Here's the text of the letter from NPR:
September 9, 2009
The text of the letter from Senator Edward M. Kennedy referenced by President Obama in Wednesday's address to a Joint Session of Congress.
May 12, 2009
[...]I'll be posting comments to this thread throughout the night. Check back often.
' [...]Yup: Stay in school, do your homework, act right, be responsible. I can see how those messages would send white parents (and, let me say it here: they are, essentially, only white parents--the children of those seniors who are convinced that President Obama will have "death panels" to kill old, [...]
But you may have missed Dickapedia, and it is far more entertaining.
Here's a paragraph from a hysterically funny--and seemingly accurate--profile of Michelle Bachmann, the WAY OUT THERE Congressperson from Minnesota.
[...]Keep your eye on this story, because it could give Dems some much-needed ammunition for the public option.
[...]
Sometimes, the most authoritative available source is the Onion.
[...]"There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit" [...]
Overheard: Sarah Palin is a beacon of sanity compared to Michele Bachmann.
What I want to know is, how do these very limited (okay, crazy) people get elected to public office? And lest I be accused of picking on the women, there's James there's no climate change, and I know [...]
From the editor of the Charleston Gazette, we learn the following, which seems too crazy to be true even of George W. Bush:
Evidently, early in 2003, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Biblical agents of the [...]
Steve Benen has posted an absolutely dead-on analysis of the reasons anti-health-reform folks are so angry. Go read the whole thing.
[...]Unfortunately, I missed where this came from, but I loved it:
"I have given up hope for a loyal opposition. I'd settle for a sane one."
To coin a phrase: you betcha!!
' [...]Paul Krugman cuts to the chase and gives a definition of healthcare reform that is easy to understand:
"The essence is really quite simple: regulation of insurers, so that they can't cherry-pick only the healthy, and subsidies, so that all Americans can afford insurance.
[...]Political Animal has a fantastic post about the transition from for-profit firefighters to government-run fire departments.How would THAT argument play out if it were happening today?
[...]Yahoo and Microsoft have teamed up to challenge Google. As I understand the deal, Microsoft's technology will power Yahoo!'s search pages and related advertising. This new relationship between the second and third most popular search engines in the American market is being promoted as a way to encourage more competition, [...]
Those of us who teach public administration and policy proceed on the (generally unarticulated) assumption that policy debates are "evidence-based"--that is, that parties to a policy discussion begin with a general agreement about the nature and subject of the argument--should we pass this bill, which will do X or Y? [...]
I always knew that Congressman Buyer wasn't exactly--how shall I put this?--the sharpest knife in the drawer. A few weeks ago, you may recall that he made a speech on the dangers of smoking lettuce. (Yes, I mean't lettuce.) But now, he's really outdone himself.
Why do voters in Indiana [...]
Just in case anyone was in the mood for American self-congratulation about electing the first African-American President, we get this reminder of the ugliness still hiding under our rocks....
[...]Was there anyone in the Bush Administration more despicable than Karl Rove? (Okay--Dick Cheney. But anyone else?)
Karl Rove, dubbed "the Original King of Irony" by Steve Benen, has been quoted in numerous venues as being "worried" that if the CIA has to brief Congress about their programs, the lawmakers will [...]
Holy Newspapers! The big opinion piece in today’s Washington Post is by Sarah Palin. Beyond the obvious question of why The Post would do that, is why any reader should consider Sarah Palin’s opinion on energy matters to be expert. I understand that she lives in Alaska and Alaska [...]
There's a great post at DailyKos explaining why criticsm of Sarah Palin's qualifications for office are NOT sexist, and why failure to point those inadequacies out WOULD be sexist.
Here's a short taste of the much longer post:
[...]Dispatches from the Culture Wars is one of my favorite blogs. Posts like this one are why:
[...]Okay, I can make a list of what is wrong with them, but it never fails to astonish me when people's bigotry makes them do hurtful things to children. This report comes from Philadelphia.
[...]Multiple sources are reporting that health care companies are spending $1.4 million PER DAY lobbying against reform.
[...]There's nothing I can offer that would explain this, politically, but Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin, has just announced that she will no only not seek re-election in 2010, but she will be stepping down as governor in a few weeks. Lt. Governor, Sean Parnell will be sworn-in later this summer.
[...]
A very good omen for gay rights in a country that hasn't had very many.
[...]I have pulled the column I had originally written for this upcoming Monday's Star, in deference to some points raised by Dennis Ryerson, the editor. But I thought I'd post it here, for whatever comments it might generate.
Anyone who has been paying even the slightest attention knows that newspapers—at least' [...]
I have to admit to getting quite a bit of perverse joy in watching the GOP squirm their way through the Mark Sanford Affair, um, Affair. His first presser was a mesmerizing bit of chicanery, with him asserting that he was a "bottom line kind of guy" for about 8 [...]
Back when I was a lowly law clerk for the local federal court, I used to really struggle with cases where one party clearly had a better case than the other, but the other party had a much better lawyer.
It's probably no surprise that the guys with the good lawyers [...]
In my Law and Public Policy classes, I often use examples of good and bad policies plucked from current headlines. And more often than not, my "here's what NOT to do" examples come from Texas.
Which is why this is pathetic, but not surprising.
[...]As the defenders of the status quo rev up their efforts to defeat healthcare reform, the essential Steve Benen reminds us that--despite their supposed reverence for consumer choice and free markets, the current healthcare landscape is devoid of both.
[...]
Sightings is a weekly email publication of the Martin Marty Center at the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. It is generally thought-provoking, and the one I received this morning is no exception.
