The events of Charlottesville have me thinking about my role as an historian and teacher. This was reinforced by these comments by James Alex Fields Jr.’s high school history teacher. I don’t think any one teacher can be responsible for the ideas of a single student.…
An old division is rearing it’s head again in the Democratic Party. It’s gone public in the disruption of Bernie Sanders’s speeches by #blacklivesmatter protesters, first at Netroots Nation in July and then again in Seattle on Saturday (see here).…
In honor the 4th of July weekend, I’m sharing this post I wrote last year at this time:
I recently had the opportunity to sing “American the Beautiful.” The lines that most hit me are in the third verse:
…Oh, beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
Ted Cruz recently announced his candidacy for President with a speech that had everything: feel good back-story, what he stood for, what he stood against, a shout out to Reagan, etc. I went into it hoping to see what he had to offer… I left a bit queasy.…
The long effort to roll back voting access (previously here and here), Obama’s recent speech at Selma, and now Oregon’s step toward automatic voter registration has again called my attention to our voting rights. So here’s my contribution: a draft constitutional amendment on voting.…
Hillary Clinton is the only horse the Democrats have in the 2016 presidential race, and everyone knows this. True, there were those who thought she was the “inevitable” candidate in 2008, but there was also an awareness at the time of rising stars such as Barack Obama, who were just (incorrectly) thought to be a little before their own time.…
You may have seen this image (originally from reddit) and the accompanying article from the Washington Post about what gerrymandering is, and why it is a problem. But the real problems are articles and images that challenge gerrymandering while conflating space and population, ignoring other considerations, and assuming the existence of an easy solution that simply doesn’t reflect reality.…
I am going to keep this week’s post shorter than my last dissertation. This week’s fallout, OK, ONE of this week’s fallouts has been the “Cotton” letter. The letter, written by freshman Senator Tom Cotton (R- AR) and signed by 47 Senate Republicans stating that whatever agreement the Iranians might reach with the US in a nuclear agreement with the P5+1, “…is nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei…” and that the “…next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”…
Here is what happened in the two weeks since I wrote on the GOP response to ISIS.
Counting on Our Foolishness – A follow-up by Wood himself discussed the feedback he’s already received on his first piece. A quick and decent read, even if filled with frustrating academic back-and-forth about terminology and rankings, that struck me with the last paragraph which quoted an ISIS supporter:
…Maybe you can understand to some degree one of the reasons why many Muslims will share your piece.
I’ve stated in my bio on this site that I’m a big fan of the weekly political wrap on the PBS News Hour with Mark Shields and David Brooks. It happens each Friday during the last 12 minutes of the nightly News Hour broadcast, usually hosted by News Hour co-anchor Judy Woodruff, and it’s my favorite place to get perspective on political happenings.…
Header image by Tom Plewe © 2015
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