting that Alvin Lee is "Goin' Home" for the last time. Requiescat In Pace.
That title is, obviously, a bit of a misnomer, since Rand Paul didn't just have a "moment" yesterday on the Senate floor -- he had a whole bunch of them. Thirteen hours' worth, in fact. Senator Paul has a tool at his disposal that his father Ron never had, and yesterday he took that tool out of its box for the first time. Paul has been in the Senate for over two years now, but yesterday was the first time he staged a "talking filibuster."
This is what happens when Hollywood causes metaphysical universes to collide. That's the way I see it, at any rate. The news that J. J. Abrams will now be directing movies in both the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises has, quite obviously, sent ripples across the multidimensional continuum which are only now beginning to be perceived.
President Obama seems to be playing a long game in the budget negotiations, as evidenced by the press blitz over the past few weeks. So far, the White House has been very effective in setting the direction of the conversation taking place over the budget. By doing so, they have laid the groundwork for a much more realistic conversation on the federal budget which is long overdue -- the specifics of what to cut. This gets into territory the Republicans have been shying away from for a very long time, for very good reason. Because when you get down to the details of what, exactly, to cut from the federal budget, the questions get a lot tougher than easily-tossed-off campaign rhetoric. To put this another way: Obama is opening a conversation with the American people into what our federal priorities should be. That's what has been missing from the political debate for a long time. So far, Obama seems to be dominating this argument.