This morning the New York Times carries as its lead story something with this headline: States’ Rights Is Rallying Cry of Resistance for Lawmakers. And the article is replete with examples of state lawmakers passing measures that would, in theory, limit the reach of the federal government. So, just to repeat the examples that The Times leads with (having done our work for us already):

Gov. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, a Republican, signed a bill into law on Friday declaring that the federal regulation of firearms is invalid if a weapon is made and used in South Dakota.

On Thursday, Wyoming’s governor, Dave Freudenthal, a Democrat, signed a similar bill for that state. The same day, Oklahoma’s House of Representatives approved a resolution that Oklahomans should be able to vote on a state constitutional amendment allowing them to opt out of the federal health care overhaul.

In Utah, lawmakers embraced states’ rights with a vengeance in the final days of the legislative session last week. One measure said Congress and the federal government could not carry out health care reform, not in Utah anyway, without approval of the Legislature. Another bill declared state authority to take federal lands under the eminent domain process. A resolution asserted the “inviolable sovereignty of the State of Utah under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.”

The Times article points out that legal and constitutional scholars are pretty much of the view that this is mostly a bunch of hot air. But that doesn’t seem to be deterring state lawmakers from shouting a lot. Full Story »

Part 2 of 2. (Read part 1…)

It’s Time to Separate Church and State, Once and for All

If you recall, anti-Catholic prejudice was once a problem for Catholic politicians in the US. John F. Kennedy went so far as to address the issue head-on in his 1960 campaign – probably because he didn’t feel he had much choice. Here’s what he told the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on September 12 of that year:

I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my Church on public matters — and the Church does not speak for me.

He went on to assert his respect for the separation of church and state and vowed that Catholic officials would not dictate policy to him. As noted in part 1, the times, they have a-changed. Full Story »

Part 1 of 2.

I tripped across a provocative headline in the Wall Street Journal the other day: “They Need to be Liberated from Their God.” Turns out the story was about Mosab Hassan Yousef and his spying on Hamas. Which was a little disappointing. There’s no doubt that Palestinian Muslims need to be liberated from their god, but given the recent explosion in documented attacks by US Christians on their fellow Americans (as well as on reason and basic common sense), I thought perhaps the WSJ was going to be the first mainstream “news” outlet to do a story on Jesus Gone Wild!

I keep a running tab of stories that strike my interest. Full Story »

On November 19, 1863, as President Lincoln stood to deliver the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, he could not have foreseen how the nation he envisioned as the home of “a new birth of freedom” could become an intolerable refutation of much of what he said that sad day.

He could not have imagined that the exorbitant and still-rising cost of electing the members of Congress would argue that not “all men are created equal.” Rather, men, and mostly men, of considerable financial substance worth in sum about $650 million would sit on Capitol Hill. Nor would he have imagined that the most powerful interests in this nation “conceived in Liberty” would be about to spend $3.7 billion to position those (mostly) men in November to immediately forget, polls might suggest, “the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

President Lincoln could not have imagined, at least on a 21st Century scale, how the enterprise of government would become precisely that – a business enterprise riddled with corruption brought on by the enticements of money primarily intended to lubricate the interests of the powerful who wish to remain that way.
Full Story »

Never thought I’d invite a teabagger to join political forces with me. But it’s going to take an odd and broad coalition of folks who comprise “We the People” to fight back against today’s U.S. Supreme Court action granting stunning new power to corporate America to buy our government. The Court, in a 5-4 decision, rolled back all limits on the rights of organizations to spend money to influence the outcome of federal elections.

Overturning key provisions of McCain-Feingold campaign finance law and flouting a century of precedent, the decision opens the floodgates to a torrent of spending by banks, insurance companies, energy companies, automakers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, chemical producers, agribusiness giants and media oligopolies — both domestic and foreign – to sway races by buying candidates. And to trash American democracy in the process. Full Story »

by Ann Ivins

I’ve been thinking with increasing irritation about that perennial conundrum-within-an-enigma-which-actually-isn’t-that-difficult-at-all: the separation of church and state, this time in the context of gay marriage. The issue becomes more annoying the more headspace I give it, and it’s not the prejudice or the public protests or the proclamations of any group on either side. The question that makes my brain twitch is this: why is this even an issue?