The author compares the religiosity of George W. Bush and Obama, and sees similarities in rhetoric that [...]
Evidently, there was a VERY right-wing conference over the weekend that included Pat Buchanan extolling "English-only" efforts. He spoke beneath a banner on which the word "conference" was misspelled.
But it was misspelled in ENGLISH...and isn't that what counts??
[...]From the website of Senator Chris Dodd:
"Public officials aren’t supposed to change their minds. But I firmly believe that it’s important to keep learning. Last week, while I was in Connecticut meeting with members of the gay and lesbian community from across the state, I had the opportunity to tell" [...]
As the Obama Administration has moved to ease and ultimately reverse the current economic downturn, the right wing has gotten ever more shrill. Although virtually all economists, including those who are considered conservative, have endorsed the need for spending to stimulate the economy, the wingnuts have been throwing around words [...]
There are thoughtful and intelligent Republicans, like Dick Lugar, who know what they are talking about. (Granted, their numbers are thinning considerably, but they do exist.) Then, of course, there's Mike Pence.
[...]I bet you didn't know that--not only is he not an American citizen (being born abroad in Hawaii and all that)--but Obama is actually an ILLEGAL ALIEN.
[...]Greg Mitchell is the editor of "Editor and Publisher," and the author of "Why Obama Won." In a recent post at TPMCafe, he shared a letter from his daughter, who left a job at the Holocaust Museum to go back to school for her PhD.
[...]And some very good questions...
[...]Much in the same way the Bush Administration ignored intelligence reports that flatly proclaimed that Osama bin Laden was planning an eminent attack on US soil, the Right effectively silenced the Department of Homeland Security after they decided they didn't like the findings of their recent status report of right [...]
If you haven't read today's Indianapolis Times, you need to click on over right now!
Today's post raises a question--and my eyebrows! Will Mitch PRIVATIZE the CIB??
[...]Charles Krauthammer--one of the more creepy denizens of the very far right--recently accepted a "journalism" award from NewsCorp, the parent company of Fox News. According to Steve Benen, Krauthammer began his acceptance speech by "trashing Nobel peace prizes and Pulitzers, before talking up the importance of News Corp's enterprise. (via" [...]
For years, I've taught students that the Fourteenth Amendment "incorporated" most provisions of the Bill of Rights--meaning that, although the BOR initially restrained only the federal government, after passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court used a series of cases to apply most of those same restrictions to other' [...]
This morning I learned that Current TV journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were sentenced to 12 years at hard labor by North Korean courts.
[...]Most of us who blog here at the AVA, or who visit the site, share a frustration with zealotry. I don't know about the rest of you, but I have often had difficulty explaining why my allegiance to certain constitutional principles is any different from--or preferable to--the beliefs that (to' [...]
If you doubt the existence of Christian Terrorists who are every bit as fanatical as the Islamic Terrorists Dick Cheney is always warning us about, this summary of responses to the cold-blooded murder of Dr. Tiller might make you less skeptical.
[...]
Scott Roeder (who is suspected of killing Doctor George Tiller), Eric Rudolph (who bombed gay bars, the Atlanta Olympics and killed an abortion provider) and a host of other "Christians" who murder women's health providers have something interesting in common: They are all white and they kill white abortion providers.
I listened, with absolute horror, to news reports that Doctor George Tiller, serving as an usher, was gunned down in church by an anti-abortion gunman. Predictable were the comments of hate-mongers like Bill O'Reilly, who though silent on war and the death penalty (which, Bill, kill people), offered some version [...]
A diary at Daily Kos, from someone who knew Dr. Tiller intimately, deserves broad distribution.
Here is the most significant part:
[...]Dr. George Tiller was shot in Kansas--in his church. He was a doctor who performed abortions.
He had long been a target of the so-called/misnamed 'pro-life' movement.
[...]The crap being thrown at Judge Sonia Sotomayor is unbelievable. Her critics have made a big deal out of ONE sentence about Latina judges bringing a different sensibility to the bench; they are insisting it is evidence of racism. I did something unheard of--I read the whole speech from which [...]
To Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, G. Gordon Liddy, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Pat Buchanan et al:
Thank you from the bottom of my little black heart. Although your tripe is a little hard to listen to, it gives voice to 40 years of white, mostly-male angst at being flicked off the [...]
And so all they have left are slogans and trite hollow phrases, so says Jonathan Chait in the New Republic. He provides some great analogies to poke all kinds of holes through silly stuff like: "If gays can marry it will hurt heterosexual marriage".
[...]I'm going to make this brief (because this doesn't bear a whole lot of discussion): Marriage, as defined in the gay/straight marriage debate, is a religious matter. For straights, the civil nature of the union and the religious aspect have become "collapsed" such that when we say "marriage" we mean [...]
I DO love the Onion!
WASHINGTON, DC—A genie freed from a battered oil lamp by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia granted the conservative jurist a strict constructionist interpretation of his wish for "a hundred billion bucks" Monday.
[...]On this Memorial Day, Paul Krugman revisits California's Proposition 13.
For those of you too young to recall, thirty-odd years ago, California voters went to the polls and made it much, much more difficult for lawmakers to raise property taxes.
[...]Just when I thought there was nothing left that could surprise me anymore...
[...]The always-perceptive Hilzoy zeroes in on the problem with so-called "preventive detention."
If we don't have enough evidence to charge someone with a crime, we don't have enough evidence to hold them. Period.
[...]In a recent post on Dangerous Intersection--a favorite blog of mine--someone named only "Hank" responds, at considerable length, to a statement from one Albert Mohler, a conservative Catholic quite critical of a recent speech by the Pope.
[...]