November 21, 2014

On Obama Immigration Order, Republicans Push Wrong Panic Button

At a time when Republicans should be pushing the panic button on their increasingly difficult electoral college math, instead they are stampeding in reaction to President Obama’s immigration executive action. Republicans and conservative pundits call Obama’s use of executive order anything from “executive fiat” to “executive amnesty” to a “constitutional crisis.” Pay no attention to the fact that Obama did nothing unusual in comparison to the executive orders issued by presidents over the past half century.

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February 1, 2014

Yes, Liberals Are Judgmental Too

I would like to remind fellow liberals that we too are judgmental creatures. We are all human, so we cannot escape our biases. Yeah I know, sometimes we like to think we are the clear thinkers, and that we are above bias, but think about it, doesn’t that sound just a bit self-righteous? And isn’t that the kind of pious thinking we rail against when it comes to conservative thought? My hope is that most liberals realize this, and I think that might be one of the differences between liberals and conservatives, and yes, that sounds self-righteous too, with just a touch of condescension added in for good measure.

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April 26, 2013

Poll: Majority Of Pennsylvania Voters Are ‘Angry’ Or ‘Dissatisfied’ Over Background Check Vote

A Quinnipiac University poll finds a large majority of Pennsylvania voters supported the Manchin-Toomey background check bill that was “defeated” in the Senate last week. Sixty-nine percent of PA voters said they “strongly support” expanded background checks. The background check bill did not make it to the artificial 60-vote threshold needed to pass. In the Senate, barring political nonsense, it only requires a simply majority to pass a bill. But those days are long gone. The failure of expanded background checks to pass the Senate has 34 percent of PA voters “angry,” and 36 percent “dissatisfied.”

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April 17, 2013

Gun Control: Senate Votes 54-46 On Extended Background Checks

Today the Senate voted 54-46 on gun legislation that would extend background checks to include gun shows and online purchases. For those who are aware the bill did not pass, I purposely refrained from saying the Senate voted to defeat the bill. That’s because the bill would have passed if not for Republican filibuster. But as usual the media is lazy. If you search Google for “gun legislation filibuster,” most of the results are from 6 days ago, when Republicans threatened to filibuster debate of the legislation. Well today Republicans filibustered the actual Senate bill. Remove the filibuster and the bill passes by 8 votes.

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July 5, 2012

The Irony And Deceit Of Constitutional ‘Original Intent’ Arguments

E.J. Dionne has a great piece in the Washington Post: The Founders’ true spirit. In it he writes, “Differences over policy are often disguised as differences over whether a preferred choice is constitutional or not. When we should be addressing pragmatic questions — Will this approach work? Will it solve the problem it’s designed to solve? Is this a problem government should do something about? — we instead fall back on rather abstract discussions of whether a given idea violates the Constitution.”

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