Michelle Bachmann, she of we-should-investigate-anti-American-members-of-Congress infamy, said today that Republicans must do whatever they can to keep Democrats from consolidating power during Barack Obama’s time in office: they’re trying to consolidate power, so we need to do everything we can to thwart them at every turn to make sure that they aren’t able to, for…
Month: March 2009
Mandatory Retirement for Judges
Sarah Palin just appointed 47-year-old Morgan Christen to Alaska’s Supreme Court. Christen will have the opportunity to serve up to 23 years in her new position because of Alaska’s mandatory retirement age for judges kicks in at 70. Plainly put, 23 years is more than long enough, though it would be nearly a decade less…
A Friend in Need…
Comments from Left Field writer Kathy is, as you might assume from the title of the blog, not someone I agree with on a regular basis. But she’s a reasonable, thoughtful person and – to paraphrase the caustic Ms. Ann Coulter – if you must talk to a liberal, it might as well be Kathy!…
The Case for Universal Healthcare
The U.S. healthcare system is broken. No one seriously disputes that any longer. The current national discussion is all about how far to nationalize healthcare. This presupposes both the existence of a problem and that the free market cannot fix it. But do we know the latter assumption is true? How long has it been…
Liberals’ Distrust of Local Government
It seems as though whenever there’s a problem at a local or regional level there’s an uncontrollable urge to fix it with a national solution. That, Matthew Yglesias says, is because “make sense to take action at the level of a small sub-unit of a large economically integrated country”. It does make sense to have…
Making Sense of Education Spending
Chris Darkins knows something that the rest of us don’t about the public education system. Or perhaps we recognize that there is a problem but don’t realize in our limited fumbling about in the dark exactly what sort of monster is in the room with our children. And it is a hideous beast: a standardized,…