democratic views

Justice Sotomayor’s First Supreme Test: Free Speech and Campaign Finances

Summer vacation is over. The Supreme Court is going back to work early on a case that will decide how many political ads we'll see in future campaigns, and what we'll know about who's paying for those ads. The Court asked for new arguments in a case they first heard last spring – an unusual development – important enough to the justices that they cut short their summer recess. Free speech is on the line, and Justice Sotomayor will have an early test of her political and judicial acumen.

Americans Lost In Paradise

I've been thinking a lot about Milton's "Paradise Lost" in the past weeks, working on an essay about poetry and the arts in public life. Then on Tuesday Ted Kennedy died. Yesterday I watched "The Soloist," a film (never mind its Oscar-winning potential) that brings shame upon America for our callousness toward the homeless and helpless. Some 90,000 people are homeless in Los Angeles, a population that is nearly half that of Arlington County, Virginia, home to the Pentagon, Arlington National Cemetery and some of the most affluent and powerful people in our country. This morning I read Dan Baum's review of Rebecca Solnits's book "A Paradise Built in Hell." Then I watched Ted Kennedy's funeral mass.

Called to a Better Country

Soldiers died today. So did their friend. Children, sick or starving, died today. So did their friend. Refugees died today. So did their friend. Nature in her blind unambiguous way took the lives of many around the world today; and she took our friend.

Back from Vacation – Deboning a Duck

I took a week off with family visiting. Nothing much changed. The headlines are still spinning around Republican recalcitrance, the tail of blue dog Democratics wagging the dog, Obama's mysterious lack of strong leadership on health care (though it might register in the West Wing that more and more voices are calling for "Medicare for everyone".

Getting Lost and Being Found

We all know the type: someone who expresses values based on opinion and for whom evidence, facts, and reason make no difference. There's no changing their mind. At their worst they gather into tribal groups, calling rivals names and chanting slogans to be sure they drown out what anyone else might have to say. Here's why this happens: they are lost.

Health Care Mania

The media tells us America has lost its mind over this issue. 82-year-olds covered by Medicare, a government program, say they don't want government anywhere near health care. I guess they'd prefer a private insurance company's death panel to the one the government has been using to keep them healthy and alive since they turned 65. Ditzy dining room tables presume to speak about health care reform as though it were Hitler's eugenics program. Welcome to Alice in Wonderland.

Abolish the Senate: End Minority Rule

I'm deeply appreciative of the dedication and service of our Senators. They spend endless hours in committee meetings deciding what is best for the rest of us. In return they get little thanks, just an annual salary of $174,000 (more for the leaders), the best health care insurance in the country, a retirement plan that can't be bankrupted by their plutocratic friends on Wall Street, a generous operating budget for their offices and countless other perks. Without such dedication and selflessness we would truly lack leadership.

Robert Byrd for President

Chris Kelly gets all the credit for this idea. He researched the Constitution as part of his celebration of Barack Obama's 48^th birthday, and the results are startling. One has to agree with the birthers and their cynical co-conspirators in the Republican Party: Barack Obama is not entitled to be president. Short of reincarnation for Washington, Jefferson, or Adams, we need Robert Byrd.

No Opinion, Just Links to Opinionators

I'd like you all to know that I don't have an opinion today – it's been stolen by Eric Etheridge of the New York Times, who was writing about Ian Shapira's Washington Post article about how Hamilton Nolan ripped him off in a piece satirizing Anne Loehr published on Gawker. I was going to write about the death of newspapers but that seems so overused and obvious. The "death of journalism" – Shapira's phrase, seems a bit grandiose.

A Moon Colony: NASA’s Best Contribution to Civilization

Back when former president George W. Bush revealed his hidden wish to be a Kennedy and reinvigorate America's space program by announcing that we would again go to the moon and establish a colony there, I thought it a splendid idea. He could be a pioneer, our first resident in the new outpost, our first captain on a new set of pilgrim ships that would leave behind the oppression of civil rights, religious tolerance, and creeping government socialism. In response to the cries of Mayday from the broadcast minarets of Dobbs, O'Reilly, Limbaugh and choirs of followers, a new Mayflower would set sail seeking freedom, local governance, pure air and water, and unpolluted views of the universe as God created it.