The Nation defends TSA against Evil Koch Brothers
This Nation piece is a ludicrous exercise in silly partisanship. Mark Ames and Yasha Levine go to great length to show just how all this crazy outrage over TSA agents groping people – including...
Author: Erik Kain
The Wyden/Brown plan
The best healthcare reform bill introduced in congress during the recent healthcare overhaul debate, The Healthy Americans Act, came from Senators Ron Wyden (D, OR) and Bob Bennett (R, UT) and was supported by...
A Note to Readers and Commenters
We are saddened to see some of the comments in recent posts. The League is not above a good debate, but lately there have been comments made by writers here that go well across...
Let the music begin
Here’s Slight Figure of Speech, live, from the wonderful Avett Brothers: From the same show, The Perfect Space: Yes, I am a hopeless Avett Brothers fanboy.
The crazy misadventures of the TSA
Another fun TSA fail via Cory Doctorow (note, this is not Cory speaking, it is a letter from an anonymous soldier): So we’re in line, going through one at a time. One of our...
Language & Politics
In the comments, Mike at the Big Stick writes: I’ve often used the term Progressive Conservative for myself (although I stop sub-labeling after watching all of ED Kain’s self-labeling acrobatics). I would just note...
Bread & Circuses: A mini-review of Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
I finished the third installment of The Hunger Games last night, Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins, and my goodness what a read. All three books are absurdly intense page-turners bound to keep one up far...
Playing games with the deficit
“To the extent that Washington is "broken" (and I’d argue it’s less broken than some suggest) it’s because it suffers from being, unusually, both fat and musclebound. No wonder it finds it difficult to...
The Census and the Republican Victory in the House
The Republican sweep of the House of Representatives is enough a triumph in its own right, but lost in the shuffle is a factor far more important than mere congressional gains: following the 2010...
A culture war truce?
A few weeks ago, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, a possible dark-horse candidate for the 2012 GOP presidential race, urged Republicans and conservatives to make a truce on social issues and focus instead on economics. Daniels...
Locally grown and operated
Arizona has legalized medical marijuana, joining fifteen other states across the country that allow marijuana use for health purposes. A system of cultivation and dispensaries will be operative by late summer 2011, with all...
American Exceptionalism and anti-historicism on the right
J.L.’s discussion of American exceptionalism last week was really spot-on. Placing American greatness within its proper historical context is necessary both in order to understand what makes America truly great, but also to understand...
What sort of country do you want to live in?
Perhaps a country where airport security can inflict this upon your children: The reporter, also the father, has a pretty level-headed approach to this whole thing. I imagine I would have been arrested for...
Tolkien’s Anarcho-Monarchism
The best thing I’ve read all week, by a long shot, has been David Hart’s musings on J.R.R. Tolkien and his rather odd politics, what Hart describes as anarcho-monarchism. Here’s a letter from Tolkien...
Reforming the tax code
Michael Drew makes a number of good points in the comments to the Simpson-Bowles post. Essentially, he believes that A) the trade-offs are unrealistic; B) they benefit the wealthy over the middle class by...
Doubt & Certainty continued
“The whole problem with the world is that fools & fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” ~ Bertrand Russell, via commenter TKOEd’s comments in the first...
Thoughts on the Simpson-Bowles Deficit Commission report
Many of the tax reforms are excellent. Simplifying the tax code, while reducing overall income tax rates makes sense. Lowering income-tax rates would not only be good in terms of stimulus, it would be...
