It sounded like a good idea to take fourth graders to their state legislature to observe how democracy works. In the spirit of learning by doing, students drafted a bill to learn the process of how a bill becomes law. They proposed House Bill 373, an act establishing the Red Tail Hawk as the New […]
© Ted Rall I don’t know if I can explain why this comic appealed to me so much. It made me laugh and think all at the same time. I like to think I can see both sides of most issues, not to agree with them, but just to see why they might think that […]
Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu easily won the election in Israel, and he did it by appealing to the base fears of right-wing voters. Sound familiar? We’ll let Jon Stewart give the review:
© Jack Ohman After spending years trying to get rid of him, the Republicans are so happy that Eric Holder is stepping down as Attorney General that they are refusing to confirm his replacement Loretta Lynch, which will give Holder another six months on the job. You would think that after holding him in contempt […]
© Ruben Bolling After corporations discovered that they could use advertising to take your money (by selling you stuff you don’t need or even really want), it was just a small step to taking your vote. Or making it harder for you to vote. Or convincing you to not bother to vote. Propaganda for the […]
This is simple enough that almost anyone should be able to understand it. And it comes from a politician who is fighting for redistricting reform.
James Fallows has a good reaction to Obama’s speech in Selma Alabama on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday”. Fallows thinks it may be the best speech ever given by Obama, and I would not easily disagree. Here’s one quote from near the end of Obama’s speech: That’s what America is. Not […]
Yes, today is the day that we all “spring forward”. The theory at least is that we are lowering our use of energy. Indeed, they do call it “Daylight Savings Time”, and it isn’t daylight we are saving, it is (supposedly) energy. With the high cost of energy, that could be a good thing. Except […]
As a sign of how fractured the Republican party has become, a Republican group called the American Action Network (with ties to the House GOP leadership) is funding advertising against sitting Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert. The ads say: Global threats against our security are increasing … and some in Washington are playing political games with […]
© Tom Tomorrow Dan Perkins is a genius. I absolutely cannot believe that our national media was obsessed with what Rudy Giuliani said, about whether our president loves our country. Seriously? It is the kind of thing 12-year-old kids would argue. Wait, it actually is!
One of the wonderful things about the Internet is that it promotes disintermediation, also known as “cutting out the middlemen“. This can happen for more conventional products, where websites like eBay directly connect sellers and buyers. But on the Internet, the primary product is content: music, video, information, opinion, etc. And net neutrality is a […]
For people who thought that Congress couldn’t get any more disfunctional — you were wrong. As the Daily Beast put it: It used to be that Congress was broken, and was forced to repeatedly kick the can down the road. Now it seems that Congress can’t even properly kick the can down the road. The […]
Today, the FCC made two important decisions that will have a profound effect on the future of the internet. Most widely reported is their vote to reclassify the internet as a telecommunications service under Title II of the communications act. The immediate impact is that telecoms cannot charge extra for internet “fast lanes”. All traffic […]
I’ve posted a number of stories (here, here, or here) about the conservative experiment going on in Kansas sponsored by the Koch brothers. It involves (in case you can’t guess) massive tax cuts for business (they pay no taxes), and massive cuts in education, roads, and social services. Ultra-conservative governor Sam Brownback predicted “enormous prosperity” […]
There is a somewhat long, but fascinating article in The Atlantic by Graeme Wood, which explains something that the mainstream media has gotten totally wrong. What is ISIS (or ISIL, or Islamic State, or whatever the press is calling it this week)? What motivates them? Why are they beheading fellow Muslims? Why are some Muslims […]
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