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4 Things Congress Could Learn From NHL Hockey
Tweet Share on Facebook April 6, 2011 Comment (4)It’s April, so I naturally have two matters competing for attention in my brain: the budget impasse, and hockey. And as I frantically calculate the scenarios under which my favorite Buffalo Sabres will make it into the playoffs, the thought occurs to me that Congress might do better if it adopted some of the rules and tenets of hockey.
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Paul Ryan Ignores Polls, Shows Leadership in Budget Debate
Tweet Share on Facebook April 5, 2011 Comment (22)You have to hand it to Rep. Paul Ryan. He clearly doesn’t read the polls, or doesn’t care what they say.
That is the sort of snide comment often used in the political and media worlds to deride policymakers for offering up unpopular ideas. But in our ridiculously poll-driven, finger-in-the-wind climate in Washington, Ryan’s behavior displays an unusual courage and leadership in the budget battle.
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Terry Jones Koran Burning Abuses the Constitution
Tweet Share on Facebook April 4, 2011 Comment (65)Efforts to pass a constitutional amendment banning flag-burning have, thankfully, not been successful. Approve an amendment banning burning of the flag, and you might as well burn the U.S. Constitution while you’re at it. That’s the point of the First Amendment; even stupid "speech" is protected.
But it’s still stupid, and stupider, still, when a previously-obscure pastor at a tiny Florida church burns a Koran.
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'Government Shutdown Prevention Act' Undermines Democracy
Tweet Share on Facebook April 1, 2011 Comment (13)Legal training is not a requirement to serve in Congress, although many of the members are, and have been, lawyers. Nor is it necessary for a House or Senate member to have served in another government post, although many have, and their experience at forging alliances and compromises has been helpful. We no longer have literacy tests for voters, a technique southern states used until the 1960s, effectively to disenfranchise African-American voters.
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How Will GE Not Paying Taxes Help the Economy?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 30, 2011 Comment (16)There’s a fatal flaw in conservatives’ mission to spur the economy by giving tax breaks to business and to the wealthy: what does one do about General Electric?
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Libya is More Like Kosovo Than Iraq or Vietnam
Tweet Share on Facebook March 29, 2011 Comment (19)No one wants "another Vietnam," the buzzphrase for a protracted conflict with no clear mission or definition of success. And no one (anymore) wants another Iraq, which has turned out to be far longer, and far more expensive, in terms of both human lives and money, than one assumes the Bush administration had anticipated. Nor does anyone want another Bosnia, where the international community dithered for a year while former Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic slaughtered his own countrymen.
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From Geraldine Ferraro to Michele Bachmann--How Far Women Have Come
Tweet Share on Facebook March 28, 2011 Comment (4)It was truly an exciting moment in history, and one that I assumed, in my collegiate naivete, was the beginning--finally--of what would surely be true equality for women in the workforce and in politics. Yet the death last week of Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 1984, reminds us that we are far from achieving basic parity between the sexes, even more than a quarter century later.
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Attacks on Obama Over Libya Are About 2012 Politics
Tweet Share on Facebook March 25, 2011 Comment (11)President Obama dithered too long before deciding what to do in Libya. Or maybe he rushed in too quickly, failing to consult properly with Congress before joining an international military mission to protect Libyan citizens from slaughter by barely-hanging-on Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi. Worse, he violated the Constitution by making a unilateral decision to commit American military forces to the mission without getting prior approval from Congress.
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Remembering Elizabeth Taylor: Actress, AIDS Activist
Tweet Share on Facebook March 23, 2011 Comment (3)I’m not one to react when some actor or musician dies. I didn’t light a vigil candle for Kurt Cobain, and Michael Jackson’s death, while certainly unfortunate and untimely in terms of his age, seemed to me like a tragedy waiting to happen. So I’ve been asking myself why I felt a stab of sadness at the passing of Elizabeth Taylor.
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Japan Disaster Reignites U.S. Nuclear Energy Debate
Tweet Share on Facebook March 22, 2011 Comment (6)The tragedy in Japan has given new life to the anti-nuclear movement, as many Americans who had not thought about a potential nuclear disaster in decades have started to worry about the effects of radiation from a nuclear accident (not to mention the question of where to store the spent fuel rods). The question is, will the episode cause us to fundamentally change our energy-use habits?
