Sandra Korn is right about one thing. Anyone jumping for joy over Bill Daley’s appointment as Chief of Staff needs to take a second look. Sandra is upset because of Daley’s ties to business and his criticism of health care reform and financial regulation. Disagreeing with your boss isn’t always a bad thing in my … Read more
Last week, Obama appointed Bill Daley as his new Chief of Staff (replacing Rahm Emmanuel, who left to run for mayor of Chicago). While he has been praised by Howard Dean and Harry Reid, Daley represents yet another “shift to the right” in the Obama administration, and his appointment should enrage progressives and moderate Democrats … Read more
You would think that a professor of English would have some understanding of the greater meaning behind a classic work of American fiction like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Alan Gribben, such a professor at Auburn University, seems to have missed the point. Gribben has recently released an edition of Mark Twain’s masterpiece with the … Read more
A recent article in Publisher’s Weekly controversially announced that a new version of the Mark Twain’s classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will censor the “n” word and replace it with the word “slave.” The “n” word, of course, is detestable and, as the article points out, has caused many school-boards (i.e. worried parents) to ban … Read more
After a Long Career, Dodd Says “Goodbye” Senator Dodd (D), Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and longest serving Senator in Connecticut’s history, left his coveted office tucked away in the Capitol Building for the last time on January 2, 2011. January 2 marks the last day that Dodd, and the other members of the … Read more
This is from George Packer’s The Fight is For Democracy: For the past century, the political philosophy of collective action on behalf of freedom and justice has been liberalism. For most of that time, it was an expansive, self-confident philosophy, and history was on its side. Since around 1968, liberalism has been an active participant in its … Read more
Since Christmas, my time has consisted entirely of reading through Jonathan Franzen’s monolith, Freedom. Easily my favorite book of 2010, Freedom is worth the hype. Expect more posts over the next few days as I digest everything, but for now I’ll just leave some quotes on life, identity, and of course, freedom: “There’s a hazardous sadness … Read more
While enjoying the relatively mild weather and being extremely thankful to have made it home (and onto a plane) before the monster blizzard hit the Northwest, I came across a story about said blizzard on Fox news while absentmindedly flipping through channels. The news piece started off focusing on how some people lacked heating oil … Read more
Article II, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution reads: The President… shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint… Judges of the supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States…” (Pay particular attention to the usage of the words “Advice and Consent,” for that phrase is … Read more
The recent nor’easter that pummeled the eastern seaboard from Atlanta to Maine brought with it many regularities: alert snowplows hitting the streets early, states of emergency being declaredby anxious governors, and massive flight cancellations. It also, less expectantly, has brought a progressive mayor in New Jersey to the social networking site Twitter to respond personally to reports from constituents of unplowed … Read more