Colorado
updated
5:06 p.m.
NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) has released their February 2010 Global Analysis Report . Preliminary analysis indicates that globally averaged surface temperatures in February 2010 were the 6th warmest on record (dating back to 1880): 1.08?F (0.60?C) above the 20 th century average of 53.9?F (12.1?C). Perhaps more significantly, lower tropospheri...
SquareState - 4:48 p.m.
I've received many messages from our Democrats over the past few weeks, supporting Andrew Romanoff based on formulated notions that Sen. Michael Bennet is simply "washing hands with corporations". I appreciate each email, because it has sparked a concerted effort to root out fact over fiction. It is now clear where some of these allegations have originated. They are not from the Romanoff campaign....
SquareState - 4:03 p.m.
(Denver) –Representative Dianne Primavera (D-Broomfield) wants to help victims of natural disasters, such as those from Haiti and Chile, receive the critical medications and medical supplies they need with Senate Bill 115. The bill passed a final reading in the......
Colorado House Democrats - 3:49 p.m. - 2 clicks 
(Denver)- State Representative Judy Solano (D-Thornton) is helping kids have healthy, locally grown foods in their school lunches. Senate Bill 81 creates the “Farm-to-School Healthy Kids Act”, in order to promote healthy eating among school-aged children and promote the use......
Colorado House Democrats - 3:49 p.m.
(Denver) – Representative Andy Kerr’s (D-Lakewood) House Bill 1267 is making it more affordable for homeowners to lease solar panels. The bill passed a final House vote with bipartisan support today 50-13, with 2 excused. "By working to streamline government,......
Colorado House Democrats - 3:49 p.m.
(Denver) – Representative Andy Kerr (D-Lakewood) wants to hold deadbeat drivers accountable with House Bill 1164. The bill passed a final reading in the House today 44-19, with 2 excused. The story is a familiar one: An accident occurs and......
Colorado House Democrats - 3:49 p.m. - 2 clicks
"The actual enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of 10 years, in such manner as they shall by Law direct." -- Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States That's right: it's not just a good idea, it's the law. Every ten years, we have to figure out how many people live ...
SquareState - 3:09 p.m.
Various arguments against zoning are collected at Richard's Real Estate and Urban Economics blog , which notes, via the New York Times , that not only zoning, but also Fannie Mae regulations discourage mixed use development . Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2009) ...
Wash Park Prophet - 2:41 p.m.
There are days when we feel genuinely bad for CD-4 also-ran candidate Tom Lucero , like at last week's congressional debate--as reported by the Longmont Times-Call : For 90 minutes on Thursday, the four candidates for the 4th Congressional District in the Republican Party varied only slightly in their responses. Then Referendum C came up... Tom Lucero, a member of the University of Colorad...
Colorado Pols - 2:41 p.m.
As Coloradans of both parties gather this week in the first step toward selection of nominees for the state's highest offices, ProgressNow Colorado, the state's largest online progressive advocacy organization, launched a new website called PuppetJaneNorton.com and called on Coloradans of all political persuasions to hold former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton accountable. "Jane Norton's longstanding ...
Colorado Pols - 2:41 p.m.
I've been laid off from work twice in the past 40 years, and both times i applied for, and received unemployment insurance. There are certain requirements, i.e., make job contacts, and confirm during each two week period that you are eligible for those two weeks of pay. I've discovered two bureaucratic hurdles that probably routinely deprive unemployed workers of funds which, by law, should r...
Richard Myers - 2:20 p.m.
A former U.S. Pardon Attorney, Margaret Colgate Love, documents the gradual demise through disuse of the pardon power : [T]his article first looks at pardoning practices in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a time when the pardon power played an important operational role in the federal justice system. It describes how pardon evolved into parole, and after 1930 came to be used primarily to res...
Wash Park Prophet - 12:22 p.m.
One of my goals with the new squarestate is to have a bustling events calendar. I would like to have squarestate be a resource for people who are looking for something interesting to do-- interesting being defined as political and since I consider great art to be political, the definition is quite broad. If you want to see an event on the calendar, please send a calendar request and don't forg...
SquareState - 11:28 a.m.
