Tomorrow night, President Donald Trump will give his first official State Of The Union speech. The White House is leaking that his speech will be the first where he reaches out in an attempt to unify the country and offer bipartisan leadership to Congress. That is a pretty tall order for this particular president, for obvious reasons. But even if he manages to deliver an impressive speech, it's not likely to change anything afterwards. At least not in the way of actual bipartisan legislation, since Democrats are not likely to strike such deals right before a midterm election that could put them in a much better bargaining position afterwards.

Continue Reading »

American women were in the news this week in a big way, on both sides of the political aisle. Last weekend, millions of women took to the streets to protest, once again, Donald Trump sitting in the Oval Office. By the end of the week, a Republican Senate candidate in Missouri was making headlines for his rather Neanderthal views on, as he put it, "modern womanhood."

Continue Reading »

We're all on the brink of entering a brave new world of self-driving cars, but what few have bothered to point out is that we're going to have to come up with an equally brave new world of legal liability in order to do so. Because nobody's really got an answer to a very basic legal question: if a self-driving car causes an accident, who gets sued? Who pays for damages and injuries? These are basic questions, but the answers are going to get complicated pretty fast.

Continue Reading »

The state of Vermont has just made some history. It has become the first state in the Union to legalize the recreational adult use of marijuana through its legislature. There was no citizens' referendum where the people voted the new law in; instead, representative democracy worked as designed -- a clear majority of Vermonters were in favor of legalization and their elected representatives actually represented this viewpoint by changing the law. This is important because there are many states like Vermont (24 in total) where the direct democracy of ballot initiatives never took hold. When the people can't directly vote on the issue, it is up to the state government to act, to put it another way. Vermont will become the ninth state with legal recreational marijuana this July, when the new law takes effect. Over one-fifth of the American population now lives where weed is legal. Marijuana legalization can now be said to have reached -- and passed -- the tipping point. There is no going back, at this point, to the failed War On Weed, which has been waged for approximately the last century of American history. All that is really left to happen is for the federal government to wake up to this new reality. That may still take a few years, but at this point it has to be seen as all but inevitable.

Some might call such a proclamation premature. But at this point it is really hard to see how anyone can reverse this tide, even that infamous weed-hater Attorney General Jeff Sessions. There are just too many legal pot smokers and too many other citizens who have seen that life has not appreciably changed after legalization. All the horror stories that were supposed to have happened by now have not, in fact, happened. This is largely due to the fact that the drug warriors have been flat-out lying about the demon weed for almost the entire century that marijuana was illegal. Go see Reefer Madness if you need any proof of this exhaustive propaganda campaign's history. The public has been fed a steady diet of lies about marijuana ever since it was originally demonized as the way Mexican laborers and African-American jazz musicians were destroying American society from within. Again, these are historical facts, easily available for anyone to peruse. The War On Weed didn't just become racist, it actually began with racist motivations.

Continue Reading »

Congressional Republicans are reportedly (and not too unsurprisingly) gearing up to run their midterm election campaign on their only significant legislative achievement to date, the tax cut bill. Democrats are also fighting for the battle of public perception over what the bill accomplished (and didn't), and the public is probably going to be rather malleable on the issue right up to the election (and beyond). Because the real effect of the tax code changes -- both good and bad -- won't be realized by most taxpayers for over a year.

Right now, Americans are getting important tax documents in their mailboxes. By the end of this month, everyone is supposed to have all the tax info they need to begin to fill out their 2017 returns. Some will do so quickly, although many will wait until the last minute in mid-April. Either way, nothing will have changed. The new tax laws don't take effect until the 2018 tax year. So while taxes will be on people's minds for the next few months, nothing much will have changed on their current tax forms from last year's returns.

Starting in February, though, everyone's paycheck will begin to be affected by the new tax law. However, the Internal Revenue Service has been struggling with all the momentous changes Congress passed, so the withholding tables may actually be wrong for millions of people. What everyone is supposed to do (but many won't) is to run their numbers through a quick calculation to see if enough taxes are being withheld, and if not, to adjust them with their company's payroll department so the withholding amount is correct. This presupposes a level of dedication that many taxpayers just don't have, though. So most will just trust that the payroll folks are getting their numbers right.

