Article III
Contempt of Congress and obstruction of congressional investigaton is the crucial charge in the impeachment litany. It ask the simple but central question: Does Congress matter?
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Es gilt viele Mauern abzubauen
Were they walling people in? Or out? Both, it seems. As much as they tried to keep people in, they also tried very hard to keep western influences out. Jeans, rock’n’roll, Coca-cola, all the symbols of decadence that Americans thrust at them. The Berlin Wall sent a message. Like a giant billboard, it shouted out to us. We heard fear. We heard weakness.
Review: ‘Gunfight, My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America’
But guns have long signaled something different in rural places than in urban ones. Just as significant, guns now signify something radically different than they did a few decades ago. In short, guns have become highly politicized, both a cause and a symbol of our nation’s accelerating polarization
A Teaching Moment, Squandered
Give 30 minutes to walk out and return, then give an hour to study of these basic tenets of being a citizen in the US, their history, the difficulties of conflicts between rights and safety, how bills become law, and how protests change (or don’t change) law, how courts decide conflicts.
Basic civics education.
Is it still murder if the president orders it?
He’s been murdering people week after week, sometimes day after day, now month after month. We’re getting used to it. It’s not a big story anymore. It isn’t the headline. It isn’t the lead story. Oh, sure, at first, some folks were shocked, outraged, demanded an investigation. At first … but not now, not anymore. It’s become normal. Dog bites man. No big deal. Happens all the time. Not news.
TWOFER: Tax and Health Care Cuts
Trump has two top legislative priorities: “Tax Reform” and “Repeal the ACA”. Today, they intersected: his “Tax Reform” plan cuts exactly one tax from the ACA – the 3.8% Medicare tax on Net Investment Income for high-income taxpayers. It has long been a badly-kept secret that the driving force behind “repeal the ACA” has been…
We Persist
We are now being tested, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. What progress we have won seems to be slipping away, not by the natural forces of time and change, but by the sinister forces of greed and wealth and power and deceit. Like our predecessors whose radical ideas have gone before, we must persist.
There’s 7 New People Born
Into this world came this song. It certainly wasn’t on the radio, but I had bought the album – my second Dylan album – and listened to it, late at night, in the living room, on the hi-fi console, with my headphones on, in stereo.
When I first heard it, it was just “the next track” on the album. But halfway through, I stopped and moved the needle back to the beginning. I listened. Then played it again. And again. And again.
I learned, in 5 minutes, about poverty. Farming. South Dakota. Pain. Helplessness. Desperation. Terror. Loss.
I Don’t Hate Trump
Everybody on one side says everybody on the other side hates Donald Trump.
No, I don’t hate him.
To be most charitable, I don’t care about him enough to hate him. I know other people who are crude or selfish or conceited or overbearing or loud or crass or ignorant. I’ve responded by ignoring them.
No, I don’t hate Trump. But I do hate – wait, let me think… yes, I do hate what he has been doing.
The Death of the Death of Obamacare
It took the Resistance, the nationwide gaggle of Indivisible groups, ADAPT protesters, health care advocates, and the people themselves to bring this reality to the forefront. They marched and shouted, they posted and tweeted, they emailed and called and sang, they carried photos of their friends and family, yes, they disrupted and got arrested – but mostly they told their stories.