A Tale of Two Tweets

This is what being a partisan will do to you...

Tweet 1
Senator Jeff Merkley‏Verified account @SenJeffMerkley

Thank you for your leadership RT @SenatorReid Thanks to all of you who encouraged me to consider filibuster reform. It had to be done.

2:10 PM - 21 Nov 2013


Four years later...


Tweet 2
Senator Jeff Merkley‏Verified account @SenJeffMerkley

The dark deed is done. McConnell has just put a knife into the heart of our We the People republic.

11:51 AM - 6 Apr 2017

With thanks to The Reticulator at posting Ricochet.com


"Bridge of Spies"--a Cartoon

I started to watch Speilburg's "Bridge of Spies" today. I stopped after a while because I felt that I was was watching an animated comic book, albeit by a very skillful artist. I admired the opening with its focus on eyes, eyeglasses, images. etc. I was aware of deft directing and fine acting. But the plot and its analogy lost me for good. The average American is supposed to have feared Communist spies as much as and in the same way as a Clansman would an interracial couple moving in next door. The film rightly asserts that politically and morally (in the sense of the mores of the polis) the Constitution is paramount, and then pretends that no one, not even a judge, knows that or cares. The tension between law and need is real enough, but the depiction here is too stark.

We Should Be More Like Sweden Department

In Sweden, the chief of the national police had wristbands with "Don't Grope"  printed up for the refugees. He seeks to convince them that groping women is not acceptable in the West.  And "This month, the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, a government agency, reported what it called 'alarming' new figures: The number of women who state that they have been victims of sex crimes doubled from 2012 to 2015, from 1.4 percent to 3 percent....Twelve percent stay in at night for fear of being assaulted." (The Weekly Standard, Jan 30).

No Problem. This Was Expected.

World News | Wed Feb 22, 2017 | 3:00pm EST REuters British suicide bomber in Iraq had won compensation for Guantanamo stay http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-britain-militant-idUSKBN1611A8