The Great Concessionair by Will Durst Sorry if you settled into your recliner ready to enjoy the blessed silence destined to descend on the political playing field in the aftermath of the Debt Ceiling Death Match. Lasted as long as the life cycle of an adult mayfly. That momentary, blissful peace was rudely broken by a cacophony of squeaks and grunts and shouts as each camp tried to out-blame the other for the thudding crash Wall Street made falling down a well. Quick, go find Lassie! It appears...

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Republicans Should Be Embarrassed by Debt Increase Vote by Floyd and Mary Beth Brown Washington is obsessed by picking winners and losers. But the establishment media has the story all wrong again. The Republicans, they say won this skirmish over debt. But actually Republicans displayed a total lack of commitment to their principles. The only winner in the “Budget Control Act of 2011″ is massive government and the Washington bureaucracy it feeds with your money. We are embarrassed...

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Taking the GOP Back From the Radical Right by Michael Stafford With the debt ceiling crisis resolved, it is appropriate to pause and reflect on how America was brought to the precipice of a potential catastrophe. The answer can be found in two lines from William Butler Yeats’ famous poem “The Second Coming.” In the poem, Yeats’ wrote: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” Today, Yeats’ words are an apt description...

Politics, Reality Show Style by Tina Dupuy The difference between a documentary and a reality show is staging. A documentary tells a story about real life. The subjects are normally not paid, aren’t actors and the story is non-fiction. It’s a quiet, illuminating and thoughtful genre (read: boring). Reality shows are like life, in that people on these programs do things people do in real life, (i.e. travel, date, lose weight) but the circumstances are contrived. The contestants are put...

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Justitia, Open Your Eyes by Peter Funt Should Justitia remove her blindfold? Named after the Roman goddess, we know her better as Lady Justice: guardian of our courts. The scales she holds remind us to weigh evidence with care; her sword indicates that punishment must fit the crime. And her blindfold connotes…well, what? It’s generally accepted that the blindfold represents impartiality. Our system of justice, in theory at least, treats everyone equally and each situation fairly. Yet,...

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Gibberish and Manure by Will Durst The situation on Capitol Hill has become so confusing we’re going to need a nuclear physicist with a googleplex of serially connected molecular microscopes to precisely explain what is happening. Instead, you got me. This whole debt-ceiling debate has made rush-hour gridlock on the 405 look like a romantic excursion in Central Park on a bicycle built for two. Nonetheless, I take it upon myself to sort out what’s going on. No need for thanks. Part of...

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Legal Guns Would Make Norway Safer Making Sense, by Michael Reagan How long would the Norway gunman have lasted in Texas or any state where concealed-carry laws are on the books? I ran a survey while on a cruise: in Texas, 3 minutes; in Montana, 7 to 8 minutes; in Arizona, 2 minutes; and in Nevada, 3 to 5 minutes. Had Norway not surrendered to the anti-self-defense nuts, and allowed Norwegians to protect themselves by legally carrying guns, the massacre might well have been prevented. There’s...

Financial Brinkmanship by Martha Randolph Carr This weekend’s news cycle was either an indication that we have become over the top self-absorbed or more accurately, a really good indicator of how much trouble the U.S. economy will be in if we falter and default on our obligations, even if it only lasts for a few days. It’s an amazing moment in journalism when a terrorist bomb and a mass slaying of children in Norway can get trumped on U.S. news channels by brief announcements that U.S....

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