In recent years there has been a growing number of well-written, professionally-produced films with explicitly Christian messages and values; movies intended to promote those values as much as (if not more than) to make a profit. And I’m sure they do make a profit; I doubt there’s much that Hollywood makes that a committed Christian [...] Read more »

Markos writes:
Conservatives have convinced themselves that Newt will be the better nominee because he’ll crush Obama in debates. In fact, Newt is fueling this fantasy by claiming he’ll demand seven three-hour Lincoln-Douglas-style debates with Obama.
I actually think this would be fantastic, and good for our democracy. It’s the way debates should be [...] Read more »

From the BBC:
Mr Rubio is a rising star in the Republican party, and is often suggested as a viable vice-presidential choice for this year’s Republican presidential nominee.
If that nominee is Romney, Rubio would be an excellent choice. As a Senator from Florida (a huge swing state), as a teabag-powered elected official (Romney will [...] Read more »

Ah, Chris Dodd:
The moves were described as an “abuse of power” by one of the highest profile supporters of the anti-piracy bills.
“Some technology business interests are resorting to stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns, rather than coming to the table to find solutions to a problem that [...] Read more »

An interesting effort to reform the electoral college, about which I have mixed views.
The National Popular Vote effort is predicated on the following:
1. States are allowed to assign their presidential electors however they see fit. (Note how Maine and Nebraska split their electors not only by statewide vote, but by congressional district.)2. Thus, [...] Read more »

An interesting primer on the upcoming French Presidential election, by an author I’ve followed for about 7 years. Read more »

One of the impacts of the Occupy movement has been a shifting of the political dialogue and discourse in this country - much needed, and much appreciated. This change is illustrated in the following graphs from Think Progress, which I found interesting:
During the last week of July, economic discussion on cable news looked like this:

In [...] Read more »

Some people, apparently, don’t like the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. They want to defend the original intent of the constitution - apparently excluding its amendment process - by ignoring the definition of citizenship enshrined in this amendment.
The birthers rely on writings at the time of the formation of the republic and references [...] Read more »

“I don’t think it’s particularly left wing to say that people shouldn’t be ripped off in their energy bills.”
Oh, Harriet Harman. You said that all wrong. Instead of running away and running scared, you should say the opposite: that, not only IS it left wing to say that people shouldn’t be ripped off by the [...] Read more »

His learning curve may be longer than the orbit of Neptune, but still.
On Thursday, Mr Obama defended his decision to criticise Republicans, sometimes by name.
“I think it’s fair to say that I have gone out of my way in every instance - sometimes at my own political peril and to the frustration of [...] Read more »

So argues Markos Moulitsas. Read more »

From TPM:
If Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) keeps holding up the PATRIOT Act by insisting on voting on his amendments, it could have “dire consequences” for our nation’s national security, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) charged on the floor of the Senate Wednesday.
“When the clock strikes midnight tomorrow, we will be giving [...] Read more »

The Daily Show skewers the debate about who really killed bin Ladin - and the Obama administration for their tepidity. Read more »

Canada also held elections this past week. Widely expected to be a boring election which changed little, in the last few weeks it instead became apparent that the election would be a nail-biter and might change quite a bit. In terms of governance, the most significant result is that the Conservatives - a rather young [...] Read more »

I started to put together a synopsis of the protests taking place across the Arab world, only to find that Wikipedia had beaten me to it. Nevertheless I’m putting up my own map and summary of where things stand.

Red: Governments Overthrown

Tunisia and Egypt thus far.

Orange: Significant Governmental Change

Jordan is ruled by King [...] Read more »

OKCupid is a popular dating site these days, and one of the things that makes them awesome in my eyes is that they sometimes publicly analyze their extensive database of user-generated question responses. In a recent post on OK Trends, the folks there dug into the correlations between some question responses and others. I found [...] Read more »

Markos has a post up entitled “McConnell handled ‘bipartisanship’ correctly“. It starts with a quote from Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority leader:
“We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off [legislation advanced by Democrats],” McConnell says. “Because we thought — correctly, I think — that the only way the American people would know [...] Read more »

This would be so, so cool:
A short text message could be the next big thing in campaign finance.
Cell phone carriers are seeking to get approval to let customers make small donations to a political party or candidate via text messages. Read more »

Paul Krugman is right:
Urk. I just gave up on the presidential press conference. When Obama declared that Americans rejected Democrats in part because “We were in such a hurry to get things done that we didn’t change how things got done,” I checked out.
Nobody cares about this stuff — they care about results. Nobody really [...] Read more »

Like so much of what Paul Rosenberg writes, I found this post of his fascinating. I don’t read his stuff as faithfully as I ought to, because it usually requires a significant investment of time, but when I do it’s almost always worth it. In this posting he’s drawing from several thinkers in responding to [...] Read more »