t-shirt
'I promise
not to talk politics
during dinner'
-------------------
Steve's favorite news links
* The Newseum's daily compendium of front pages from around the world
* Google News, "crisis" or "crises" updated continuously throughout the day.
* Maryland Independent Party - the official site
Your humble host
"Contemplating" ...
agrees with the signers of
Declaration of Independence
that all men are created equal,
endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable rights,
including the rights to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness
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August 12, 2010
Crisis of confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary
Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor writes: "This crisis of confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary is real and growing". The comment is from the preface of a report issued today ("The New Politics of Judicial Elections; 2000-2009; Decade of Change") by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU law school, Justice at Stake, and the National Institute on Money in State Politics. The report includes quote from a Justice at Stake campaign legal brief: "Judicial elections have created a crisi of confidence. National surveys from 2001 and 2004 found that over 70% of Americans believe that campaign contributions have at least some influenceon judges' de3cisions in the courtroom."
August 12, 2010
Dire distress in instance of extreme danger to life or property
An art gallery in Colorado is evoking quite a reaction with it's outside display of a U.S. flag. Here's a clipping of front page story in Durango Herald:
The full story, and dozens of comments from readers, is available at the newspaper website -- http://www.durangoherald.com/sections/News/2010/08/12/Art_piece_with_upsidedown_flag_sparks_debate_on_Main/
The artist is quoted as saying "I don't see a difference between Democrats and Republicans. It doesn't matter what they say, because their actions are all the same and that's what's created this distress."
May 28, 2009
The Audacity of Abrogating the Constitution
A Tweet today caught my eye. The writer was asking for possible explanation for why a car would have both a Confederate flag and an Obama sticker displayed. I replied with "well, the apparent disregard for following the Constitution (re natural born citizen requirement) raises secession talk". The original poster asked me to please explain. I've pointed him here, because I'm not good enough a writer to fit my answer into Twitter's 140 character limit.
I think this natural born citizen issue will eventually lead to a full-blown Constitutional crisis. I can't remember any sitting Governor of a state talk about secession until Texas Governor did so last month. The right of each State to secede from the Union was quite stomped on during the Lincoln presidency. And secession is to this day looked upon by many as a traitorous, or at least dangerously close to that, concept even to discuss.
As you might already imagine, I thoroughly disagree with the notion that secession is a taboo subject.
One of the great things about the USA in my lifetime has been that folks who find their candidates defeated in one election can look forward to the next. But the current situation, where none of the Electors, or members of Congress, or judges -- not even one -- stood up to ensure that the Constitutional requirement to serve as President was met, well tends to deflate the hope that the next election will be a fair one.
So, if you want secession rights of States to again be widely discussed, Barack Obama being sworn in -- without even a prima facie case that he meets the requirements -- is probably the best thing since New England States held their secession convention in early 1800s.
[May 29 update: The fellow who asked for explanation apparently doesn't see things as I do. His reply asked if I was stupid or trying to make a joke. This is the same sort of attitude that was apparent earlier in the week by the guffaws from White House press secretary and the peanut gallery when the natural born citizen unpleasantness was raised at White House press briefing. I've had a fondness for the fellow who asked that question at the White House -- radio host Les Kinsolving, of Baltimore -- ever since he asked similarly appropriate questions at the Clinton administration's briefings.]
November 15, 2008
War against al Qaeda far from over, says CIA chief
This ran on p. 19 of today's Sydney Morning Herald, of Australia
September 30, 2008
* The Obama-backing regulatory socialists join up with the McCain-backing corporate socialists to urge a big leap in the wrong direction
Your humble editor is taping a "Meet the Candidate" segment on local cable news station this afternoon -- I'm running for Congress. Here's an excerpt from the script I submitted yesterday for their teleprompter:
"... The major parties appear intent on forcing you and me and our children to pay for a massive economic bailout plan. There is a much better option: abolish the federal income tax. This will result in an economic boom the likes of which we have never seen. Investor confidence will turn around so quickly that the current 'crisis' will be but a tiny blip in our history."
You can see the full text here
April 1, 2008
* US high school dropout rate
"Cities in Crisis" is the title of report to be released today by America's Promise Alliance, a drop-out prevention group founded by retired Gen. Colin Powell. The group studied 2003-04 data. Nationwide, nearly one in three U.S. high school students drops out before graduating, or about 1.2 million students a year. "When more than 1 million students a year drop out of high school, it's more than a problem, it's a catastrophe," Powell said. The study was hampered because there is no national standard for measuring drop-out rates. But, as Alliance president and chief executive Marguerite Kondracke said, "I don't care what data you use, the results are not acceptable."
[Source: Kevin Diaz (Minneapolis Star-Tribune), "Minneapolis schools get failing grade on dropouts"
March 31, 2008
Hello and welcome. The term "crisis" is both overused and underused, although the former is what I expect to most populate this site. I've been searching, harvesting and distributing news items from a wide variety of sources since before the web became so ubiquitous. It was in my review of the Congressional Record that I first shook my head in sad awareness that the "crisis" label was being bandied about so prolifically. I occasionally did a targeted search for the mention of the words crisis or crises, and would post a "Today's Crisis" kind of compilation in my favorite usenet newsgroup. Here's an example thread, which includes some praise for the concept, which I was heartened to see. A few weeks ago, I started checking the crisis hits in newspaper article feed at google (which I harvest for nuclear-related items every day), and I was surprised that there's even more hits on crisis or crises every hour than on the mega-hyped subject of global climate. Thus was born the idea for this site. To get in the proper frame of mind, I urge listening to an old album by The Kinks titled "Misfits". One of the songs recommends "Don't get depressed when you read in the press about world revolution and social unrest. Try not to panic when you switch on the news and see crooked politicians and unemployment queues."