Yes Dear, I Remember When Women Were People Too

Yes Dear, I Do Remember When Women Were People Too by Tom Levenson Blogging  in haste whilst waiting out the sprout’s martial arts class, this from the ACLU blog seems an excruciatingly appropriate follow up to ABL’s post below: On December 23, 2010, [Bei Bei] Shuai, a 34-year-old pregnant woman who was suffering from a [...]

Prom Night In The Cosmos/My High School Wasn’t Like This

A bit of (not quite) random beauty — and a lovely story parsecs from politics — for your morning pleasure: (Link to a big  tiff here.) The story:  This image is the winner in the second annual contest the Gemini Observatory runs for Australian high school students, in which teams identify objects in the night [...]

I’ll Take Godwin for $1,000: Wisconsin Rule of Law Edition*

Via TPM, we find that Wisconsin Judge Maryann Sumi (echoing a commenter here, what a great name for a judge) has again enjoined the state of Wisconsin from implementing the union busting law passed in dubious battle last month. Based on the following, I’m guessing she’s seriously pissed (a legal term of art, you know): [...]

The Libyan Second Amendment Solution

I know I’ve been off-grid lately (work is the curse of the blogging classes), and I haven’t had much chance to think about much of anything — but in part it’s because I’ve been getting ready for a meeting with folks whose security clearances greatly exceed mine. (It is impossible to have a lower clearance [...]

Why Do Republicans Hate America So? — Nuclear Nonchalanting Edition

Update: Oh damn. For those in peril…. ————————————————————————— So, as reported in today’s New York Times, here’s Mitch McConnell talking trash about how Real Americans™ deal with their neutrons: “My thought about it is, we ought not to make American and domestic policy based upon an event that happened in Japan,” Mr. McConnell said. Which, [...]

DFH’s Say No Blood For Oil

That would be DFH’s like Assistant Secretary of Defense Sharon Burke. Just to take a break from Wisconsin perfidy, consider Burke, whose brief is “operational energy plans and programs,” making the connection between death and dinosaur wine in a speech at Harvard last week: Though the official price of a gallon of fuel within the [...]

A Joyful Voice Stilled: RIP Peter Gomes

I got an email this morning telling me that the most purely wonderful voice in Cambridge is now silent. Peter Gomes died yesterday, of complications from a stroke. He was sixty eight — younger than I would have guessed, for he seemed somehow outside of time — and much too young to be gone. As [...]

Quote of the Day: Adam Smith Profiles Barack Obama

Reading Nicholas Phillipson’s admirable new(ish) biography of Adam Smith walking to my office this morning, I came across a passage from The Theory of Moral Sentiments that seems to me to capture Obama’s style and theory of governance remarkably well: When he cannot conquer the rooted prejudices of the people by reason and persuasion …(h)e [...]

No, Really. Democrats are Just Republicans in Cheap Suits.

The Obama Administration can play it cool when it wants to. Via Feministing by way of TPM, we learn that the forced birth/hate teh gayz crowd took one on the chin last week, and, despite all efforts to the contrary, women (and gays, and transexuals, and just about anyone who thinks it’s none of anyone [...]