Entangled Giant - The New York Review of Books

I guess it's not so easy to roll back executive power. Here's a good short history of expanding executive power: Entangled Giant - The New York Review of Books

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We have so much work to do...

The following quote from the 9/12 rally in DC shows how deeply in need our country is of good history teachers:

But some gripes were new. I was especially struck by the tea baggers' obsession with czars. Everyone knew the number of czars Obama appointed: 37. And nobody was happy with them. "They're socialist radicals," said Davy Reeves of Kalamazoo, Mich. "I don't like the idea of all these czars," said Geri Shea of Leesburg, Va. "It's unconstitutional." (Original Slate.com article)

So now, "czar" equals "socialist." But perhaps I should not be surprised...



















I mean, they're all the same, right?

Truthiness Check on Obama

During the Election season, David turned me on to politifact.org, a nonpartisan fact-checking website that rates statements by public figures on a scale ranging from "True" to "Pants on Fire." I have found the site to be an invaluable resource as I pick my way through the claims and counter-claims of the health care debate.

Here's the link to Politifact's ratings on Obama's address to Congress on health care (and on his Heckler, Rep. Joe Wilson).

A Conservative on the Conservative Movement

Okay, let's get this Blog up & running for the 2009-2010 season. Newsweek has just published a Q&A between John Meacham, editor, and Sam Tannenhaus. Tannenhaus' responses remind us how desperately we need the traditional Republican conservatives to rediscover their voice in order for our democracy to get back on track. I for one have not been pleased with how our President has been handling himself on Health Care (and the jury is still out on Afghanistan).Here is an excerpt and the full link is below it.

...The Republicans, so intent on thwarting Obama, have vacated the field, and left it up to the sun party to accept the full burden of legislating us into the future. If the Democrats succeed, Republicans will be tagged as the party that declined even to help repair a broken system and extend fundamental protections—logical extensions of Social Security and Medicare—to some 46 million people who now don't have them. This could marginalize the right for a generation, if not longer. Rush Limbaugh's stated hope that Obama will fail seems to have become GOP doctrine. This is the attitude not of conservatives, but of radicals, who deplore the very possibility of a virtuous government....

http://www.newsweek.com/id/214253