[ Posted Friday, March 23rd, 2012 – 16:36 UTC ]
Two years ago, Joe Biden was famously quoted for saying to Barack Obama upon the occasion of health care reform legislation finally passing: "This is a big [expletive deleted] deal." In the past week or so, the White House has rolled out a big media push to support Obama's signature legislation. Next week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on the subject of whether the law, as written, passes constitutional muster or not.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, March 16th, 2012 – 17:46 UTC ]
Sometimes I'm just astonished at the inability of political campaigns to do a simple web search. Case in point: the story about Mitt Romney's dog Seamus.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Wednesday, March 14th, 2012 – 16:26 UTC ]
That's it in a nutshell. The title is so good, it barely needs explaining. If Congress doesn't pass a completed budget on time -- both the budget blueprint and the 12 appropriations bills necessary -- then when the new federal fiscal year dawns on the first of October, they stop getting paid. Their paychecks halt until the budget is complete, and they are not allowed to (later on, under the cover of night) award themselves retroactive pay for this period.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Wednesday, February 29th, 2012 – 17:11 UTC ]
But there's another Leap Day tradition in America, from a suburban Chicago city. Aurora, Illinois used to be famous for its Leap Day fun, when the unmarried women took over the town and arrested all the unmarried men for the "crime" of being a bachelor. Yes, you read that right.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, February 24th, 2012 – 17:51 UTC ]
"When the going gets weird," Hunter S. Thompson famously said, "the weird turn pro."
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Monday, February 20th, 2012 – 15:03 UTC ]
While this may -- as a direct result of a very successful mythmaking campaign -- be almost universally true today, it was not when the flesh-and-blood man (not the myth) held office as the new nation's first "Chief Magistrate" (as it was referred to back then). Yes, even Washington had his media critics.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, February 10th, 2012 – 17:02 UTC ]
In other news, the Obama White House had rather a bad week... but again, we'll get to that in a moment.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Thursday, February 9th, 2012 – 16:59 UTC ]
Mainstream American churches have, in the past, used Biblical passages to advocate the rightness of slavery. Mainstream American churches have also refused to allow blacks to join their congregations with the same status as white worshippers. Mainstream American churches have used the Bible to justify wife-beating, and corporal punishment for children. That is all fine and good (well, it's not, really; but it's legally all fine and good) -- the Constitution does not permit government to have any sort of sway over a church's beliefs in any way (except possibly if the church were mounting armed resistance to the government and calling it religion).
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, February 3rd, 2012 – 17:10 UTC ]
Mitt Romney, frontrunner for the Republican nomination, announced he wasn't too worried about poor people. Maybe it would be fun to see Romney debate Joe Biden, just because nobody would know what to expect from either of them. Heh.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Wednesday, January 11th, 2012 – 18:09 UTC ]
Two hundred and thirty-six years ago this week, a pamphlet was published in Philadelphia. There is some disagreement among historians over the exact date (variously given as January 9th or 10th), and the pamphlet's title page itself only lists the year, 1776. Whatever the actual date, though, Thomas Paine's Common Sense hit the American consciousness like a bombshell -- one which would reverberate for years to come.
Read Complete Article »