It's rare to find a solution to energy problems that has support from farmers and ranchers, hunting and fishing groups, labor unions, conservation groups, and industry. Yet Coloradoans agree that renewable energy sources such as solar and wind offer important benefits for our economy, environment, and rural communities. In fact, our state is recognized as the national leader in what many call "the...
Colorado Pols - 11:28 a.m. - 2 clicks
Squarestate.net has been around the Colorado blogosphere for half a decade. You can find the old version of the site under the blog roll. The new Squarestate aims to inform the Colorado blogosphere of political or otherwise current events. This includes what is going at the Capitol, in the government, what organizations are doing to mobilize and inform people, what events are effecting the quali...
SquareState - 10:46 a.m.
Join Our Live Colorado Caucus Coverage Join our community coverage of the Colorado caucuses by tweeting updates from your precinct, interacting with the caucus live feed, and embedding the caucus feed into your website. Colorado voters across the state will be contributing live blow by blow coverage of the Democratic and Republican caucuses this Tuesday March 16th. Coverage begins a...
SquareState - 10:46 a.m.
Last week in my Texas Focus I concentrated on some absolutely critical School Board races. I got a comment that I was burying the lead in my story. What I failed to emphasize, though I mentioned, was that the Texas School Board DOMINATES the school textbook market. They are the ones who keep almost getting creationism in our science books, downplaying of slavery in our history textbooks, and Chri...
DailyKos (Colorado) - 10:46 a.m. - 4 clicks
Update: This launch has had some hiccups so please report issues in this thread. I'm working on a few things and more content should be up in a sec. This did not go exactly as planned, c'est la vie Hello and welcome to the new Squarestate! The popular political blog SquareState is announcing new management today. SquareState is a member of the 50 State Blog network and was awarded pres...
SquareState - 10:22 a.m.
We flew home on Friday for my fiancee's father's 80th birthday celebration (we're both from St. Louis originally). At some point during the celebration it dawned on us that with all of her family in together for the first time in 10 years (6 brothers and sisters living in 5 different states) we should just go ahead and get married. We made that decision at about 3:30pm on Friday, hauled it down to...
Steam Powered Opinions - 9:09 a.m.
From Public Policy: -In the Democratic Senate contest Michael Bennet leads Andrew Romanoff 40-34. Support in this race may end up having to do more with personalities than ideology, as there's no real divide in support along liberal/moderate lines for now. Bennet's up 42-33 with liberals and 40-36 with moderates. Both candidates are pretty well liked by the party electorate. Bennet's approval...
Colorado Pols - 9:09 a.m. - 2 clicks
Full summary from PPP: In the Republican Senate race Jane Norton leads with 34% to 17% for Ken Buck, 7% for Tom Wiens, and 10% combined for the rest of the field. There are more Republican primary voters who dislike Norton than there are Democrats who dislike either Bennet or Romanoff . Her favorability stands at 41/26. She leads Buck 39-7 with moderates, but by a much narrower 34-21 with conse...
Colorado Pols - 9:09 a.m. - 2 clicks
No ambiguity on the issue of the Army's hotly-contested proposed expansion of the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site for gubernatorial candidate John Hickenlooper --and a clear distinction between himself and GOP opponent Scott McInnis . As the Pueblo Chieftain reported yesterday: If residents of Southeastern Colorado don't support the expansion of the Army's Pinon Canyon training facility, gube...
Colorado Pols - 8:06 a.m. - 3 clicks
"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common." --John Locke ...
Colorado Pols - 6:03 a.m.
With caucuses just a couple of days away, the local conservative blogosphere is crying foul over an apparently pro-Senate candidate Ken Buck 'independent' message group's tactics. The details don't really seem all that scandalous, or in any event substantiated by much more than innuendo, but high dudgeon is the order of the day from the Independence Institute's Ben DeGrow : In short, the Ta...
Colorado Pols - Sun 11:46 a.m.
Is Colorado's caucus system for party nominations outdated? If so, what system should we use? Some thoughts on the subject follow the jump. Please contribute your own ideas as well. With Colorado's caucus only a few days away, I find myself sitting amongst boxes of caucus materials at the Denver Dems office thinking there must be an easier way to do this. I began looking at the candidate nomi...
