A quick question for a rainy (oh so rainy) Sunday afternoon With all the glibertarian bloggerati* out there, blathering on about the government stealing their prodigious assets and other sundries, and encroaching further and further into our daily affairs, how is it that none of them ever voiced any concern about the fact that the Washington fat cats think they can control time itself? I mean this, mostly, as a joke, but if I were truly concerned about government intervening in things with which it has no rightful business, surely the machinations of the sun and earth...
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Enjoy your brand new Parliament!
So, I read Pop’s post on bipartisanship with interest, and I just wanted to add a comment or two. I mostly want to say that I think Pops is mostly right, but doesn’t go far enough. It’s true that it’s good to have varying viewpoints in the discussion, and he’s right to say that at least to this point that viewpoint has come from conservative Democrats rather than liberal Republicans, but I don’t think that’s due to some coincidence. The fact is that in the initial votes in the Senate and House, the controlling vote was owned...
Continue reading...Pay for sex?
So, I discovered today that the NPR iPod app gives me access to recordings of many recent Intelligence Squared debates, so I spent a good chunk of the day listening to a few of them. Quite a few of them were really interesting and entertaining, and if you haven’t already, I would definitely recommend them. One in particular drew my attention, though not because it was particularly good, but because I felt like the debaters dropped the ball on a key point. The question was “Is it wrong to pay for sex?” The debate broke down along...
Continue reading...and I don't like Star Wars
Every year, when the weather is just warm enough to ditch the jacket and sweater for a few hours in the middle of the day, I get nostalgic for bicycling. I was never a competitive biker, or even particularly good at it, but I love it. It has been a few years since I lived in a bike-friendly city, but D.C. looks promising. This post was going to lament the lack of bike lanes in the city, but today the Post reported that L, I , additional bits of 15th and parts of Pennsylvania Ave. are getting...
Continue reading...Morning Constitutional – Wednesday, 10 March 2010
Good morning, everybody. Nomar’s retiring as a Red Sox, Lindsay Lohan is suing, and De Niro’s going to play Vince Lombardi. Now, enjoy your morning constitutional: Teen star Corey Haim died of an apparent overdose in Los Angeles last night. An Associated Press-GfK poll shows the President is still more popular than Congress. In Wichita, a man paid a crack dealer with Monopoly money. Unsurprisingly, the dealer wasn’t happy about it. The arrest of a Pennsylvania woman in October for trying to recruit Islamic terrorists on sites like YouTube raises questions about homegrown terrorism. Bike directions have...
Continue reading...Happy Gay Marriage Day, D.C.
Today’s the day that equal marriage really begins in D.C., and the Associated Press predicts that up to 150 same-sex couples are eligible today to wed. So, the best from us at V+V to all of you in D.C. finally being able to say your vows to those you love today. (Same-sex marriage was made legal last Wednesday, but there is a three-day waiting period from applying for a marriage license to getting one. Hence, today’s the first day.) Update: DCist has more about the first few same-sex wedding around the city today: The Post reported earlier that...
Continue reading...Process stories
Interestingly enough, today’s New York Times front page contains only two mentions of “health care.” One is a letter to the editor, while the other is a link to a Paul Krugman blog post. I mention this, mostly because I discovered this odd fact while looking for yesterday’s piece which did appear on the front page (as well as page A1 of the print version): “Obama Turns Up the Volume in Health Care Bid.” And I mention this because the story, probably the most important story of the day on an issue that is arguably the most...
Continue reading...Morning Constitutional – Tuesday, 9 March 2010
Good morning, everybody. Betty White’s going to host SNL, T.I. drops a new single, and Sean Penn might hope you die screaming of rectal cancer. Now, on to your morning constitutional: In California, Republican state Sen. Roy Ashburn, arrested for drunk driving this weekend after leaving a gay nightclub, admitted Monday that he is, in fact, gay. The Christian Science Monitor asks where gay Republicans fit among conservatives. Elizabeth Green, in The New York Times Magazine, asks what makes a good teacher. Despite a Texas Republican primary last week that drew the most GOP voters in at...
Continue reading...How the scurvy cure was lost
Over at Idle Words, a fascinating story about the history of scurvy, and how the cure, which was basically discovered in 1747, was somehow not well-known even as late as Robert Falcon Scott’s 1911 expedition to the South Pole. Now, I had been taught in school that scurvy had been conquered in 1747, when the Scottish physicianJames Lind proved in one of the first controlled medical experiments that citrus fruits were an effective cure for the disease. From that point on, we were told, the Royal Navy had required a daily dose of lime juice to be...
Continue reading...Ready to die
With so much coverage over the past several months of the Green Revolution in Iran, it’s easy to forget how often disputed election results occur in nascent democracies, how often this leads to street-level protests, which end up, far too frequently, with street-level violence. And even without violence, disputed election results, whether caused by wholesale corruption in the worst cases, or honest mistakes in the best cases, damage presidencies and the overall reputation of democracy. Most recently, Afghanistan’s disputed election last year has undermined President Karzai’s government, while the disputed 2000 election in the United States—arguably the...
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