[ Posted Wednesday, March 11th, 2015 – 18:01 UTC ]
Marijuana legal reform has made great strides over the past few years. Four states are now allowing their citizens to freely use recreational marijuana. Washington D.C. -- the seat of the federal government itself -- has joined Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington state in fully legalizing marijuana. Almost half the states (23 of them) have legalized medical use of marijuana, and an additional dozen have allowed for heavily-restricted medical use of some form of the plant or another. That adds up to over seventy percent of America. Yet the federal laws have not budged an inch, and remain Draconian in their condemnation of any use of marijuana.
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[ Posted Monday, February 9th, 2015 – 18:18 UTC ]
Roy Moore, the chief justice of Alabama's state supreme court, is making a stand in the courthouse door. This is not literally happening, the way it did back in 1963 when Alabama's Governor George Wallace made a similar stand in the schoolhouse door. But the motivation is similar; a classic standoff between states' rights and federal legal supremacy over state law. In both Moore's and Wallace's cases, high Alabama officials are defying federal civil rights legal orders -- and the United States Supreme Court -- to preserve the state's ability to legally discriminate against a segment of its population.
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[ Posted Friday, January 30th, 2015 – 17:54 UTC ]
That headline certainly does promise a large amount of schadenfreude over the misfortunes of a certain former vice presidential nominee (and half-term governor of Alaska), doesn't it? Well, that'll all have to wait for the end of this column, where we will be supplanting our normal talking points section with a few choice conservative reviews of Sarah Palin's recent speech in Iowa. But before we dive into this snarktastic dessert of vicious quips, we've first got to get through the meat and potatoes of the politics of the week.
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[ Posted Friday, January 16th, 2015 – 17:58 UTC ]
This was a busy week in politics, as the Republicans in the new Congress began a bout of legislating and President Obama ramped up his agenda in preparation for next Tuesday's big speech to Congress and the country. So let's just dive in to the week that was, shall we?
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[ Posted Monday, January 12th, 2015 – 16:31 UTC ]
The New York Times disclosed over the weekend that federal prosecutors have recommended that the Justice Department should bring charges against former general and C.I.A. director David Petraeus. Unless President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder (or his successor) want to be seen as flaming hypocrites, Petraeus must now be prosecuted.
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[ Posted Friday, January 9th, 2015 – 18:13 UTC ]
Je suis Charlie. In fact, let's go even further: Nous sommes Charlie Hebdo. Because we are all Charlie, this week.
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[ Posted Friday, December 26th, 2014 – 19:14 UTC ]
Welcome back to our annual year-end awards column!
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[ Posted Monday, November 10th, 2014 – 18:04 UTC ]
Politico has an interesting article up which details the efforts in the liberal political donor camp to come up with something to combat the influence of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. The new liberal counterpart will be named the State Innovation Exchange, or "SiX." Creative capitalization seems to be their first innovation.
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[ Posted Friday, October 24th, 2014 – 17:58 UTC ]
A program note, before we get started: there will be no Friday Talking Points column next week. We have to make room for our traditional Hallowe'en column, where we try to scare the pants off of everyone across the political spectrum with spooky tales of what the upcoming election might mean (plus, we get to show off our politically-inspired Jack-o-lanterns). So don't miss that, but the Friday Talking Points column won't be back until after the election.
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[ Posted Friday, August 29th, 2014 – 17:25 UTC ]
President Obama gave a press conference recently, and -- since it is still the political Silly Season -- got a lot of media attention. For what he was wearing. No, seriously. Washington was all a-twitter (or even a-Twitter) because Obama wore a suit that was not dark blue or black. While some may smack their heads over the idiocy of what passes as the Washington press corps, the right thing to do is to celebrate how males have finally reached sartorial equality with women, when viewed by political "journalists." This is not a backhanded compliment, I hasten to point out, it is meant as a backhanded insult. Because it is always insulting to a politician to focus on what she (or, now, he) is wearing, instead of reporting on the substance of her words and actions. This has been going on for women in politics for exactly as long as women have been in American politics, right up to Hillary Clinton's pantsuits and Sarah Palin's shopping spree. All women know this -- they will be judged on what they wear, sometimes more than what they say or do. Especially female politicians. President Obama is just getting a tiny taste of what women have had to put up with in the political arena since Day One. So I choose to celebrate this new equality (of the idiocy of the political press), and the closing of this particular part of the gender gap.
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