Seen Rebecca’s dating advice? I think it’s pretty damn funny, and apposite. More apposite than I’d like it to be.

I don’t exactly see myself on either “team,” to the extent that there are two “teams.” I don’t think absolutely every single thing said and done on either side is 100% correct and perfect and right, so I’m not really on either “team” if that’s what it takes. But I don’t suppose anybody on either “team” really thinks either “team” is 100% correct and perfect and right any more than I do, so maybe that’s not what it takes.

At any rate I’m not on any team that calls Rebecca “Twatson” or thinks that her dating advice is a … Read the rest

How to do gummint.

In the world according to ALEC, competing firms in free markets are the only real source of social efficiency and wealth. Government contributes nothing but security. Outside of this function, it should be demonized, starved or privatized. Any force in civil society, especially labor, that contests the right of business to grab all social surplus for itself, and to treat people like roadkill and the earth like a sewer, should be crushed.

Because, the national chairman of ALEC explained on Fresh Air yesterday, creating jobs isn’t the job of government; corporations are the ones that create jobs.

O rilly? I thought what corporations did was cut jobs as much as they possibly could without … Read the rest

How cozy.

ALEC is a critical arm of the right-wing network of policy shops that, with infusions of corporate cash, has evolved to shape American politics…ALEC’s model legislation reflects long-term goals: downsizing government, removing regulations on corporations and making it harder to hold the economically and politically powerful to account. Corporate donors retain veto power over the language, which is developed by the secretive task forces. The task forces cover issues from education to health policy. ALEC’s priorities for the 2011 session included bills to privatize education, break unions, deregulate major industries, pass voter ID laws and more.

Corporations “helping” state legislators to craft legislation, in short. What a fantastic arrangement.

“Dozens of corporations are investing millions of dollars a

The Taoiseach lets fly:

…for the first time in this country a report on child sexual abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago.  In doing so the report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection and elitism that dominates the culture of the Vatican to this day.  The rape and torture of children were down-played or managed to uphold the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and reputation.  Far from listening to evidence of humiliation and betrayal with St. Benedict’s “ear of the heart”, the Vatican’s reaction was to parse and analyse it with the gimlet eye of a Canon lawyer.

A couple of prominent rabbis were briefly held for questioning in Jerusalem recently.

Rabbis Dov Lior and Yacob Yousef had endorsed a highly controversial book, the King’s Torah – written by two lesser-known settler rabbis. It justifies killing non-Jews, including those not involved in violence, under certain circumstances.

The fifth chapter, entitled “Murder of non-Jews in a time of war” has been widely quoted in the Israeli media. The summary states that “you can kill those who are not supporting or encouraging murder in order to save the lives of Jews”.

At one point it suggests that babies can justifiably be killed if it is clear they will grow up to pose a threat.

How would that be “clear,” one … Read the rest