Waste and Abuse
So, we’ve just narrowly averted — do we avert things in any other way? — we’ve just narrowly averted yet another government shutdown. I can’t help but feel that the magic is gone, and...
Monthly Archive: December 2011
LoOG Exclusive: Ask a Republican
[We premiere a new feature @ LoOG: Republicans are a largely unknown and alien race here.] Few LoOGies observe Republicans in their natural habitat: Talk Radio comes in only through Media Matters’ accounts of...
The problem with [books].
Wired: “One of the biggest complaints about [books] is that they are used to consume, not create. If you give your kid a computer, she can program, write, draw, and endlessly create. [Books] posses...
Hobbes: Notes on Leviathan
Karl Marx once said that he wouldn’t consider himself to be a “Marxist” and reading Leviathan I don’t find that Hobbes was quite as “Hobbesian” as he’s made out to be either. Often, he’s described as...
Why I Will Be Voting for Ron Paul in 2012
Ron Paul is often described as a crank. Even folks like Ross Douthat who write basically sympathetic columns about the congressman from Texas say things like, “Paul, for all his crankishness, is the kind...
Rational’s Not In It
On the new Medicare proposal from Paul Ryan and Ron Wyden, Digby writes: One might have thought the prudent thing would be to wait and see how the health care reforms work before throwing...
Journalism Is More Than Just Quoting Speeches
(Image via The Atlantic: Humvees sit parked in a courtyard at Camp Liberty in Baghdad, on September 30, 2011.(Reuters/Mohammed Ameen) Today, as every major news outlet is reporting, the Iraq war has officially been...
The Great Cases, No. 1
At my sub-blog, I have begun a series of analyses of significant cases in U.S. Supreme Court history. If you’re interested, please drop by and peruse my gloss on Marbury v. Madison. (I described...
How Civil Liberties Die
In a bit of news that obviously isn’t important — it didn’t make the front page of the Washington Post — President Obama has withdrawn his veto threat for the National Defense Authorization Act,...
If I were a carpenter.
Ta-Nehisi Coats: [W]e are, in the main, ordinary people living in plush times. We are smart enough to get by, responsible enough to raise a couple of kids, thrifty to sock away for a...
Yes, Amazon Is Evil, But Probably Not That Evil
A friend pointed me to this op-ed by Richard Russo in the New York Times about Amazon’s latest tactic to establish itself as the sole source for buying… well, everything, to be honest. Basically,...
The Saga of the Whiteville Water Tower Continues
Following up on a story I discussed in October and again in November, concerning a Latin cross atop a municipal water tower in the Western Tennessee town of Whiteville, the Freedom From Religion Foundation...
Scenes from a boat-building, 12/13/2011
Contrary to what my most recent posts here at the League might seem to indicate, it has not been all death and taxes this last week. Amidst the burials and the bloviating there has...
Going Down to St. Francisville
Rod Dreher is going home, back to the South, back to St. Francisville – a town he left at sixteen. His musings on that departure and eventual return are worth the read: When you...
How Republican is That?
Mike Riggs quotes approvingly this interview with Gary Johnson: “I think the Republican National Committee has hung me out to dry,” he said. “I’m angry. Really angry.” The wildly popular former two-term governor of...
So, What Should I Write About?
I haven’t written much lately, and I’d like to fix that. Suggestions for topics?
The Lowe’s Press Release that Should Have Been
*** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE *** Date: December 5, 2011 To: Our Valued Customers From: R’Tod, Public Outreach Director, Lowe’s Home Improvement Re: Lowe’s Home Improvement and the “All-American Muslim” boycott ——————————————– To Our Valued Customers:...
Portrait of the blogger as a young man
So I am now officially unemployed. Well, I am officially blogging full time actually – so not quite unemployed so much as not traditionally employed. I am a contributor at Forbes so that makes me...
There Can Be Only One! (in which I use Highlander to finally figure out the GOP)
(Photo: Dinesh D’Souza experiences the Quickening after thoroughly defeating conservative rival Robert Spencer) Via tweets by Erik I saw that FOX and Glenn Beck, each strong arbiters of the GOP faithful, are now saying that...
Crystal Cox vs. Jenkins vs. Georgia
Perhaps some of you have heard of the recent court case wherein the Obsidian Finance Group won a $2.5 judgment against blogger Crystal Cox for defamation. Blogger Cox was accused of making false and defamatory...