Colorado Pols - Sun 11:07 a.m. - 4 clicks
As the Denver Post reported yesterday: A Colorado Springs resident claims a state senator who is paying only $500 a month rent for a downtown Denver condo is violating the state's ethics laws. A complaint filed this week with the Colorado Independent Ethics Commission says Sen. John Morse accepted something of value greater than $50, which was outlawed when voters in 2006 approved Amendment...
Colorado Pols - Sun 10:25 a.m. - 6 clicks
Here in Colorado, we're going to caucus Tuesday evening. I look forward to it. The last primary caucus was the night I wept at the polls ~ tears of pure joy. My tiny mountain precinct never seemed to have more than a handful of people standing in line to vote or caucus for Democrats, so I automatically got in the short line that chilly night in 2008 ... and found out it was the wrong line. Whe...
DailyKos (Colorado) - Sat 4:48 p.m. - 2 clicks
I seem to have trouble learning substantive information about the Democratic Senate primary coming up for the Colorado Senate seat recently appointed to Bennet. I would love to hear opinions as to whom I should support. ...
DailyKos (Colorado) - Sat 4:05 p.m. - 3 clicks
Rep. Mark Ferrandino's attempts to cap interest rates on payday lending in Colorado stalled Friday in the Legislature , the Denver Post's Tim Hoover reports, as House leaders postponed a vote because two Democrats were absent. The margin could be as close as a single vote, Ferrandino told Hoover. Who's opposed? House Republicans, who say reining in 300 percent interest rates would hurt t...
Colorado Pols - Sat 5:44 a.m. - 7 clicks
As The Associated Press reports: Under White House pressure to act swiftly, House and Senate Democratic leaders reached for agreement Friday on President Barack Obama's health care bill, sweetened suddenly by fresh billions for student aid and a sense that breakthroughs are at hand. "It won't be long," before lawmakers vote, predicted Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She said neither liberals' disappoin...
Colorado Pols - Fri 5:49 p.m.
The Green Party of Colorado state business meeting and nominating convention for 2010 will be held on Saturday, May 1. Location for the gathering is in Florence, Colorado. MAP More details at this web site in coming days....
Metro Denver Greens - Fri 3:05 p.m. - 5 clicks
Just released today, Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter has officially endorsed Sen. Michael Bennet . From a press release: Democrats in Colorado are blessed to have two highly qualified men running to represent Colorado in the United States Senate. One is our sitting US Senator, Michael Bennet, the other is our former Speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives, Andrew Romanoff. I have rema...
Colorado Pols - Fri 2:20 p.m. - 2 clicks
SATURDAY UPDATE: The Denver Post's David Harsanyi did respond , but we think beer-thirty started early at the Post yesterday afternoon. Should have probably just taken his lumps, because this response is, well, it's unusually and notably ridiculous. The bill gives Amazon an ultimatum. Collect taxes on your site for Colorado or hand over the names of those who do not pay up. If you do no...
Colorado Pols - Fri 2:20 p.m. - 2 clicks
Wow. So much I don't like about today's so-called "conservatives" exhibited in one article. And it's not even my birthday! The headline ( Texas Approves Curriculum Revised by Conservatives) tells you pretty much everything you need to know. After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday voted to approve a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp ...
Anne Zook - Fri 2:20 p.m.
In the wake of 9-11, Americans were extremely concerned about Islamic terrorism and the threat that Islamist regimes could pose. We remain afraid. But, eight years later, it does not look like the modern civilization destroying threat that it did eight and a half years ago. This is a movement without a grass roots base of support in the United States. In the United States and Europe, planned t...
Wash Park Prophet - Fri 1:15 p.m.
Latin America Gay marriage has arrived in Mexico City (as well as the District of Columbia, in both cases by legislative action), and Mexico has developed a multi-party democracy after generations of dominant party rule. Latin America is no longer dominanted by military regimes. Major earthquakes in Haiti and Chile struck at time when those countries have had their political affairs in bett...
Wash Park Prophet - Fri 1:02 p.m.
Today's PPP poll on the Colorado Senate race shows the same trend found in recent Rasmussen polling: Andrew Romanoff does better than Michael Bennet against the leading Republican, Jane Norton . According to a poll pitting the Democrats against the top three Republicans , Romanoff would beat Norton 44-39, while Bennet and Norton would be tied at 43-43. Both Democrats do well against Ken Buc...