I firmly believe that the followers of any given religion have the perfect right to include, exclude and/or vilify anyone they choose. Full Story »

You’re going to find this outrageous.

Last week, the wife and I went out for dinner to a new restaurant in our neighbourhood.  The food was awful and the service insulting.  Afterwards a few of the patrons gathered outside.  One man was particularly engaging and inspired us to take action.  We formed an angry mob, set fire to cars in the parking lot and threw stones and burning wood through the windows of the restaurant.

A few days later we went back to the restaurant and – this is the bit you’re going to find outrageous – their service had NOT improved!

Afterwards I led the riots.  We destroyed nearby shops and looted what we could.  Next week we’ll go back and see if they’ve recognised our concerns. Full Story »

The AEJMC News jury has rendered its verdict: As a print journalism professor, I am a dinosaur. I suspect many professors like me — bred through long newsroom careers and leavened, in many cases, with doctoral education — feel the same. Outdated. Web 3.0 inadequate. Multi-media insufficient.

In the past year, had I sought a professorship to teach print news reporting, writing, and editing, I’d be hard-pressed to find a job despite my two decades of experience and a really expensive piece of PhD parchment. A reason: Several thousand highly experienced, talented print journalists have been shitcanned by their newspapers in the past two years. But print professorships are few, making it a buyer’s market, writes Joe Strupp at Editor & Publisher.

But there’s another reason: Journalism schools, at least in terms of their job postings, may be shifting identities.
Full Story »

Last week, Lord Christopher Monckton accused a group of young climate activists who invaded an Americans for Prosperity (AFP) event where he was speaking of being “Hitler Youth” three times – twice caught on video (see these two posts from last week) and then at least twice on the Science and Public Policy Institute blog here and here (and he denied making the claim at an Associated Press event over the weekend). Clearly Monckton believes that the activists are behaving as the Nazis would.

Monckton is wrong. Temporarily taking over a meeting, chanting, and disturbing the organizers and invited speaker (Monckton) is not what the Nazis would have done. As someone who studied the history of Nazism and fascism in college, allow me to describe what would have happened during the meeting had it been invaded by the Nazis. Just a warning – I’m not going to go into gory detail, but I’m not going to sugar coat this either, so some of what I describe below is unpleasant. Full Story »

I can almost hear Thomas Jefferson calling from across the tidal basin, from across the centuries: “What about me? What about me?”

I hardly give the Jefferson Memorial a second glance. I see it, like a glowing turtle that has crawled onto the bank, on the far side of the basin. Beneath the memorial’s domed ceiling—modeled after the ceiling of Jefferson’s home, Monticello—Jefferson calls, “What about me?”

It reminds me of that great little scene from “Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington,” from season three of The Simpsons. After seeking advice and inspiration from Abraham Lincoln, who’s inundated with advice-seekers, Lisa seeks out Jefferson for advice instead. The place is deserted. “No one ever comes to see me,” a bitter Jefferson laments. “I don’t blame them. I never did anything important. Just the Declaration of Independence, the Louisiana Purchase, the dumbwaiter….”

Lisa, her patience already frayed, leaves him. “Wait!” Jefferson calls. “Please don’t go. I get so lonely….”

The scene always delights me—in part because of what may be an irrational grudge I hold toward Jefferson. Full Story »

The crickets and katydids still trade chirps between the trees and the bushes that line the Potomac River’s great tidal basin. As I walk along the basin toward the FDR Memorial, the insect song see-saws back and forth—but then it’s drowned out completely by the rumble of a low-flying jet making its descent toward Ronald Reagan International Airport on the far side of the river.

