Category: Politics

I’ll refrain from commentary and simply state that this is an important read.

Recently the House passed a resolution re-affirming that our nation’s motto is “In God We Trust”. This was in response to a US President stating that our motto was “E Pluribus Unum”.

Thank God Congress is on top of things. It’s not like we have more important things to worry about…

If you are reading this post because of the title, prepare to be disappointed.

I am fascinated by the Supreme Court. Everyone can have their opinions about various justices, but ultimately this is nine really smart people debating important, but highly abstract legal concepts.

If I had to pick a job in journalism, I would probably go with a job covering the Supreme Court (second choice, of course, being Yankees beat reporter).

If you’ve never read the actual debates that they have, you really need to. It’s fascinating and occasionally hilarious.

A very common subject for the Supreme Court is cases involving the fourth amendment. How do you balance the constitutions prohibition against unlawful search with valid police activities? Non-trivial.

So articles like this fascinate me, and not solely because it contains the sentence

"Scalia can’t imagine naked people, I suppose"

But a funny quote nonetheless…

Literally.

A measure that passed the House and can pass the Senate 57-42 will never get a simple up or down vote due to Republican pressure.

We can’t have a mosque anywhere near Ground Zero, that would be un-American. But helping the folks who actually risked their health after 9/11, that’s, well, I really don’t know. Are they really saying it’s unpatriotic?

OK, I get it. We can’t pass any spending bill unless it’s paid for. What? This bill would be paid for by closing a loophole that lets people keep money in the Cayman Islands?

So Republicans prefer rich folks hiding their money in the Caymans to paying for health care costs for firemen who helped after 9/11?

Someone please tell me I’m reading this wrong.

This is just bizarre. Julian Assange has not actually been charged with a crime in Sweden. He is wanted for questioning.

Interpol is involved. He’s arrested in the UK. Denied bail. And he hasn’t been charged with a crime?

Like I said, a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream…

While this has been a crazy election season, it’s still important to vote. I read this funny quote in the Economist about the hyperbole surrounding the midterm elections:

It’s as if Crest is telling us that Colgate leads to socialism and Colgate is telling us that Crest leads to plutocracy and all of us believe half of it.

So filter the craziness, but do vote…

Imagine you travel abroad. And then for some crazy reason (your name is Islamic, your name matches a known child pornographer, you are friends with known radical Dan Song, etc.) the US decides you are a threat. So the CIA authorizes you to be killed by airborne drones. Sounds ridiculous, right?

It’s important to put yourself into these equations. Usually when we talk about stuff like this it is, "terrorist who authorized release of hideous deadly fart smells in D.C. subways authorized for death", except it’s usually a lot worse than "fart smells".

But remember, we (meaning the US government) do screw up sometimes on this stuff. Lets think about how many supposed criminals have been released lately due to DNA evidence. And those are people who went through actual trials with actual judges and were still wrongly convicted. Recent drone killings abroad have no trial or judge. We’re just smokin’ bad guys based on totally one sided evidence. And again, big picture, not that I’m against this.

But we tend to trust the government to kill a terrorist thousands of miles away with limited evidence, but not to give our grandmother a flu shot.

When you are debating whether this is something the government should be allowed to do, you shouldn’t always assume we are only talking about "guilty people", you should imaging that you decided to take a trip to Pakistan and for some reason the government confused you (Fred Patriot) with someone else (Fred Patrios).

I live in New York. I’m a big fan of not getting bombed/killed/etc. I like walking in Times Square without bombs exploding.

But I’m also a big fan of the uniquely US view of justice. That whole "innocent before being blown up by the CIA" thing.

So this story makes me a bit uneasy.

Seriously? There are plenty of legitimate reasons to disagree with or even dislike (politically) our current president. But the number of ridiculous reasons keeps growing.

• Because his middle name is Hussein
• Because he knows what a fist-bump is
• Because whack jobs think he was born somewhere other than Hawaii

The latest reason? Because he likes golf. Are you kidding me? And this is coming from the left. With friends like this…