One Utah

So last night I’m at the gym, using the elliptical trainer, watching the news.  Obama’s speech - well, how can I put this . . . I know.
My god he’s good.  I mean transcendent.  I mean jawdropping.  I mean “Holy freaking sweet mother that man has a gift.”
When he got to his line about “a King [...]

“Hands-off” government and a free market have become a popular view in the U.S., as well as in much of the free world for the past couple of decades. This view was heavily influenced by the economic philosophy of the famous economist Milton Friedman. His core philosophy can be summed [...]

What was the point of the Trib reporting on the death of Joshua Ruzicka? How could they simply disregard the wishes of a grieving family? Why can’t the journalist even get his facts straight?
They correctly reported that my dear niece Janny Merrill died of an overdose. I could not be prouder of my brother [...]

Political quiz: Here’s an excerpt from a candidate’s stump speech. Who was the candidate?
We ran a positive campaign. We campaigned on the issues. The issue is change. Change…for the future!
Answer: It was Thomas Jefferson Johnson (Eddie Murphy) in the comedy “The Distinguished Gentleman” (1992).

The quote seems familiar because Barack Obama has somheow gotten [...]

Over the weekend, I happened to catch a documentary called Clear Cut: Philomath, OR, on the Sundance channel, about the bizarre series of events in a small Oregon town that somehow became a short term front on the culture war.
The documentary of course had a series of interviews. One of the interviewees was a [...]

In last night’s Democratic presidential debate, the candidates were asked about a hypothetical act of nuclear terrorism by non-state actors and what they would do to prevent it. Nobody had a good answer. Such is politics.
However, I noticed the always-savvy Wired Danger Room blog did an even better than usual job of covering [...]

Over a Orcinus, Sara has a great series on leadership that has gotten me thinking about America’s history of leadership. Read it here, here, here and here.
Sara makes an important point. Political systems have a life cycle - they begin as a solution to a set of problems. They function well for [...]

Obama’s victory in Iowa was impressive. It was enough to throw the Clinton campaign off its game, and the portion of last night’s New Hampshire debate that I saw, and Senator Clinton herself. By contrast, in the debate both Edwards and Obama seemed confident, cool, and calm.
Bear in mind that the Iowa winner [...]

Sean Hannity is a dolt who is nice to people (such as recently to Ron Paul) that he doesn’t like only when it is to the advantage of himself or the shitpot network that he works for. Tim Russert didn’t do too bad of a job interviewing Ron Paul on Meet the Press recently, [...]

In a thoroughly-researched lead article in tomorrow’s New York Times Magazine, Clive Thompson asks the most important questions about 2008:
What happens if the next presidential election is extremely close and decided by a handful of votes cast on machines that crashed? Will voters accept a presidency decided by ballots that weren’t backed up on paper [...]

It is apparent that Utah is for sale. Our state is the only state in the Union now identified as being willing to continue as the nation’s nuclear dump site, and now the world’s site as well, without protest and defensive acts by our political leaders.
What will Virginia do with its nuclear leftovers? It doesn’t [...]

Eight years ago, I used to admire Senator John McCain. His occasional enthusiastic overstatements were an endearing quirk, evidence that he didn’t take himself too seriously. But McCain has lost the integrity he once had, after embracing the Bush administration, voting for the torture bill that did away with the Constitutional guarantee of [...]