Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
And have a plan to do something about them too: The most obvious new element of the president’s regionalist policy initiative is the July 19 publication of a Department of Housing and Urban Development regulation broadening the obligation of recipients of federal aid to “affirmatively further fair housing.” The apparent purpose of this rule change …
Continue reading "They Really Do Hate the Suburbs After All"
The Gnome of Princeton is at it again: So what’s the matter with Atlanta? A new study suggests that the city may just be too spread out, so that job opportunities are literally out of reach for people stranded in the wrong neighborhoods. Sprawl may be killing Horatio Alger. Let's start with the key observation: …
Continue reading "Paul Krugman's Moronic Take on Sprawl and Upward Social Mobility"
Well, it's not quite down to my pastor's favourite mantra, but it's close: We are number 1 right? USA! USA! No one can beat our wealth creation machine, our economic dynamism, our level playing field and our bastions of higher education. We have a middle class that is the envy of the world, right? Well, …
Continue reading "The American Middle Class: Broke, Busted and Disgusted"
Forty years ago this past summer, this country was riveted by the hearings of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, better known as the Watergate Hearings. Although they did not directly lead to Richard Nixon's exit from office, they were an important step in that process. I've discussed Watergate many times on …
Continue reading "Forty Years Out, Watergate Still Matters–and Gets Repeated"
Yes, he's coming to the epicentre of the bitter people with their Bibles and guns after all: President Obama plans a visit to Chattanooga next week. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said he will visit the Amazon fulfilment centre at the Enterprise South Industrial Park on Tuesday. He said President Obama will give the …
Continue reading "Barack Obama's Strange Visit to Chattanooga"
It is to pitch officiating civil marriages altogether, as the Sikhs in the UK are being advised: Sikh temples have been advised to halt all civil marriage ceremonies on their premises to protect them from possible legal challenges for refusing to conduct same-sex weddings. It is the first example of a religious group altering its …
Continue reading "The Most Sensible Response of the Churches to Same-Sex Civil Marriage"
About time: Former president Jimmy Carter condemned the effect U.S. intelligence programs had on U.S. moral authority in the wake of NSA revelations brought to light by leaker Edward Snowden, Der Spiegel reports. “America has no functioning democracy,” Carter said at a meeting of The Atlantic Bridge in Atlanta, Georgia on Tuesday. I've never been …
It happened: SCOTUS has struck down the provision of the Defence of Marriage Act that denied federal recognition to same-sex civil marriages, and basically "punted" on Proposition 8 on a standing issue. The latter doubtless seals that provision's fate. One of the reasons I find myself getting away from blogging on political issues is that …
Continue reading "Same Sex Civil Marriage: The Saddest "I Told You So" of Them All"
Now that we know that Edward Snowden has blown the NSA's cover on its secret operations, the thoughts of some of us turn back to the days of Daniel Ellsberg, the victim of some of Richard Nixon's dirty tricks after he outed the Pentagon Papers over the Vietnam War. Like our current security apparatus isn't …
Continue reading "The New Daniel Ellsberg Will Have It Much Rougher Than The Old One"
I've run a good number of "I told you so" pieces on this blog. This time, however, it's more like "It used to be this way, but..." and the subject is national security. Barack Obama has, at least, cut the left's Gordian Knot on the issue. Let me go back to 2006 with this pre-election …
Continue reading "Barack Obama: Finding His Inner Lenin, Finding His Inner Dzerzhinskii"
Positive Infinity 