It’s like Patrick Henry famously said, “I support the idea that I should have liberty, so much so that I might prefer death, but that’s not really my choice to make and I understand not everyone will agree with me on that.”
Category: Politics
Aug18
Jun4
An excellent illustration of how the procedural complexities of Congress make it hard for non-wonks to understand what the hell is going on. Even if government were 100% transparent, we’d still need people familiar with parliamentary procedure to “translate” for us.
Apr13
Mr. McDonnell may be compounding the damage by insisting that nonviolent former felons — people convicted of shoplifting and other property crimes, for instance — must do more than just apply to the state if they wish to vote, a process that until now has been time-consuming but generally successful for those who stick with it. Mr. McDonnell would have them submit a letter making the case that they have contributed to society since their release — an utterly arbitrary standard. What’s more, they are asked to explain why they think they should get their rights back. As we see it, the correct answer is: Because they are rights. Period.
Feb20
Bus Route of Tears
Misspelled protest signs have become a strange, hilarious art form over the past year. Terrence Nowicki reminds us that we only laugh at them to hide our own tears.
Feb18
I’m always a little confused by this stuff. Are we supposed to believe that Barack, Michelle, and Anita Dunn are secretly Maoists, but they keep forgetting to actually seize power in a violent coup and instead got confused and put internationally famous neoliberal economist Larry Summers in charge of economic policy?
Dec17
I was saying around the office that I think what was missing from the Lieberman public option sellout deal was a healthy dose of liberal catharsis. Like if Lieberman got the leadership to agree to drop the public option, but in exchange Bernie Sanders gets to slap Lieberman five times in the face as hard as he can.
Nov29
It’s a symptom of something entirely new in the history of science: Aside from crackpots who complain that a conspiracy is suppressing their personal discoveries, we’ve never before seen a set of people accuse an entire community of scientists of deliberate deception and other professional malfeasance.
Oct18
Stay on Target!
Terence Nowicki, Jr., is a freelance editorial cartoonist. Very often I find his take on the news to be more interesting than those of in-house cartoonists at major newspapers.
Sep16
The Senate Finance Committee’s version of the health care bill is out, but only as a 223-page PDF. OpenCongress has translated it to HTML, but David Moore rightly complains that the whole damn process is too convoluted. Because it hasn’t yet been introduced, it’s not available in THOMAS, and even if it were, we’d need the kind souls at OpenCongress and GovTrack to convert it into a usable format. (Even worse: the way we write legislation is stupid. Why do we need three different versions of the bill if they’re all going to be reconciled in conference committee anyway?)
Aug19
How did LaRouche’s ideas make his way to that town hall? Well, his followers are the most interesting part. They are young, usually college aged. They are articulate, and they will present LaRouche’s ideas in what seems to be an intellectually viable light. If you question them, they will become extremely angry. They will not defend their ideas with logic. Instead, they will call you ignorant. They will tell you that their ideas are the only thing in between America and certain doom. They will tell you the only way to learn their ideas is to buy a DVD. The DVD is $25.