Colorado Pols - Fri 12:22 p.m. - 6 clicks
Traffic deaths reached their lowest level (in absolute numbers) since 1954 in 2009. [T]otal traffic deaths declined nearly 9 percent in 2009 — to 33,963. That's the lowest toll since 1954. In 2008, an estimated 37,261 people died on the roadways. The newest numbers fit into a trend of steady decreases since 2005, when an estimated 43,510 people were killed. Adjusted for population, miles t...
Wash Park Prophet - Fri 10:54 a.m.
This time it's an op-ed repeating GOP talking points in the Washington Post. How much do you want to bet Andrew Romanoff's biggest regret is having hired this clown : If Democrats ignore health-care polls, midterms will be costly By Patrick H. Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen Friday, March 12, 2010 ...[The Democrats'] blind persistence in the face of reality threatens to turn this political m...
Colorado Pols - Fri 10:41 a.m. - 4 clicks
We're a little behind on this, but just a few weeks after former Rep. Tom Tancredo endorsed his campaign for Congress , Republican Jimmy Lakey pulled out of the race in CD7 (h/t to Complete Colorado ). According to a Facebook announcement: While I have truly enjoyed meeting so many wonderful people, I have come to the conclusion that this is not my year and I will live to fight another d...
Colorado Pols - Fri 10:08 a.m. - 2 clicks
Headlines today tell of Wall Street bailouts and banking abuses that have resulted in our usurious credit card hikes, heartless foreclosures, and the bankruptcy of Greece's entire economy. It seems that no person or institution is safe from corrupt banking practices. While we might naively think that these practices are limited to Wall Street and large banking institutions, it has become clea...
DailyKos (Colorado) - Fri 10:08 a.m.
Got the press release below forwarded to me by a friend who covers finance stories on a national desk and this just a couple days after an SEIU newsletter about "interest rate swaps." Reading between the lines and taken along with the NY Times article and the recent SEIU newsletter, there are some very serious questions that need answers. These Swaps are exactly what has sent Greece to the b...
Colorado Pols - Fri 8:07 a.m.
"This ban on salt, these people... In fact, in this health care bill... Where is it? Where is it? No, it's in the stimulus bill. I have to look in the right stack. In the stimulus bill already there are tax increases on sugared drinks. In the stimulus bill. It's already there. They've already passed it. Obama's already signed it into law. Everybody thinks this stuff is not going to happen. It's t...
Colorado Pols - Fri 6:07 a.m.
This afternoon, Colorado Senate Republicans' press office kicked into high gear to start the damage control against the Republican Caucus' opposition to a bill that allows pregnant women to get insurance in Colorado. First, a few facts about the bill, House Bill 1021 : The bill requires all insurance plans sold in Colorado's individual and small-group markets - the only markets over which th...
Colorado Pols - Thu 5:45 p.m. - 4 clicks
It's now been over 22 weeks since Jane Norton has been quoted directly in The Denver Post. Now wait a minute, you say, in The Post on Nov. 11, in the year 2009, there's a quote attributed directly to Norton, not to one of her spokespeople or to a news release. Norton was quoted as saying, "The very heart and soul of who we are as Americans is being eroded. We're seeing Washington's giant ha...
Colorado Pols - Thu 5:45 p.m. - 4 clicks
There are times when our criminal justice system delivers a conviction and in so doing delivers some solace to victims but without delivering justice. Willie Clark's conviction today strikes me as one of those times . A guilty verdict has been rendered, some closure may be found for Williams family, the Denver Broncos and the city of Denver. I just don't think we'll ever know who actually shot Da...
Steam Powered Opinions - Thu 1:00 p.m. - 4 clicks
Less than 48 hours into the effort, support is growing rapidly for ProgressNow Colorado's call to boycott online retail giant Amazon following its decision to terminate relationships with affiliates in the state. The public can sign the pledge to boycott Amazon here: http://progressnowcolorado.org... The editorial board of the Aurora Sentinel writes in today's edition ( click here to read...
