I got a late start on my real work today, so blogging has suffered. Here are some things I would have written at length about if I had time...
+ Sometime later today, the portion of the Iraq War widget over on the right tracking U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq will scroll past the 4,000 mark. 900 of them have come since the start of The Surge, and 97% of those casualties have come since our president declared "Mission Accomplished."
+ John Yoo, one of the brilliant legal minds behind the "its legal if the president says or does it" theory of executive power, took to the pages of the WSJ today to decry the undemocratic nature of the Democratic Party's primary process. His primary argument?
This delegate dissonance wasn't anything the Framers of the U.S. Constitution dreamed up. They believed that letting Congress choose the president was a dreadful idea. Without direct election by the people, the Framers said that the executive would lose its independence and vigor and become a mere servant of the legislature.
He really couldn't have gotten this any more wrong if he tried. Has he ever heard of the Electoral College? Does he not know anything about the series of events that prompted the passage of the 12th Amendment. And what about the 17th Amendment? The Framers did everything possible to avoid creating a system of direct presidential election, and they were so successful that we still live with that system today.
I don't know what is worse: That Yoo was stupid enough to write this nonsense, or that the Wall St. Journal published it.
+ Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) announced on Bill Maher's show that he intends to introduce the 'Make Room for Serious Criminals' bill. Its purpose? To begin to end our ridiculous war on drugs by decriminalizing marijuana.
+ Ezra is right: if you are eating cheap meat, it is either cruel or unhealthy. Or both. What low meat prices signal is that something in the process that brought that meat to your plate has gone horribly awry. And worse, were it not for massive subsidies, none of it would be this way.
+ For the 5,247th time.... Congressional recess is not the same thing as "vacation." Even members of the media who know better constantly fall into this mistake. When Congress is in recess, members go home to their districts to work, not to some tropical isle to sip fruity drinks. Meeting with constituents might not be glamorous, but it is an important part of their job. Would we prefer that they lived in DC year-round? No. So why then do we talk about recess this way?
+ And last but not least... apparently fish can both count and reason. As I always try to remind people, we humans are not nearly as unique and special as we think we are.
Subscribe to this blog's feed
