During my commute yesterday, I listened to Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia on race and religion. It was amazing and inspiring, but not in the usual way one expects to use the words. The oratory was rarely soaring and it didn’t build to huge crescendos.
Instead, what made the speech so good was the […]
“Tell me what you know, then tell me what you don’t know, and only then can you tell me what you think. Always keep those three separated.”
– Colin Powell to Mike McConnell, summer 1990, as reported in Lawrence Wright, A Reporter at Large: The Spymaster, The New Yorker, January 21, 2008
The article’s well worth reading […]
I am an independent and looking for a president with integrity. Should I vote for John McCain or Barack Obama?
Didn’t we all swear to stop picking the candidate who would be most fun to go on a picnic with? You’re torn between the guy who’s been against the war from the beginning and the guy […]
Barack Obama appears to be a once in a generation candidate: he’s smart, he’s appealing, he speaks well, and he seems to be viewed more positively across the political spectrum than negatively. In addition, his policy positions are closer to mine than I could reasonably hope from a leading candidate. I’ve been […]
Senator David Vitter, caught in the DC madam brouhaha, said, according to the Washington Post, “This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible. Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife.” Now, I’m not a believer, but how does […]
Appropriately for tax season, I recently finished reading David Cay Johnston’s Perfectly Legal. The book describes the current state of the U.S. tax system; the description is of a no-longer progressive, mostly flat system which systematically offers loopholes to the richest while hunting for cheaters among the poorest.
Johnston covers taxes for The […]
I found Noah Feldman’s suggestions for the relationship of church and state to be both unsatisfying and pernicious. The unsatisfying portion is that it is weakly argued and filled with wishful thinking in favor of his own opinion; he picks and chooses bits of history to support his case and argues that a “solution that […]
Kevin Drum says something I wanted to say, but better:
We’re almost exactly where we were four years ago.
Which, really, is an amazing thing. You’d think an event like 9/11 would act as a catalyst that blows apart existing political dynamics and realigns the electorate, but instead it seems to have cemented it into place. Not […]
I don’t know who I’m writing this to, but I need to write.
For all the reasons, across all everything I know and have seen, electing George W. Bush is a mistake for the U.S. People have seen him as president for four years and they should know this. But there’s a disconnect between me (along […]