The Retroactive Table of Contents : February 3 – February 10

Headline of the Week

Everyone welcomed back Tom Van Dyke after he returned from what must have been the worst League hiatus ever. Ever.

New Bright Shiny Object of the Week

Unsurprisingly, the big “new” story was the same here as it was everywhere else on the internet: the Non-Profit Celebrity Death Match between Susan G. Komen for the Cure and Planned Parenthood.

Pat was thoroughly unimpressed with Komen’s weak-sauce apology, and I argued that Komen tripped up the moment they decided to deviate from their core mission.

Politics, Government & Elections

In Tom’s first “issues” post penned on one leg, he argued that Obama overreached by taking on the Catholic Church.

Ryan’s musings on that same contraception issue left him thinking that the employer paid mandate just isn’t the answer.

Jason, on the other hand, looked at the Contraceptive/Catholic polls and thought that we were all asking the wrong questions.  He also took a look at what due process is as opposed to should be, and looked once again at the travesty that is our prison system.

Christopher wasn’t so impressed with how the cops treat suspects before they even get to prison.

Burt took a first look at the court’s narrow ruling on Prop 8.

Erik marveled at the right’s eerie, awe-inspiring ability to always use the exact same words and phrases, and wished that they might use this power for good rather than evil.

Tim lamented that youthful countries today just don’t make constitutions like they used to back in the day.

I thought out loud about why it is we never do amendments all the time like we used to when we were young and in America’s honeymoon stage.  We were like amendment rabbits back then.  Figuring that maybe we just needed a little something exotic to put us back in the mood, I suggested we role play and make some of our own.

Mark argued that unions and libertarians need not be on opposite sides of the field.

Pat used kids in full color panels to illustrate regulatory capture.

Food & Drink

Mike thumbed his nose at New York, San Francisco, and food snobs everywhere as Kentucky cuisine became the new black…

… but you’re going to need something to wash that down with. Boegiboe suggests a glass of Arab Spring with rose syrup for Valentines Day.

Culture

Mark used his Friday Jukebox to show us that you can find good things even in Texas and Canada, and sometimes – rarely – even in a Superbowl halftime show.

I argued that not all artistic accomplishments are equal; neither, by the way, are NBA players.

Guest writer Sam, however, still does not agree with me on the whole art thing.

Real Life

David’s boat continues to go from a really cool idea to an amazing work of art.

Patrick passed along a call for help from a group of kids that will someday own all of us.

Christopher looked to play John Henry to Google’s steam engine in the growing world of patent translation.  If he beats Google but dies in the process, our next group assignment will be to write a folk song about him.