[ Posted Wednesday, May 7th, 2014 – 17:23 UTC ]
Today's article title is meant as commentary on the media's overreactions to the first big round of primary election results (announced last night), and not any sort of supportive call to arms. Just to be clear up front, in case anyone was expecting a very different sort of article. It really should read "The Tea Party Is Dead / Long Live The Tea Party," since it represents a clear dichotomy in how pundits reacted to the primary results. Since the Tea Party candidates didn't do very well (and even that's putting it charitably) in this first big round of primaries, many are now proclaiming total victory for the Establishment Republican faction of the Republican Party, and an absolute rout of the Tea Party faction. The second way of interpreting the results warns that rumors of the Tea Party's death are premature, and that what really happened was that the Tea Party's takeover bid for the entire Republican Party is now a complete success. The Tea Party won, this way of thinking goes, because they have now become the Republican Party.
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[ Posted Tuesday, May 6th, 2014 – 15:29 UTC ]
Paying handsome salaries for full-time religious officials in both houses of Congress is nothing short of an anachronism. Any member of Congress seeking spiritual guidance has many modern methods to communicate with the religious leaders of their choice, without taxpayers having to foot the bill for it. So while the argument rages over opening prayers, my question is a more practical one: why are we still paying these guys to morally instruct our legislators?
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[ Posted Friday, May 2nd, 2014 – 16:55 UTC ]
There was a lot of political news this week, most of it pretty good for Democrats. In the Senate, Democrats forced Republicans to filibuster a minimum wage bill (more on that in a bit), and then the week ended with some very good news in the unemployment numbers.
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[ Posted Tuesday, April 29th, 2014 – 16:03 UTC ]
I speak out today in support of a Tea Party candidate.
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[ Posted Friday, April 25th, 2014 – 16:24 UTC ]
There were two political stampedes this week, both towards and then back away from the same man: rancher Cliven Bundy. Bundy was a strange hero for conservative Republicans to adopt, since he is essentially fighting for his right to be a "taker" (in "conservativese") from the federal government -- a right that he refuses to pay for, and by doing so has broken the law. So he's a law-breaker and he wants to mooch off the public for free -- two traits which conservatives routinely rail against. I guess conservative Republicans can be forgiven, since there was all the excitement of guns and going toe-to-toe with the dastardly gummint agents -- which always causes conservative hearts to swoon.
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[ Posted Thursday, April 24th, 2014 – 16:42 UTC ]
Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has a new book out. In it, he proposes six new amendments to the United States Constitution. Three of these would change language in either the text of the Constitution or its amendments, and the other three are additions to the Constitution's text.
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[ Posted Wednesday, April 23rd, 2014 – 17:10 UTC ]
The people who see everything through the lens of partisan politics are currently playing a rather crass game which might be called "guess the date of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's retirement." We'll get to the reasons for playing this game in a bit, but first the point must be made that Justice Ginsburg can stay right where she is for as long as she damn well feels like it. Which is entirely how it should be. Short of impeachment, the decision is hers and hers alone, as the Constitution demands. It matters not one tiny bit what anyone else thinks about her decision, which includes bored pundits looking to stir the partisan pot a bit in a slow news week.
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[ Posted Tuesday, April 22nd, 2014 – 17:14 UTC ]
Today is Earth Day, and I'd like to take the occasion to give some credit to an oft-maligned group of people: hippies. I say this in all seriousness, without a trace of condescension or irony whatsoever, since they regularly get that sort of thing elsewhere (by the truckload). I say it because the radicals known as hippies have actually been amazingly victorious in changing American culture in all sorts of ways -- even though they seldom get any credit for pioneering ideas that were once considered (at best) "far out," but are now so mainstream that they fit comfortably in every suburb across the land. And Earth Day is a perfect time to do so, since it is the "hippiest" (to coin a phrase) of all the modern holidays and celebrations.
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[ Posted Friday, April 18th, 2014 – 17:24 UTC ]
Three hundred of these columns? To coin a phrase... far out, man.
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[ Posted Thursday, April 17th, 2014 – 17:20 UTC ]
Over the past five or ten years, Democratic politicians have all but completed a full evolution (to use President Obama's term) on the subject of gay marriage. In 2008, both Hillary Clinton and Obama were against gay marriage. In the 2012 election, Obama came out in support while Hillary did so about a nanosecond after she stepped down as Secretary of State. It is now getting tougher and tougher for any Democratic politician to not support gay marriage. As I said, the evolution is almost complete within the party. The question I now ask is how long that evolution is going to take on a different subject: marijuana reform.
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