[ Posted Tuesday, April 7th, 2015 – 16:58 UTC ]
Senator Rand Paul announced today (to absolutely nobody's surprise) that he is running for the Republican presidential nomination for 2016. He joins only one other official candidate, Senator Ted Cruz, who made his own announcement a few weeks ago. On the Democratic side, nobody has officially thrown their hat in the ring. Such announcements are happening much later this presidential cycle, due to quirky financial advantages of our crazy campaign finance legal system (if it can even be called that, anymore, after the Supreme Court's evisceration). But I'm getting distracted, and veering off the topic at hand, which is paying proper attention to those candidates who actually are declared candidates. Since nobody else has officially stepped up to the podium yet, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul deserve at least a moment in the spotlight.
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[ Posted Monday, April 6th, 2015 – 16:49 UTC ]
Not since the line "Let them eat cake!" was supposedly uttered have delicious baked goods been so central to a political upheaval. Yes, we have entered what might be called the political era of "Cake Wars," it seems. Now, I don't mean to trivialize an important civil rights issue by relegating it to the dessert cart (as it were). But with all the political frenzy about both religious freedom and discrimination, the pundits always seem to come back to the same classic case: a baker contemplating whether to bake a cake for a gay wedding. It reduces the moral and legal arguments to a case that is both easy to understand and downright ordinary. What strikes me, though, while listening to the argument rage, is that most people on both sides of this argument haven't really come to grips with the larger implications of what they're advocating. To stretch the metaphor one last time, things could get a lot messier, as when a mischievous spouse mashes a slice of cake into their newly-wedded loved one's face at the reception (an admittedly bizarre ritual some couples feel honor-bound to perform, for the entertainment of their guests). That's right, folks -- the Cake Wars haven't actually gotten sticky enough, yet.
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[ Posted Friday, April 3rd, 2015 – 16:49 UTC ]
President Barack Obama is finally earning his Nobel Peace Prize, it seems. A few months back, he announced a major shift in U.S. policy towards Cuba, ending a half-century of frostiness, and this week the outlines of a deal to avoid a war with Iran were unveiled, thawing a relationship that froze over back in 1979. Both of these foreign policy accomplishments go a long way towards deserving the Nobel Peace Prize Obama was prematurely awarded in 2009. At the time, many (this column included) joked that the Nobel committee was really awarding the prize to Obama for the sole achievement of "not being George W. Bush." But it seems now that by the time he ends his term in office, Barack Obama will indeed have earned the world's foremost peacemaker's prize. Since this is Good Friday, perhaps a Bible quotation is in order: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God."
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[ Posted Friday, March 13th, 2015 – 16:56 UTC ]
For the uninformed, Pi Day is a yearly celebration of a date on the calendar, for its numerical significance. It ranks up there among geeky holidays with the fourth of May ("Star Wars Day," since you can go around wishing everyone "May the Fourth be with you!"). The significance is it will be "3/14" (at least in the United States, as Europeans write their dates differently). These are the first three digits in the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, or "pi."
But this year's Pi Day will be the best one for the next 100 years, because a whole bunch of digits will come into play. Pi's value is, to 10 digits: 3.141592653. This year's Pi Day will be 3/14/15. Taking it a step further, just before 9:30 AM tomorrow morning, the date and time will read: 3/14/15 -- 9:26:53. Woo hoo! Best Pi Day of the century!
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[ Posted Thursday, March 12th, 2015 – 18:18 UTC ]
Forty-seven Republicans in the United States Senate caused an uproar this week when they sent an "open letter" to the people running Iran's government. This action was roundly condemned, both here and abroad, for being (at the very least) undiplomatic in the extreme. The Iranian foreign minister dismissed it as a cheap attempt at propaganda, which is to date possibly the most poignant description of the letter. After a few days, even some Republican senators who signed the letter were beginning to admit that it probably hadn't been a good idea.
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[ 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 Friday, March 6th, 2015 – 18:34 UTC ]
The February jobs report is out, and -- once again -- Obamacare has failed to kill all those jobs Republicans warned us about. But we'll get to all of that later, in the talking points, so you'll just have to wait for that.
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[ Posted Monday, March 2nd, 2015 – 16:41 UTC ]
This will be a rather busy week in the political world. We've got the Prime Minister of Israel giving a controversial speech before Congress tomorrow, and then at the end of the week we'll have another round of government shutdown follies, courtesy of the House Republicans. Between these two events, the Supreme Court is going to be busy with a few questions in the political arena. The most prominent of these cases is King v. Burwell, which puts Obamacare back on the docket.
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[ Posted Friday, February 27th, 2015 – 18:58 UTC ]
Mr. Spock is dead. Long live Mr. Spock!
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[ Posted Friday, February 20th, 2015 – 17:56 UTC ]
Hello and welcome back to our Friday political news roundup. I must apologize for not writing one of these columns last week, but I was under the weather and far too sick to type (or think coherently). So the events covered today really encompass the previous two weeks, just to warn everyone in advance. Also, this intro is going to move along at an accelerated clip, because there is a lot to cover. Our awards this week are backwards, and then we've got a rant on the Republicans in Congress who are getting ready to have another government shutdown (because the last one worked so well, right?). But enough overview, let's get on with things.
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