Dem nominee quality control unlikely to improve

Democrats are shaking up the primary schedule for 2008. As with most superficially good ideas Democrats have -- combating poverty, nominating ostensibly moderate southerners for President, Vietnam -- the execution is a little deflating. The decision by the Democratic National Committee leaves Iowa as the nation's first presidential caucus and...

August 22, 2006 Author: Matt Barr
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Presidential signing statements II: So that's why he hasn't been vetoing stuff

Part I Part II Part III An American Bar Association task force has a report out condemning the overuse of Presidential signing statements, those "interpretations" of new laws the President issues upon signing the bills, indicating how and whether he intends to enforce certain provisions. In one sense this is...

July 25, 2006 Author: Matt Barr
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Maybe angry neighbors could burn the flags

The Senate passed the Freedom to Display the American Flag Act, which prohibits condominium and homeowners associations from enforcing rules against displaying an American flag. Nothing, it should be noted, prohibited aggrieved homeowners from not moving in somewhere that had those rules in the first place. "If there's anything stupider...

July 20, 2006 Author: Matt Barr
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One of the strangest legal statements of all time

Is what Dahlia Lithwick calls this: "I think it's dangerous for us to try to make an evaluation, case by case, as we look at potential terrorist plots and making a decision, well, this is a really dangerous group, this is not a really dangerous group." "Really? Because I thought...

July 17, 2006 Author: Matt Barr
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Those were the days

The Washington Post has managed to suggest -- see last sentence -- that it's really too bad the U.S. can't broker a cease fire between Israel and Hezbollah like it did in 1993 and 1996, during its reporting that Israel and Hezbollah are waging war against one another, evidently without...

July 13, 2006 Author: Matt Barr
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Anthem

"Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe," wrote Douglas Adams in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green...

June 30, 2006 Author: Matt Barr
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