Category: Big Ideas

  • The House of Shame

    As I write this the 118th Congress of these United States is on it’s second day of voting to appoint the Speaker of the House of Representatives. With a narrow majority, the presumed front runner, last sessions’ Republican Minority Leader, Kevin McCarty of California’s 20th district, was still trying to wrangle a bakers dozen or…

  • Happy New Year Beloveds

    The late Molly Ivin’s would often address her prose to “my beloveds,” as if her readers, including myself, were her intimate partners in the collective endeavor of comprehending the ins and outs of America’s delightful and frustrating experiment in self government. I’m enchanted by the sentiment and have adopted the late Texan’s turn of phrase…

  • Virginia is for WTF?

    The above is the most embarrassing picture of me in the St Xavier HS Class of 1987 yearbook. It’s not even really that embarrassing, my wife (who has seen very few pics of me from this era,) thought it was kind of cute. I was just really tired that day. At least I’m not doing…

  • The Origin of Specious, How Evolution Helps Explain the Modern GOP Pt. 1

    In the run up to the 2016 Presidential Election, all 17 members of the Inane Clown Posse (H/T Ed Brayton at Dispatches From the Culture Wars,) were asked if they believed in evolution. Only “Low Energy” Jeb Bush would say yes, and even he equivocated, claiming that it shouldn’t be “part of the curriculum.” In fact a majority of Republicans refuse…