Colorado Pols - Thu 1:00 p.m. - 5 clicks
Until the advent of the automobile, city fringes were were the poor lived, and the better off people lived closer to the core of the city. This situation hasn't vanished. There are currently many cities that have refused to annex low income neighborhoods , leaving them in unincorporated areas with minimal government services despite their urban nature, as discussed in the linked article. Copyri...
Wash Park Prophet - Thu 11:41 a.m. - 2 clicks
What ever happened to GMAC , the former lending arm of General Motors? The federal government has so far spent $17.2 billion to bail out GMAC and now owns 56.3 percent of the company. Both GMAC and Treasury insist that the company is solvent and will not require any additional bailout funds, but taxpayers already bear significant exposure to the company, and the Office of Management and Budget ...
Wash Park Prophet - Thu 11:41 a.m.
And starting again out in left field...Jane Norrrr-tonnnn . We've expressed amazement in this space before at Republican Senate candidate Jane Norton's apparent message strategy we dubbed "Out of Left Field" Norton. And we've said before that it sucks to be Norton's spokesperson . You never know what Norton is going to say, or when she might say it, and more often than not , she's not sayi...
Colorado Pols - Thu 11:41 a.m.
The prospect of former Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor running for political office does, as Josh Marshall notes , hold a high degree of entertainment value. Press flacks get paid to stand there and spout the company line no matter what the facts actually are or how transparent their dissembling may be. A press flack for any moderately high profile politician is going to be...
Steam Powered Opinions - Thu 10:56 a.m. - 5 clicks
What do households and the non-profit sector (combined) own, and what does it owe in the United States? Where is the breakdown as of the fourth quarter of 2009 ? Assets $68.2 Trillion - Real Estate $18.2 Trillion - Other Non-Financial Property $4.8 Trillion - Financial Assets $45.1 Trillion -- Cash and Equivalent $7.7 Trillion -- Bonds and Loans Payable $4.2 Trillion -- Corporate Equity $7.7 T...
Wash Park Prophet - Thu 10:26 a.m.
Busy, busy week for me - bad blogger, I know. I'm with John Cole , Rep. Massa sounds like the Lt. Dangle of the House of Representatives. Glenn Greenwald has a pitch perfect response to Chief Justice Roberts whining dubbing it, " Majestic Petulance " Not that I expect the administration to do much about it but the Israeli's utterly embarrassed Joe Biden and the President this week . Israel'...
Steam Powered Opinions - Wed 11:48 p.m.
Today's word is "Thoroughfare" For a year, I fell asleep every night to the ocean-like ebb and flow of 18-wheelers careening down the I-80 thoroughfare just outside the singlepane window of my Cedar Rapids dormitory. The room was always cold (unless it was hot), and in the winter months frost would form on this great glass portal overlooking the concrete ribbons of the interstate. I am one of a...
Vestal Vespa - Wed 9:42 p.m.
Mayor Dave Bing is proposing to abandon large swaths of the city, move the few people remaining to more functional neighborhoods, tear down the buildings left behind and let what's left become forests, pastures and farmland. The consolidation, aside from eliminating square miles of eyesores, would cut the cost of services like police, fire, snow removal, water and sewage. Already people are said...
Wash Park Prophet - Wed 8:06 p.m.
The United States military is close to trying to start the process of developing a major new weapons system called the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) Infantry Fighting Vehicle . Initial proposals are due in April. The proposal has deep conceptual flaws and should be scrapped before it starts. Big There has been discussion of it being as heavy as 70 tons , about the same as an M1 Abrams heavy ta...
Wash Park Prophet - Wed 6:24 p.m.
Join the Green Party "Float" in This Year's St. Patrick's Day Parade Saturday, March 13, 2010 10:00 A.M - 1:00 P.M. Join us at the Coors Field Parking Lot to participate in the Green Party, Bob Kinsey for Senate presence......
Metro Denver Greens - Wed 5:49 p.m.
The phase "Creative Destruction" coined by Schumpeter, a big picture economist, refers to the fact that those who lead new economic revolutions are rarely the ones who were the leaders before those revolutions. As a case in point , the tech bust of 2001 utterly overhauled the ranks of Colorado's big businesses. About two-thirds of their combined lost value came from reduced shares prices for Q...
