Political Compass

I’ve been struggling a lot lately with my political compass — which side of the aisle I’m sitting on. I’m not going to say much about that right now, mostly because I’ve been working on a longer post on the subject, but this post by Gregg Easterbrook on his New Republic blog really got me […]

Subversion Part II

In case you need more proof that Jesus was all about subverting the state of things in the world, take a look at Matthew 20:1-16. This passage doesn’t sound very conservative to me — in fact, it sounds downright socialist.

Random Things

First post from the new job…. Two interesting politic tidbits this morning: First, a radio interview with Dick Cheney on NPR, mostly focusing on the war with Iraq and the administration’s motivation for it. One thing Cheney repeated: we’re just following up what the Clinton administration started — regime change in Iraq. Hmmm. Go figure […]

Huh

Salon’s criticism of a Howard Dean interview that mentions the word “God” I’m not quite sure what all the fuss is about here. Howard Fineman did not attack Dean with his questions about Dean’s faith. He didn’t try and twist his answers. Fineman was trying to learn to learn more about Howard Dean the person, […]

The Fix is In

Pittsburgh City Council to raise parking tax to 50% to provide budget relief. Wow. Imagine for a moment you own a business, and you receive notice that the city will now be taking 50% of your revenue. Keep in mind these people will still be paying their federal and state taxes with the 50% of […]

More Interesting French News

It looks like France will ban religious clothing in their public schools. There’s two things I find really interesting: 1. Most “intellectual” Americans like to look to France as the example of why Europe is so much better than the United States. According to their logic, the French are much more open-minded (see their lack […]

Welcome to Socialism

As you may have heard, France’s Prime Minister Jacques Chirac must decide if the country should ban Muslim headscarves in schools. There have been several reactions to this potentially explosive situation. First, some people have said this is a problem nearly every large European country will have deal with very soon because, by their nature, […]

Sound Familiar?

I’ve been too busy/fed up with work lately to post much of anything, but I read this article on Slate regarding Al Gore’s endorsement of Howard Dean. What really caught my eye was this quote from Gore: “We can’t afford to be divided” Gore, sounding a bit like the neo-conservatives talking about the criticism of […]

The Changing Political Landscape

History is often difficult to discern when it is happening. When you’re living what students will read about in textbooks in fifty years, it is really hard to see the picture the way historians can see it, with the facts laid out in a tidy outline on paper. Certain things are hard to miss (9/11 […]

Knee Jerk

I came across this interesting discussion on Plastic about an apparently anti-Islamic episode of the B.C. comic strip. I don’t have much time for the argument at hand, mostly because I don’t care, but I was appalled that the supposedly intelligent Plastic readership thought that a crescent moon on an outhouse door was anti-Islamic. Hello? […]