Continue Reading »

The Senate Democrats ended their government shutdown today, not with a bang but with a whimper. They did not achieve their stated objective, to force a vote on a bill to save the DACA program, but they did at least raise awareness of the issue in Washington, so it can't conveniently be swept under a rug for the foreseeable future. The moderates and the Democratic Senate leadership point to a rather squishy promise made by Mitch McConnell to hold a floor vote on a DACA bill at some point in the next two months, which was apparently enough of a commitment to assuage the fears of a majority of Democratic senators for now. But lost in all the recriminations is one glaring question: what about the House?

Before we get to that, though, let's take a look at where Democrats currently find themselves. The Dreamers and their advocates are pretty upset with the party, and they have good reason to be angry. When President Trump announced he was singlehandedly ending the DACA program, Democrats swore up and down it would be one of their highest priorities in Congress. They promised that they wouldn't agree to a budget unless the DACA problem was fixed by the end of 2017. Since they made those promises, they voted -- twice -- to kick the budget can down the road without addressing DACA (once in early December, once at the end of December). This was a slap in the face to the Dreamers, so they were already pretty upset with congressional Democrats even before the recent shutdown.

Continue Reading »

Where we find ourselves as a nation: this week, the not-at-all-liberal Wall Street Journal broke the story that Donald Trump paid off a porn star mere days before the 2016 election, to the tune of $130,000, to keep her silence about an affair they had right after he had married his third wife. It was later revealed by In Touch Weekly magazine that Trump had compared the porn star (stage name: Stormy Daniels) favorably with his daughter. And yet this news didn't even really break onto the front pages. After one year of President Trump, such a revelation is considered minor news, in other words. That's where we find ourselves as a nation, folks.

Continue Reading »

As I write this, the House of Representatives appears to be ready to hold a vote on the one-month budget extension (continuing resolution), which likely means Paul Ryan has successfully twisted enough arms of the Freedom Caucus (né Tea Partiers) and now has the votes he needs to get the bill passed. Up until a few hours ago, even this was uncertain, showing how Republicans are struggling even among themselves to get anything done. And that's before the bill goes over to the Senate, where it will likely die. Will this lead to a government shutdown tomorrow night? Or will some last-minute deal be struck to keep the doors open? At this point, nobody knows.

If a shutdown comes to pass, the next thing on the agenda in Washington will be the blame game. Both sides will be spinning like crazy, hoping that the public buys their version of events. Who will succeed is an open question, at this point. But what few in the media are bothering to point out is that this didn't just appear out of the blue. What preceded it is indeed the real problem.

Continue Reading »

Last night, Democrats successfully flipped another state legislature seat, this time in Wisconsin. This was a pretty stunning upset, and one that bodes well for Democratic chances this November in the congressional midterm elections. Their continuing string of victories in special elections just adds fuel to the speculation that this year will see a rather large Democratic "wave election" cycle. There are, of course, no guarantees, but so far things continue to look very good for Democratic candidates.

Continue Reading »

As Congress returns to Washington, the question on everyone's mind is whether the federal government will shut down Friday night or whether some sort of deal (whether long or short term) can be agreed to at the last minute. As of this writing, it's impossible to tell what the outcome will be, but then that is the very nature of such games of brinksmanship. If there wasn't an edge to be close to, then there wouldn't be any threat, to put it another way.

While the Republicans control the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House, they do not have big enough majorities to just pass whatever they want without Democratic input. They will need at least nine Senate Democrats to agree with any plan for it to successfully pass. This gives Democrats some major leverage in the negotiations.

Will the Democrats play hardball and demand that a DACA fix pass before any budget extension can be voted on? If so, it could indeed lead to a shutdown. So far, the Democratic leadership has shied away from making this demand explicit, although many rank-and-file Democrats in both the House and Senate have already sworn they will not vote on a budget bill until DACA is fixed. But no accurate whip count seems to exist as to how many of them feel that strongly. I did hear one Democrat proclaim that "a majority of the Democratic caucus" had taken this stand, but that may not be enough to block a last-minute deal.

Continue Reading »