Wash Park Prophet - Wed 1:22 p.m. - 6 clicks
The Denver Post reports (in a buried short on the business page) that the holding company for the Colorado Springs Gazette has filed for bankruptcy. Reportedly, secured creditors will take about 60 cents on the dollars. The details of the plan's impact on other creditors and shareholders was not discussed. Normally, in a bankruptcy where secured creditors do not receive payment in full, non-p...
Wash Park Prophet - Wed 12:26 p.m. - 6 clicks
Colorado public radio's KCFR program Colorado Matters had an interview (audio only) today with Liesl Begnaud about a homelessness prevention program of the Homelessness Prevention Coalition that she manages targeted at families in financial distress in the metro Denver area. The program focuses on weekly counseling sessions with the families, usually at their homes, designed to help them acce...
Wash Park Prophet - Wed 12:26 p.m. - 4 clicks
How about this for a question: Are Colorado Gov. Ritter and Lt. Gov. O'Brien as keen on firing teachers in Colorado as President Obama is for terminating teachers' employment in Rhode Island? Considering Ritter's and O'Brien's obsequiousness towards the so-called......
Dave Chandler - Wed 5:20 a.m. - 11 clicks
Some people are aggressive mean drunks. Overwhelmingly, these people are not women. These people are also disproportionately men who weight 215 pounds . (FWIW, the study used screwdrivers to get the subjects drunk.) There is even more good news for women who drink alcohol from a study of the drinking habits and weight of 19,220 women over age 38 who started the study at a normal weight: [...
Wash Park Prophet - Tue 3:06 p.m.
The standard mindset of economics is to see the point of everything to be maximizing productivity (as measured by the inputs to Gross Domestic Product), and the maximize GDP itself. As a first order goal, it isn't a bad approach. But, productivity fails to capture important measures relevant to quality of life (e.g. the benefits of having diverse products produced on a small scale rather than h...
Wash Park Prophet - Tue 1:42 p.m.
At last we have a good reason to make some calls urging the Democrats in Congress to pass one of their craptacular health care "reform" bills. Radio ranter Rush Limbaugh has vowed to leave the US if the legislation is enacted . Although passage of meaningful and necessary reform would be delayed for years if one of these hollowed out bills becomes law, at least the country might be spared the c...
Unbossed - Tue 11:48 a.m.
The 'Dimocrats' deserve to lose their majorities in the Colorado legislature ... and the governorship, too. Last month, the Dimocrat majority in the legislature and the Dimocrat governor of this state enacted into law a provision that now places an......
Dave Chandler - Mon 4:44 p.m. - 12 clicks
Professor Bainbridge on Corporations: "shareholders do not own the corporation." Nice theory, if you are a CEO. Bad law. Ownership of corporate shares is collectively ownership of the corporation. The corporation as a nexus of contracts is a nice theory, but simply isn't the law and isn't even a very realistic description of how corporations work. There are large, contract based entities, l...
Wash Park Prophet - Mar 8
It isn't uncommon to see an economic analysis of the benefits of a college education or a high school diploma. Typically, the discount expected lifetime incomes for median people of each education level, and then reduce the advantage for college education by taking into account opportunity costs and the costs of getting the education (tuition, room and board, etc.). But, the advantage of educati...
Wash Park Prophet - Mar 8 - 2 clicks
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a provision of the 2005 bankruptcy reform act that prohibited attorneys from giving certain kind of advice, by making clear that it should be read narrowly to prohibit only advice that a client abuse the bankruptcy system, rather than any advice that a client take on more debt when permitted by law to do so. The decision is unanimous on all points that matter. ...
Wash Park Prophet - Mar 8 - 2 clicks
From West Africa to India One of the long standing hypotheses of ancient history is that agriculture (and with it settled civilization) made its way to India from the Fertile Cresent to the Indus River Valley around 7,000 BCE. These people, sometimes called the Harappans, engaged in trade with Sumeria, used the same package of crops (wheat and barley) and domesticated animals as those found in...
Wash Park Prophet - Mar 8 - 2 clicks
There is nothing fundamentally union specific about the tactic we know as a strike. Strike behavior can arise any time you have a buyer and seller who are locked into dealing with each other to the exclusion of anyone else. Disney made the obvious when it shut down its ABC station in New York City for fourteen minutes at the start of last night's Academy Awards as a result of a breakdown in it...
