[ 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 Monday, October 13th, 2014 – 17:00 UTC ]
The Catholic Church is contemplating some rather big modernizations, led by the charismatic Pope Francis. How far-reaching such changes wind up being remains to be seen, but so far the indications are that Francis intends to significantly move the Church's direction on a number of subjects. Today's news is a preliminary move toward this new direction (which we'll get to in a minute).
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[ Posted Friday, October 10th, 2014 – 17:37 UTC ]
I address this desperate attempt at communication to any remaining survivors in America of the apocalyptic scourge that is Ebola. Is there anybody still out there? Because, according to my television for the past few weeks, the death rates have been climbing so high that hundreds of millions of Americans should be pushing up the daisies by now. So, with full sorrow for the uncounted lives lost over the past few weeks, I humbly wonder whether anyone is left on the internet to read this lonely missive.
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[ Posted Thursday, October 9th, 2014 – 16:41 UTC ]
One counter to the argument I made in this article (which was basically: "Go Apple! Go Google! Right on!") is to wonder why any upright citizen would object to police searching their photos and data, especially under a court-ordered search. It's not like the cops are going to misuse that data, right?
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[ Posted Tuesday, October 7th, 2014 – 17:28 UTC ]
Today I am taking a victory lap of sorts, because while the term "tipping point" is now in a lot of headlines, I actually predicted this chain of events a year and a half ago, in the column below. That doesn't sound like a whole lot of time, but consider that when I wrote this the following was true:
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[ Posted Friday, September 26th, 2014 – 17:18 UTC ]
Holder certainly had a momentous term in office. Depending on when he is officially replaced, his will either be the fourth-longest or third-longest record as Attorney General in American history. Liberals found him lacking on civil liberties issues (especially in Obama's first term), and conservatives just despised him because he was serving a president they really, really hated (he's also the first Attorney General to be found in contempt of Congress by the House).
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[ Posted Monday, September 22nd, 2014 – 17:09 UTC ]
The prosecution objects. That's one way to put it, at any rate.
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[ Posted Friday, September 19th, 2014 – 16:57 UTC ]
Congress followed up their recent five-week vacation with almost two whole weeks of actually doing their jobs, so to reward themselves they're now going to take off on another vacation. Until mid-November. The American people will show their disgust at this pathetic work ethic by returning upwards of ninety percent of them to office, if this year is anything like a typical one. The big question on everyone's mind is whether the Democrats will hold onto control of the Senate, which will mean two years of gridlock with the Republican House, or whether Republicans will gain control of the Senate, which will mean two years of gridlock with both the Tea Party and the president.
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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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[ Posted Tuesday, August 26th, 2014 – 17:06 UTC ]
The national Democratic Party is reluctant to support divisive issues, at times. They drag their feet until pressured by a significant faction within their own base to stop waffling and take a clear progressive stand. This is pretty much common knowledge, and the same can actually be said to a differing extent for the Republican Party (although you'd have to replace the word "progressive" with "conservative" to make it work). What usually pressures the national party enough to act is when large party donors begin to threaten to turn off the spigot, which puts the flow of money to the national party at significant risk. Gay marriage advocates (for example) had gotten a lot of lip service and lukewarm support from Democrats, right up until they started drawing a line in the sand: no marriage equality support, no more donations. Which led to not only President Obama but the entire Democratic Party quickly "evolving" on the issue. This may now be starting to happen on the subject of marijuana.
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