Good morning, everyone. Idol\’s down to a dirty dozen, Corey\’s heart was just too big, and Leno\’s back at number one. Now, on to your morning constitutional: From the bad-ass files: In New York state, a 91-year-old pharmacy cashier gets punched fending off a thief, refuses medical attention, says she doesn\’t want to just \”sit there and be bored.\” From the \”Science is freaking crazy\” files, NASA says that the Chilean earthquake may have actually shifted Earth\’s axis. Yesterday, Sens. Dick Durbin and Jeff Sessions announced they had reached a compromise on eliminating the 200-1 sentencing disparity...
Continue reading...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...A two-party system
If the recent debate over health care reform has taught us anything, it is that the U.S. does still have a functional two-party system. The two parties, however, are not the Democrats and Republicans, but the Democrats and the Democrats. This is not to suggest that his is necessarily a bad thing—for the Democratic Party or America. The Republicans may have a substantial 41-member minority in the Senate, but being tied to their strategy of obstruction, just saying no, and refusing to cooperate or even compromise, have rendered themselves utterly and completely irrelevant. Consequently, the two teams...
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...Morning Constitutional – Thursday, 11 March 2010
Good morning, everybody. Charlie Sheen says it never happened, and A.C. Slater is having a baby. Now, enjoy your morning constitutional: The Virginia General Assembly has moved to make it illegal for the government to require people to buy health insurance, a move clearly in response to current health reform efforts in Washington. Girl in Mississippi wants to bring her girlfriend to the prom. School\’s response: Cancel prom. Ezra Klein gives an interesting history of the filibuster. It even involves Aaron Burr, a personal hero of mine. Chile inaugurates a new president today, conservative billionaire Sebastian Pinera....
Continue reading...1,000 lawyers in a deep sea trench…
I think I’d like to make basketball the subject of my inaugural post. You see, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the negotiations leading up to agreeing on a new collective bargaining agreement. There a lot of points of contention, lots of issues to be hashed out, but the gist of it is that the owners are feeling pinched by decreased revenues owing to the recession, and are looking to cut their personnel costs. This, to sort of stop before I even start, is total nonsense, see here. But what’s interesting to me is the owner...
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...Reader response time
Got a very nice email from a reader: I read your recent post about the possible fraud in Togo’s 2010 election, and your insight of the importance of democracy and deep concerns really impressed me. I think you might find this video interesting. Along with the point you mentioned in your post about how this election could be fraud and how this process could be really hard to challenge in such a political climate, this video covers from many perspectives about the current battle for power and people’s protests, it also briefly touches on Togo’s political history,...
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...Crack Rock or a Jump Shot
In the school where I work, there’s a fifth grader who wears a Notorious B.I.G. jacket. There are a few staff who covet it. Though I don’t say anything, I’m one of them. The boy is 11. Biggie Smalls died 13 years ago, today. He doesn’t know anything about Biggie. Couldn’t name an album or even a track, couldn’t give me any 16 bars, let alone 16 Bars. I want to talk about it with him, to school him on Biggie, to get on his level in a way I can’t with their hip-hop idols. God knows...
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