[ Posted Friday, July 8th, 2011 – 15:44 UTC ]
The silly season has come early to Washington, it seems. The root cause is a simple fact of American politics these days -- sometimes, there just can't be transparency. That's a fairly provocative statement, so allow me to explain my reasoning in detail. Then, later on (in the talking points section of our program), we'll get into the option of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and how Obama should be using it right about now. But for now, it's time for a sober assessment of where Washington currently stands.
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[ Posted Friday, June 24th, 2011 – 16:13 UTC ]
Well, it's certainly been an eventful couple of weeks, hasn't it?
We're back on our regular weekly schedule here after returning home from our second trip this month (this one to Netroots Nation), after which I can firmly conclude that flying, these days, sucks. Big time. Sigh.
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[ Posted Friday, June 10th, 2011 – 15:40 UTC ]
Having just gotten back from a trip abroad where the news was dominated by the story of a politician facing severe consequences (and the end of his political career) for his sexual misconduct, I opened up the pages of the American news to find... well, pretty much the same thing.
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[ Posted Friday, April 15th, 2011 – 17:33 UTC ]
Something the media largely missed in the midst of multiple budgetary battles this week was the fact that this is what bipartisanship looks like. The media, at least the "serious" ones, residing either inside the Beltway or in lower Manhattan, have long made much sport out of decrying "partisanship" -- at least, when Democrats act like Democrats, at any rate. Politicians are supposed to "work together" in some Utopian dreamland, to "get serious things done." It sounds great in an editorial, and all of that.
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[ Posted Tuesday, April 12th, 2011 – 16:59 UTC ]
One person who (assumably) won't be celebrating the fifth anniversary of Romneycare is Mitt Romney himself. This is because the entire issue has become the biggest albatross around his neck, politically, as he tosses his hat in the 2012 presidential ring. So don't look for him to be cutting a "Romneycare fifth birthday cake" today. In fact, as far as Romney is concerned, it would be just fine if everyone conveniently forgot about the issue altogether.
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[ Posted Friday, April 8th, 2011 – 16:51 UTC ]
Sigh. What's depressing about the whole thing, to me at least, is how the entire knock-down-drag-out fight is merely the preliminary round. This whole government shutdown walk-to-the-brink-and-stare-into-the-abyss thing is nothing more than the warmup for the next budgetary battles -- which will be much bigger. The entire initial fight is about staking out ground for the next two fights -- raising the debt ceiling, and the 2012 budget. Nobody involved -- not the Tea Party Republicans, not President Obama, not John Boehner, not Harry Reid -- really cares all that much about how this particular round ends up. They're all stuck thinking: "If I give in now, they'll want more later" -- and they're all entirely correct.
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[ Posted Friday, March 25th, 2011 – 17:27 UTC ]
Anyone who sits in the Oval Office -- no matter what their name or political party -- is going to have detractors. As they should, since disagreeing with political leaders is almost the national sport in America, and always has been (sorry, baseball, but political bickering has been around a lot longer). Sometimes criticism of the president is for very principled and deeply-held beliefs. Sometimes, it is just knee-jerk-ism of the first order.
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[ Posted Friday, March 18th, 2011 – 17:22 UTC ]
Here's a quick test for whether you are being fed speculation and fluff, or whether you are being told real information: Are there numbers involved? If so, then thank a scientist (and the editor or producer who allows such science on the air, I guess).
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[ Posted Thursday, March 17th, 2011 – 13:37 UTC ]
Saint Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, lived in the fifth century A.D., and he came to Ireland as a proselytizer for Christianity. That is about the sum total of the known, verifiable facts about Patrick. The rest is myth. Since such mythologizing began only a few hundred years after his death (which happened on March 17, by the way), these myths of Patrick are much more widely known than the thin shreds of his real history (which are limited to two surviving letters written by Patrick in Latin). Besides, it's much more fun to sit around telling these tales over a pint of Guinness than to dig up actual facts. Even if the tales are pure blarney.
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[ Posted Tuesday, March 8th, 2011 – 16:07 UTC ]
[Program Note: I know I just did one of these "re-run" columns last Thursday, and that it is probably way too soon to do another. Sometimes, I re-run columns because I have a dentist's appointment or have to get the car fixed or whatnot, but in both recent cases I am re-running the original column because I think the point made needs making once again. In other words, that the original column is relevant to a contemporary discussion. This week, Republican Representative Pete King is holding hearings in the House of Representatives on Islam and American Muslims. King has, in the past, not only made some rather disparaging comments about Muslims, but has also been on record supporting a terrorist group (the I.R.A.), so he brings a (shall we say) unique perspective to the table. But while we'll have to wait until Thursday to see just what gets said in these hearings, I thought it was pertinent to remind everyone that congressional hearings on religion have indeed happened before in this country. Granted, the situation is not exactly the same, but I feel the following is still instructive. I wrote this column right after Mitt Romney gave a speech on the campaign trail about his religion, for context.]
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