I was watching C-Span and they aired a brief interview with former House member Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, a fairly liberal Democrat who served in the 1970s. As part of her interview she discussed the fact that she was the first member of Congress to give birth to a child and the first to be granted maternity leave. It struck me that today that would hardly be a big deal, indeed outside of the human nature part of the story I doubt many would report it. But for the era, it was a big deal. Indeed in...

I’ve been catching up on my reading and one of the books was so compelling I felt the need to commend it to the TMV crowd. The book is called Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives In North Korea by Barbara Demick. We’ve all heard the stories out of North Korea about the famines or how the average North Korean is shorter than his South Korea brother, but this book takes a new tack that gives you a real insight into the nation. The author chose to focus on one city in North Korea and tried to...

A touching commentary on the same sex marriage vote in Washington

As you have seen in the news a number of banks have settled with a number of attorneys general to resolve issues related to the mortgage meltdown mess. Now I am not going to say that a 26 billion dollar plan is nothing but let’s do a little math here. To begin with the reports I am hearing say it will take 1-3 years before anyone starts getting money or modifications, not a big help to those in trouble today. Second, let’s run the numbers. Now a portion of the money will go to people...

No they have not managed to extend FB to the world beyond…… yet. But this is a free estate planning tip to all the TMV readers. While many of us plan for our loved ones by setting up a will or trust and leaving them with information about bank accounts and credit cards, one thing we tend to forget is our internet presence. It’s not a pleasant topic, but we’re all gonna go sometime (unless someone knows something I don’t) and your loved ones need to, among other things,...

Even as a supporter of gay rights this seems a bit of an overreach to me. Were his comments a bit tactless, sure. I can even see how some people could initially find them offensive. But he’s got a pretty good track record on gay rights issues and I think it should be sufficient for him to simply apologize and move on.

Republicans are holding a primary in Missouri and cauci in Minnesota and Colorado. Total number of delegates at stake…. zero Importance of tonights vote… well it gives Wolf and Rachel something to do…

Moments ago a 3 judge panel of the United States 9th Circuit Court Of Appeals ruled that Proposition 8 violates the Equal Protection provisions of the US Constitution. The 2-1 ruling was made by a 3 judge panel and at first glance it appears it applies only to California. Because the ruling was tailored to apply only to Caifornia and the process of the California Supreme Court ruling followed by Proposition 8 it is possible that the US Supreme Court would reject the case. It is also unclear if there...

What’s good for the goose ?

Officials of the Los Angeles School District have announced that they will replace the entire staff of a troubled school where two teachers were arrested on charges of lewd conduct. It is not yet clear if this move will be permanent or temporary. I do understand the need to protect children from potential predators as well as those who ignore the conduct. At the same time there are likely many innocent staffers at the school and I would hate for them to be tarred with the stigma

Word just issued this morning that the 9th Circuit US Court Of Appeals will issue their ruling on Proposition 8 at 10am on Tuesday February 7th. This ruling will cover the issues of the Constitutionality of Proposition 8 as well as review the lower court opinion, the issues of standing and alleged bias on the part of Judge Walker. Whatever the ruling is it will be appealed and so the battle is far from over. This is a 3 judge panel so the appeal would likely go first to the full appeals court sometime...

As I was pondering the elections this weekend I could not help but reflect that the Presidential race alone is expected to spend upwards of a one or two billion dollars. Add in the Congressional races and you get to perhaps three billion or more. And what will the result of all that spending be ? The most likely outcome is pretty much status quo. President Obama is very likely to be re-elected and the GOP is very likely to keep the House. The Senate may shift parties but the balance will be close...

For those starting to follow the campaign beyond the race for the White House, this is a nice guide to the current state of affairs.

Despite overwhelming evidence that the Syrian government has been brutalizing the people on the orders of President Assad, the Russian and Chinese ambasadors to the UN exercised their veto on a resolution calling for Assad to leave power. One wonders why a brutal dictatorship and a quasi dictatorship would oppose such a resolution….

According to a friend who lives in Nevada some relatively representative caucui went as follows Romney in first at around 50-55% Paul a distant second Gingrich a close third behind Paul Santorum in fourth with single digits. Will this be how the results pan out ? We shall see later tonight

Just breaking this morning that they have changed their minds.

John King of CNN is reporting tonight that Mitt Romney will get a Secret Service detail within the next few days. It is unclear as to whether the protection was requested or not but the impression I got was that this is a decision by the Secret Service that he has reached the point that it is a proper decision.

First off, it’s a pretty thumping win for Mitt. If you look at the CNN results map it shows Romney winning every single county from the conservative panhandle all the way down the keys. But the exit polling does show a mild split between various groups. Men and women both voted for Mitt, but women favored him by a 22 point margin (51-29) while men did so by just a 6 point spread (41-36). Latinos were much stronger for Romney (53-30) than whites (44-33). When divided by age the spread is actually...

Although most observers have already said that Mitt Romney is likely to defeat Newt Gingrich in the Florida primary, exit polling just out on CNN is more bad news for the former House Speaker. For one thing the exit polls showed about an equal split between “very conservative”, “somewhat conservative” and “moderate” (all self described). This is very different from South Carolina where the electorate was strongly tilted to the “very conservative’ camp. The...

This morning the US Senate held a hearing on the subject of the leading terror threats facing the US and the world today. As I watched a portion of the hearing two things came to mind. First, that the hearing was to some degree for show and that there were many even more scary threats that they were not going to discuss in public. Second, I pondered, do I really want to know about those threats (or indeed the ones being discussed at the hearing) ? I mean what could I do about it if I did know ? Let’s...

An interesting post on the current state of politics and the 2012 campaign from Roger Kimball.

Here is a fun diversion (hat tip to Jimmy Kimmel show who did it with a scene from Jersey Shore) Take a sentence and translate it into a foreign language on Babelfish or Bing Translator Then translate that sentence into a 2nd language Then back into English I tried “We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal” and took it from English to Japanese to French to English I ended up with “All created all men, holds the truth of these trivial.” Try it...

During a speech to a Hispanic leadership group Florida Senator Marco Rubio (R) was interrupted by a group of protesters upset over his opposition to the Dream Act. They first held up signs objecting to his opposition to the law held up signs linking him to the Tea Party and implying that he was anti Hispanic. In a move I think many politicians could learn from Rubio praised the bravery of the protesters for expressing their views in a forum where many would disagree with them and expressed gratitude...

Here is a case to show the possible complications of technology. In the case a woman and her husband were arrested and charged with bank fraud. When they were arrested the police served a warrant and seized several laptops. One of them had encrypted files on it. Based on both the names of the files on the laptop and comments by the defendant Ramona Fricosu, they determined it was her laptop and she knew the password. The authorites served another warrant requesting that she provide a decrypted version...

How is this story for amazing…. President John Tyler was born while George Washington was President, he served from 1841-1845 and died during the Lincoln years. Yet two of his *grandchildren* are alive today…. Both he and his son had children quite late in life and the grandkids are pretty long lived themselves…