Category Archive for 'Politics'

On the FairTax

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

I’ve not read the original FairTax book, and have only flipped through the follow-up written to answer the critics, but I have spent many hours reading about it online over the years, and back when I listened to Boortz of course he pushed it. At the moment, I don’t see it as workable and I [...]

It wasn’t torture when America did it.

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Suuure. Salon’s Mark Benjamin on what our last Vice President has described as “a dunk in the water”. Disturbing.
Also looks like Obama’s (unsurprisingly) caving on civilian trials. Nothing says “rule of law” like pre-trial torture sessions and determining location and rule of court by political theater. KSM may be a mass murdering bastard, but aren’t [...]

Is Detroit the Outcome of Liberalism?

Friday, January 15th, 2010

Lately Detroit’s terrible situation is given as proof that liberalism inevitably leads to cities lying in ruin with high unemployment, high crime, poor education outcomes, etc.

HOPE Turns Into a Bill

Sunday, January 10th, 2010

Sent to my House Representative Corrine Brown (links added here):
Ms. Brown,
I encourage you to support H.R. 4055, Honest Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE) Initiative Act of 2009. Hawaiian Judge Alm’s probation and parole reform program has shown we can significantly reduce both crime and imprisonment.
The program is a clear winner all around: States save prison [...]

A Bad Precedent?

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

While Microsoft has certainly used unlawful practices in the past to build the Windows empire, I fail to see how Opera’s EU antitrust case was anything more than a thinly veiled (and successful) attempt by Opera—and later additional competitors—to strong-arm Microsoft into directly promoting their products.
Users of Microsoft’s ubiquitous Windows operating system in Europe who [...]

Moyers Considers Similarities Between Afghanistan and Pre-War Vietnam

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

Bill Moyers treats us to LBJ’s telephone recordings, highlighting some of the similarities between today and the days before our escalation in Vietnam. I wish we could hear the conversations of all our presidents like this. Moyer’s concludes with this:
Now in a different world, at a different time, and with a different president, we face [...]

Latest 9/11 Victim: our Justice System

Friday, November 20th, 2009

Greenwald makes a pretty convincing case that Bush/Obama’s “justice system” for accused terrorists is merely for display purposes only.
If you’re accused of being a Terrorist, there’s not one set procedure used to determine your guilt; instead, the Government has a roving bazaar of various processes which it, in its sole discretion, picks for you based [...]

More Cannabis Research Around the Corner?

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Today almost no credible evidence suggests that cannabis belongs on Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, alongside drugs like heroin. This position has stifled medical research of the drug and its component chemicals for 39 years, making research extremely expensive and arbitrarily difficult to secure compared to that of much more harmful drugs.
A few [...]

Reasonable People May Not Show

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

(Obviously started in August)
In the age of Glenn Beck, the town hall meeting paradigm is just the anonymous web forum with no moderator. The people interested in genuine discussion won’t go near it, and “socialist!” is the new “yr gay”. To this extent the tea party folks have certainly been successful at churning out viral [...]

Morning Edition is not the O’Reilly Factor

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep is often an excellent interviewer, but his behavior in this “interview” with Republican chairman Michael Steele was awful (and many commenters seem to agree). This morning I only heard the last 30 seconds or so and it was painful. I tried to listen again and could only stand a [...]