SEE UPDATE/CORRECTION BELOW Today is International Beer Day,* and if you’re a lover of fine micro-brews (and I know you are), you have but one person to thank. No, not Jim Koch. The person you must thank is none other than former President Jimmy Carter. E.D. Kain explains: To make a long story short, prohibition led to the dismantling of many small breweries around the nation. When prohibition was lifted, government tightly regulated the market, and small scale producers were essentially shut out of the beer market altogether. Regulations imposed at the time greatly benefited the large...
Continue reading...United States
The Party of Lincoln, or the Party of Jefferson Davis?
Steve Benan on recent Republican efforts to revisit the 14th Amendment: Take a moment to consider what’s become fairly common in GOP circles of late. A sitting Republican congressman and governor have openly speculated about secession. A Senate candidate in Nevada has raised the specter of armed insurrection against the United States government. A Senate candidate in Kentucky has spoken out against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota believes states should be able to ignore federal laws they don’t like. None of these developments have drawn even mild rebukes from the party...
Continue reading...Sharron Angle believes Democrats are breaking the First Commandment
I may have ended my last post by noting that there is, indeed, nothing new under the sun. However, this sounds actually novel to me. Sharron Angle, the Republican vying to unseat Harry Reid in the Senate, who has said some ridiculous things in the past, is accusing the Democratic leadership—President Obama, Reid, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—of making the government into a god and thereby breaking the First Commandment. Jon Ralston reports that in an April 21 interview with TruNews Christian Radio’s Rick Wiles, Angle said: “And these programs that you mentioned — that Obama has...
Continue reading...Colorado Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes warns that bike-sharing is a nefarious international conspiracy
Dan Maes, Republican gubernatorial candidate and current tea party favorite for the nomination, thinks that bike sharing programs are a plot to give cities U.N control. Months ago, Denver mayor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat who is also running for governor, helped start a large-scale bike-sharing program in Denver. At first, Maes liked it, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that it was just a nefarious conspiracy. From the Denver Post: Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes is warning voters that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s policies, particularly his efforts to boost bike riding, are...
Continue reading...Triumph for Religious Tolerance
I was glad to hear that the New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission has voted to allow the construction to move forward for an Islamic Center near ground zero. The plan is moving ahead despite vehement protests from the usual suspects (Sarah Palin, calling for a “refudiation” of the mosque, Newt Gingrich, et al.), as well as some less likely suspects (the Anti-Defamation League, as Pop mentioned in yesterday’s Morning Constitutional, objected to the location of the Islamic Center, saying that its construction “in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain...
Continue reading...Tennessee gubernatorial candidate Basil Marceaux finally has an official campaign ad
That’s right! He’s got an official ad up on the YouTubes. It’s rather amazing, as expected. He’d rather lose than take campaign contributions, so I can’t imagine it’ll be on TV anytime soon (with the exception of news or Tosh 2.0), sadly.
Continue reading...Sharron Angle promises to bring Senate business to a halt
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s reelection hopes are probably about 50/50 right now, and now his main message to hopefully tip the prospect in his favor is that only he has the clout to deliver federal money and assistance to Nevada. Sharron Angle, on the other hand, is employing an only slightly different strategy. She challenges that as a Senator, she can do a lot to stop the legislative process, thereby killing any bill the Democrats offer, popular or not. As reported in the Las Vegas Review Journal, Angle told a gathering of about 200 Republicans: Angle...
Continue reading...What happened to cap and trade?
David Roberts at Grist places the blame on the Senate’s failure to pass climate legislation not on environmentalists, but on the broken political situation in the Senate itself: But step back for a moment and think about it. Climate and clean energy are incredibly difficult issues for any number of reasons. Yet environmentalists pulled together a huge coalition of businesses, religious groups, military groups, unions, and social justice groups. They got a majority of U.S. citizens on their side, as polls repeatedly showed. And — here’s the kicker — on the back of all that work, they...
Continue reading...Poem of the Week
Have you ever before encountered a poem with a camel in it? I hadn’t. Man and Camel by Mark Strand On the eve of my fortieth birthday I sat on the porch having a smoke when out of the blue a man and a camel happened by. Neither uttered a sound at first, but as they drifted up the street and out of town the two of them began to sing. Yet what they sang is still a mystery to me— the words were indistinct and the tune too ornamental to recall. Into the desert they went...
Continue reading...Connecticut Senate candidate Rob Simmons wants to remind you he's still in the race
< Today’s Hartford Courant, the largest newspaper in Connecticut, makes an interesting endorsement today: Former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons has a gold-plated public-service resume. His votes over time have been in line with the mostly moderate traditions of the Republican Party in Connecticut. It is for those reasons that The Courant’s editorial board, with hesitation, recommends that Republican voters in the Aug. 10 primary choose Mr. Simmons to be their standard-bearer in the fall election for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Christopher J. Dodd. Interesting because, well, it’d be a surprise to many in Connecticut...
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