Wash Park Prophet - Mar 8 - 3 clicks
[R]ecent clashes involving Muslim herders and Christian villagers that killed hundreds of people near the central city of Jos. A security meeting in Abuja is begging held as authorities in Jos bury hundreds of hacked bodies of victims, mostly women and children, in mass graves. A spokesman for the state government, Gregory Nianlong, says at least 500 people were slaughtered in a night raid on...
Wash Park Prophet - Mar 8
Until about six years ago in the US we shared a broad consensus that torture was reprehensible, unjustifiable, illegal, and un-American. Then the public learned that the Bush administration allowed, then that it ordered the cruel treatment and torture of prisoners overseas. Hundreds of years of consensus suddenly began to unravel as Bushs supporters sought to excuse these horrors. Led by Dick ...
Unbossed - Mar 8 - 2 clicks
Now that many prominent Republicans are denouncing the McCarthyite smear campaign against DOJ attorneys being orchestrated by Keep America Safe, Liz Cheney and William Kristol are scrambling to recast themselves as innocuous good-government types. Indeed. Their attacks were simply misunderstood, they say. KAS never meant to impugn the loyalty or values of the lawyers hired by the Obama adm...
Unbossed - Mar 8
The knee-jerk analysis of Instapundit is generally so slipshod as to merit no notice, but this op-ed is remarkable by even his own low standards . Glenn Reynolds argues that whereas the vast majority of Americans think the federal government lacks the consent of the governed, nearly two-thirds of our political rulers imagine that they do have this consent. And the other third who dont presum...
Unbossed - Mar 7
Pretty big week this week. I focus a great deal on global warming this issue, but also on right wing support for domestic terrorism and some local stuff going on. The surge in support to defeat Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, School Board elections in Texas, the downfall of Governor David Paterson in NY State and the EPA declaring the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn are among the topics I cover. More belo...
DailyKos (Colorado) - Mar 6 - 13 clicks
Michael Bennet is pretty much your classic establishment guy - son of a prominent Washington inside r he atteneded St. Albans, Wesleyan and Yale law. He worked in the Department of Justice and Clinton's White House out of law school. His father's family goes back to the Mayflower. His brother is the editor of The Atlantic Monthly. Today though Ezra Klein published an interview that he did wit...
Steam Powered Opinions - Mar 5 - 2 clicks
This chart from Nate Silver is interesting but it's not nearly as illustrative of his broader point as he believes , F.D.R. and L.B.J. might have been great cleanup hitters -- and you'll get no argument from me that Obama's aptitude at shepherding his agenda through Congress has been mixed, at best. But they basically spent the first several years of their Presidencies playing in the Congre...
Steam Powered Opinions - Mar 5 - 2 clicks
The proudly homophobic new Attorney General of Virginia, Kenneth Cuccinelli , didnt waste much time in trying to force Virginias public colleges and universities to eliminate the protections against discrimination that theyve extended to sexual orientation. The Washington Post has obtained a letter dated March 4, 2010 that he sent to every public institution of higher learning. In it, Cuc...
Unbossed - Mar 5 - 3 clicks
To be fair to Liz Cheney , her dad is a self-confessed international war criminal so we shouldn't be shocked that she'd go to extreme measures herself in order to distract from his crimes. ...
Steam Powered Opinions - Mar 5 - 2 clicks
A post here explores the pros and cons of giving voters ballots with large numbers of offices to fill, one unique to the United States and Switzerland. I personally oppose the long ballot for meritocratic positions. Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2009) ...
Wash Park Prophet - Mar 5
Bloggers have a better record of not jumping the gun on information in embargoed press releases (i.e. press releases distributed early to blogs and media with a "do not release before X" time and date) than main stream media sources. Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2009) ...
Wash Park Prophet - Mar 5 - 3 clicks
The employment situation is still bad . Jobs continue to disappear staying at or near the post-Great Depression low with no sign of a rapid turn around. Unemployment at 9.7% is still very high, and the ranks of the involuntarily part time workers, and long term (more than 26 weeks) unemployment are also at or near record post-Great Depression highs . The employment per population ratio remain...
Wash Park Prophet - Mar 5