It’s 7:00 p.m. The last trickle of the evening commute has drained from the capital, and the busloads of school groups haven’t yet arrived from dinner. It’s the perfect time to visit. It’s me and the insects and perhaps ten other visitors. Three Muslim women walk past me, their heads covered with scarves so brightly colored I can see them in the dark.

And there’s the president—a bronze, life-sized statue of FDR in a wheelchair that sits near the entrance to the memorial. Writer Christopher Buckley once said the statue looked “exactly like James Joyce on the toilet,” an image I can now never shake from my mind. What a way to dethrone one of the Twentieth Century’s towering figures. Full Story »

Every sperm and every egg, fertilized or not, is a living, breathing person, endowed by its Creator with certain inalienable rights. At least, that’s what the proposed 2010 personhood amendment to the Colorado state constitution implies. No, it doesn’t say that literally, but thanks to the vague wording of the amendment, that’s one possible interpretation.

It’s also clear from an article in The Colorado Independent that this is only half of what the amendment’s authors intended.

“It’s intended to account for human beings who may be created through asexual reproduction in laboratories and used as raw material for research, organs, or stem cells. Fertilization would not have properly applied to asexually reproduced humans, but even asexually reproduced human beings have a definite biological beginning,” [Gualberto Garcia] Jones explained. (Jones heads the organization that initiated this year’s amendment)

That this law could be interpreted to include sperm is an ironic example of the law of unintended consequences. Full Story »

America’s democratic ideal doesn’t work perfectly. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all, and in these cases it feeds our cynicism to the point where we’re tempted to conclude that the very possibility of true freedom is a sham. I know whereof I speak, because there are few people out there more soaked in bile than I am.

Still, this whole “marketplace of ideas” is a marvelous concept. Perhaps the most marvelous concept in history. Drawing on the Miltonian belief that if people are allowed to enter the agora and freely state their cases, then “the truth will out” (that is, an educated and informed citizenry will unerringly perceive the truth and that weaker ideas will be disregarded in favor of stronger ones), our nation’s founders crafted a Constitution that assured people the right to voice their opinions, free from government intrusion. Full Story »

“Rodney Deegen was surprised alone in his security booth where he was pleasuring himself while staring at ghost-like images of naked children. He was arrested immediately. Investigators suspect that he may have distributed some 350,000 images of naked people over the past 18 months.”

You remember that story, don’t you? Was all over the press in July 2012? Oh, wait, that hasn’t happened yet. Still to come, so to say. Let me get my thoughts arranged. Full Story »

According to Fortune Magazine, the largest American company in 2009 was Exxon Mobil Its total revenues were $442.85 billion. Second was Wal-Mart, with total revenues of $405.61 billion. Rounding out the top 10 were Chevron ($263.16 billion), ConocoPhillips ($230.76 billion), General Electric ($183.21 billion), General Motors ($148.98 billion), Ford Motor ($146.28 billion), AT&T ($124.03 billion), Hewlett-Packard ($118.36 billion), and Valero Energy ($118.30 billion).

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the 182 nations of the world had a combined GDP of nearly $60.9 trillion (or $60,900 billion) in 2008. But comparing the GDP data to the Fortune 500 data produces the table at right (click for the top 182 nations and corporations each, in order). If Exxon Mobil were a country, it would rank 25^th in the world, right between Norway and Austria. Wal-Mart would rank 27^th, sandwiched between Austria and Taiwan. Chevron would rank 28^th, ConocoPhillips 42^nd, GE 49^th, GM 59^th, Ford 60^th, and AT&T, H-P, and Valero would be ranked 64-66 respectively.

