Category: Current Events

I’m starting to like Rand Paul more. When he first ran for the Senate in Kentucky, I remember watching an awkward interview with Rachel Maddow and thinking he was trying to seem like a Ron Paul 2.0 who could get farther in the Republican Party but was so much less charismatic than his father that he might not get anywhere.

Of course, Paul won the Republican nomination, won the Senate race, and has only continued to expand his influence. Last year he lent support to the elections of some like-minded Republicans, many of whom supported his filibuster on Wednesday.

Continue reading Ramblings About Rand

Rand Paul filibustered the nomination of John Brennan to CIA Director for over twelve hours yesterday, demanding clear answers about the federal government’s authority to target US citizens for drone strikes without a trial. It was an exciting performance that blurred the tired left/right political lines as Paul won rare praise from both Heritage and the ACLU, from both Rachel Maddow and Sarah Palin.

For the record, while I think our overseas drone strikes are unethical and counterproductive, I think malicious use of drones to assassinate non-“imminent” US citizens on US soil is completely hypothetical, and not something the Obama administration ever wants to use, just like I don’t think Obama really wants to “take all our guns away.” But, on principle, I still think the President shouldn’t have powers that he just promises not to use; that’s the fundamental reason behind our notion of a Constitution, of limited government, of being a nation ruled by laws and not by men. Even democratically-elected leaders can abuse their powers; just look at Hugo Chavez, who in many ways was the socialist that many American conservatives still think Obama actually is.

So I think this is an excellent discussion to be having, and I’m ecstatic that in a few months we have gone from hearing no questions about drone policy in the entire election campaign to leaked memos, Congressional hearings, and now 12-hour filibusters that make national news! Whatever your opinion of Paul’s particular arguments, I think this was a much-needed pro-civil-liberties event that was led by Paul and supported almost entirely by fellow Republican Senators (with the admirable exception of Ron Wyden, D-OR).

Of course, the political affiliation of last night’s speakers caused no shortage of irony:

Continue reading Filibusters And Partisan Whiplash

A new study blames volcanoes for the lack of global warming since 2000. This continues an interesting trend in the realm of climate science.

For years, climate change skeptics have been claiming that the earth has been failing to warm as scientists predicted. Climate change defenders have been accusing them of fabrication and cherry-picking, insisting that all the Smart People all agree that the Earth is still warming and even accelerating!

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, more and more scientists are coming up with theories to explain why there hasn’t been any warming lately. Maybe it’s pollutants in Asia. Maybe it’s hiding deep in the ocean. This time, maybe it’s volcanoes. Increasingly, the scientific community seems to be subtly abandoning the old argument that “the planet is definitely still warming, and anyone who doubts the consensus is anti-science,” in favor of a new argument that “the planet doesn’t appear to be warming, but climate change is still true, and here’s the reason for this unexpected pause.”

Continue reading A Subtle Shift In Climate Change Defense

Wow. After much dilly-dallying, delaying, and obstructionism, it looks like the Sequester might actually Go Through this week. For some reason Americans aren’t very freaked out about it; the latest theory is that “it lacks a catchy name.” Maybe it’s harder to overhype something when it doesn’t have a scary word like “cliff” in the title.

What Spending Cuts?

Not that the government isn’t trying to overhype this thing. The powers that be are threatening us with delayed flights, furloughed workers — even “a lawless society“! To hear Obama and other politicians and officials talk about these “dire,” “brutal,” “devastating,” and “painful” cuts, you would think the Sequester is chopping the budget in half!

Actually, the apocalyptic post-sequester world involves federal spending that is still bigger than last year’s, just… not as big as it would have been. Here’s one of the charts going round the Internet:

Continue reading Bring On The Sequester!

Three months ago I argued that the “hodge-podge, cobbled-together, bureaucratic-bloated, corporate-handout monstrosity” known as Obamacare was already beginning to unravel. Since then, the cracks have only continued to widen.

Continue reading The Collapse of Obamacare, Part 2

UPDATE 02/21/13: The petition stormed past 100,000 signatures yesterday! I shall imagine that my timely blog post was what helped propel it over the finish line. (Naw, it’s probably better for my ego if I don’t.) Now we’ll see whether the White House responds meaningfully or if the petition will join the ash heap of political talking points.

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If you haven’t already, I encourage you to sign this petition on the White House website. Unlike most useless Internet petitions, these petitions actually at least elicit a response from the White House if they reach the arbitrary threshold, which was recently raised to 100,000 signatures. The petition to Make Unlocking Cell Phones Legal has 85,000 and needs 15,000 more by Saturday.

Reaching the threshold may not actually change anything, but even for a White House petition the odds are greater than normal. The regulation that recently and arbitrarily made it illegal to unlock cell phones came from the executive branch (The Librarian of Congress, specifically) and could theoretically be reversed. Based on my understanding of the subject, there was no good reason to change this regulation, and reverting it back would provide a better and freer market for consumers.

Derek Khanna, who has been helping to lead the charge on this, argues that “The Law Against Unlocking Cellphones Is Anti-Consumer, Anti-Business, and Anti-Common Sense.” Khanna is the same young conservative activist who was fired from his Republican staffer position after he rocked too many boats with his memo about common-sense copyright reform. I love how Khanna is directly trying to influence politics for the better by pursuing tangible and achievable policy changes – first with his copyright memo and now with his support for this petition.

So go sign the petition!

Earlier this week, the Senate voted on re-authorizing the “Violence Against Women Act,” and some Republicans caught flak for voting against it. The Internet lit up with predictable jokes about how the GOP is so anti-woman. Journalists even wrote articles like “Why Would Anyone Oppose the Violence Against Women Act?” as if the virtues of the bill were so patently obvious that it required a special investigation to uncover the mysterious motives one must have for opposing it.

This is a classic case of judging a bill by its title, which has become increasingly dangerous in recent years (Why would anyone not want to be a PATRIOT? Who wants to Leave Children Behind? Don’t you want Care to be Affordable? Etc. Etc.) Oddly enough, this bill has precisely the wrong title for such judging, yet everyone still manages to commit the same fallacy anyway!

The bill should be titled “Preventing Violence Against Women Act,” so anyone who opposes it could be accused of not wanting to prevent violence. As it stands, headlines like these don’t sound so bad: “Marco Rubio opposes Violence Against Women…” Yet everyone still implicitly understands that the joke is on the Republicans. Somehow it’s obvious that the bill’s goal is actually the opposite of its title, but it’s not at all obvious that the bill’s provisions may not be related to either one!

But enough about the title. I thought violence against women was already illegal, anyway. So what does this bill actually do?

Continue reading So Republicans Oppose Violence Against Women?