July 2009
7 posts
Why Politicians Don't Read Bills
With a 1,000-page health care bill bouncing around Congress, Rep. John Conyers said this about the act of reading congressional legislation:
Yes, elected officials usually do not read the bills they pass or reject. As we know, many important bills have become law with little or no time for members of congress to vote on them, such as the USA Patriot Act, whose 241 pages were presented the...
“The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow”
– H.G. Wells
WWII in Three Hundred Words (or Less)
It’s been done. In the least likely of places ever, no doubt, but done. An excerpt:
The USA tools up the world, ‘cause it’s got more factories than everybody else put together, & they’re out of bomber range. Axis runs out of steam in Russia, cause Russia’s enormous & bloody freezing. Allies invade on D-Day… 5 landings: 2 British, 2 American, 1...
Healthy Competition
Missouri Representative Roy Blunt recently offered up an intriguing take on the role on everybody’s favorite celebrity couple—the U.S. government and health care:
Look. There’s a bunch of arguments people can make against government involvement in the American health care system. A real bunch. But the idea that introducing a government-provided option into the mix of industry offerings would...
A Blog of the World
From what is now modern-day Turkey came a man, born two millenia ago, named Diogenes of Sinope. He was a controversial type, infamous for embracing poverty as a “natural” way of life and shunning the plesantries of civilization for what he saw as a return to simplicity. At one point, asked of his origins, he replied
“I am a citizen of the world.”
A strange idea, as...