In fact, all of the Fortune 500 would rank above the 40 smallest national economies in the world. And the smallest company on Fortune’s list of the 1000 largest U.S. companies would be larger than the national economies of 28 entire countries. Exxon Mobil’s revenue is greater than the combined GDP of the 78 smallest countries (out of a total of 182) in the world. Full Story »

Off to the Globe Theatre last evening for the new play on Thomas Paine by Trevor Griffiths, A New World. I have to say it was a bit of a disappointment. Part of the problem was the weather—it was absolutely pouring during much of the performance, and, coupled with the Globe’s frequently dodgy acoustics, this made much of the dialog unhearable. Not to mention the loud noise of the pitter-patter on the slickers that the Globe sells cheap in the event of downpours such as this one. The real problem was the play itself—the production values, as always, were great, John Light, who plays Paine, was fine, often stirring, and there was a great bustle much of the time.

The problem was deeper—Griffiths has written a straight history here, but without the philosophic context. We’re told that Paine was a great man, and we hear bits and pieces of his writings, and we see him engaged with both the American and French revolutions. But we don’t get a clue about his seminal importance, or about why Paine changed the world, and for the better. To be fair, Paine had such an eventful life that it’s difficult to get it all in a two and a half hour production. But what was left out was much of the meat, and the key to why Paine was important—one of the most important men who ever lived, in fact. It was still an enjoyable evening at the theatre—but also a frustrating one. If you knew something about Paine, you were probably bothered by what was left out; if you didn’t know much about Paine (which is certainly the case here in the UK), you left the theatre no wiser, really. I almost hate to say this, but this would have been a more interesting play if Tom Stoppard had written it. That way we wold have had endless conversations about the philosophical and political issues that Paine dealt with–and these were intensely important at the time, and still are.
Full Story »

“I keep telling you guys my aim is to become a legend,” said Usain Bolt, after smashing the world 200 metres record and becoming the first man to hold the 100 and 200 metres sprints in both the Olympics and the Athletics World Championships.

Competition at international sporting events is fierce and the pursuit of an edge, sometimes measured in hundredths of a second, leads some to cheat.  Steroid abuse aims to increase the strength, speed and endurance of what is natural.  But the androgens created by the body are not set to any standard.  Some people do genuinely produce more than others.  Figuring out what is normal and what is not is difficult.

And, sometimes, something else is going on. Full Story »

I’m not a Republican, but I know many people who are. I have GOP friends, co-workers and family members, and for that matter I used to be a Republican myself. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, to be sure. But it’s true.

It’s no secret that I don’t agree with the GOP on much of anything these days, but there’s kind of an odd element to my conversations with Republican acquaintances lately: a lot of them profess significant disagreement with the platform and policies of their party, too.

Taken in a vacuum, this is hardly surprising. Full Story »

I start from diminished expectations.

My first experience with the UK was registering my company and opening business bank accounts. In South Africa, as a local, it takes two months to register the company and another three months to then open the bank accounts.

In the UK, it took 24 hours. And I walked away with a personal credit card, despite having no credit history. This, by the way, after the collapse of the credit industry. Not that I’m complaining.

This vote of confidence allowed me to rent a small apartment just outside the centre of Oxford. I was told that, living alone, I could apply for reduced rates. I’m used to dealing with municipalities. So, I fortified myself with a jug of coffee and a book, and phoned. Full Story »

In January of 2009, it snowed in Oxford. Deep drifts covered the meadow outside my study window. I watched as a fox, stark red against the pillow-white, tensed-and-leapt tensed-and-leapt through the fluffy deeps. It landed easily on a tree trunk, recently fallen across the river at the bottom of my tiny garden, and then ran along the informal bridge to my side before disappearing into a hedge.

I have seen snow before, but never lived in a place where snow thrusts itself into your daily life. The familiar landscape of fields, farmlands and wilderness was utterly transformed. I could see just how much wildlife lived around me. Bunnies hopped. Deer loped. Birds scratched.

I took a morning off, just to go see what the massive Port Meadow would look like. I got only a few yards on my bicycle before becoming glued in the snow. So I walked. It was magnificent. Full Story »