First Raich, then Kelo. Two major Supreme Court decisions in a row in which I side with Justice Thomas, not something I'd expected. I mean, how many med-marijuana supporters would have expected to be siding with Thomas back when his name was always attached to Anita Hill's?
Props to Thomas and the other dissenters in Kelo who respect your right to own your own home without it being under constant threat of being taken by the state so someone can put their private business there.
You want links? Too bad. Blogger's control board doesn't come up on Mac's Safari browser, and my art school is a Mac place. And I ain't getting paid to write html. Try Slate.com or Reason for some court case analysis.

If you haven't yet seen Guruphiliac, you really need to take a peek.

The other week I was nearly lucky enough to meet the highly talented French author Michel Houellebecq at the event mentioned in this article. He was promoting the new translation of his older work: H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life (published by Believer Books). His novels include Whatever, The Elementary Particles, and Platform (English titles).

Keith Thompson is Leaving the left because he can "no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity."
Here's a part from his piece that explains why I have similar sympathies: "A certain misplaced loyalty kept me from grasping that a view of individuals as morally capable of and responsible for making the principle decisions that shape their lives is decisively at odds with the contemporary left's entrance-level view of people as passive and helpless victims of powerful external forces, hence political wards who require the continuous shepherding of caretaker elites. "

Oh, this is insane here, we are talking madatory snitching now... I can't believe it would pass the Supreme Court, but here's the word (long excerpt from alternet.org but there are other places to read about this):
Sensenbrenner, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman, has introduced legislation that would essentially draft every American into the war on drugs. H.R. 1528, cynically named "Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act," would compel people to spy on their family members and neighbors, and even go undercover and wear a wire if needed. If a person resisted, he or she would face mandatory incarceration.

Here's how the "spy" section of the legislation works:
If you "witness" certain drug offenses taking place or "learn" about them, you must report the offenses to law enforcement within 24 hours and provide "full assistance in the investigation, apprehension and prosecution" of the people involved. Failure to do so would be a crime punishable by a mandatory minimum two-year prison sentence, and a maximum sentence of 10 years.

Here are some examples of offenses you would have to report to police within 24 hours:
You find out that your brother, who has children, recently bought a small amount of marijuana to share with his wife;
You discover that your son gave his college roommate a marijuana joint;
You learn that your daughter asked her boyfriend to find her some drugs, even though they're both in treatment.

In each of these cases you would have to report the relative to the police within 24 hours. Taking time to talk to your relative about treatment instead of calling the police immediately could land you in jail.

End excerpt. Yes, it's true. Don't like it? Wanna fight it? Fight here (just one place)!

The Tour de Sol is a Monte Carlo-style road rally where participants must achieve over 100 miles per gallon in their vehicles to have a chance at winning. The rally is surrounded by a number of other events promoting smart transportation energy use.

"Without realizing it, liberals and conservatives are working from opposite ends of the political spectrum, under opposing rationales, to reach the same end: expanded government power." William H. Mellor wites in The American Lawyer.

The lifestyle center is a bizarre outgrowth of the suburban mentality: People want public space, even if making that space private is the only way to get it.

"Creationism comes from within"
The two articles linked below note the liberal origins of of the anti-science climate that has allowed the recent rise of religious based "science."
This article in the New Humanist describes the "Vedic-science" claims in India that sound a lot like American "faith-based science" to me.
Over at Spiked-online, liberal relativism is implicated in facilitating the rise of American creationism more directly.
Being in grad school myself these days, I often see the "cultural-relativist" approach taken to science. I hear teachers talk about science as an "ideology," and generally display their misunderstanding of basic accepted truths of modern science (like evolution) in the classroom without any protest or debate (because facts just get in the way of cultural theory).

It's not just in the rarefied climes of The Nation that this sense of liberal unreality surfaces. Barely three weeks after the election the trendy MoveOn.org, the motor force of the so-called "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," rallied its adherents coast-to-coast in a round of 1,600 house meetings. The assembled liberal activists -- some 18,000 -- polled themselves and then published their top six political priorities. The results, in order, tell you all you need to know about the current state of progressive detachment and denial. Election reform and media reform came in first and second. The war in Iraq was third, followed by the environment, the Supreme Court, and civil liberties. In short, the biggest problems liberals face are those damned voting machines and Fox News. Glaringly absent from this activist wish list is anything vaguely resembling an aggressive populist agenda. The MoveOn plan provides no answers to those sweaty plebes out there who are "stoked" by kulturkampf rhetoric as well as all-too-real fears about their jobs, wages, health insurance, and school tuition.
A review of George Lakoff's book "Don't Think of an Elephant."

I’ve always had a problem paying for bottled water, especially when the standards for tap water in the United States are so high (and the benefits of bottled water, other than its portability, are truly questionable). So the other day while doing a little asset inspection in Florida (i.e., walking roofs), one of the real estate brokers assisting us stops by with some bottled water. Dasani, manufactured by Coca Cola, to be specific.

So I’m drinking the water, fine, no problem, I’m thirsty, it’s doing the job…and then I notice a little blurb on the side of the bottle:

DASANI is filtered for purity, using state of the art treatment by reverse osmosis, and enhanced with minerals for a pure, fresh taste. DASANI is water – pure and essential.

Now I guess I’m just slow, but this is the first time I’d realized that some of this expensive* bottled water doesn’t actually come from springs. It’s treated tap water! On top of this, they add minerals to flavor it – to artificially make it taste more like real mineral water. Then, to make matters worse, they add SALT! Leave it to Coke to turn something as pure as water into what is essentially a “soft drink”. It’s no wonder that they feel the need to reassure you of the “water-ness” of their product: “DASANI is water – pure and essential.”

Combine all of these concerns with the added externality that one creates as a consumer of this product – waste plastic. Hopefully most of these bottles get recycled. My guess is that a significant number of them end up in landfills.

Ah, the commoditization of the gifts of the earth – thank you Coke, and the rest of the bottled water industry for taking something natural and adding a layer of marketing (and plastic) to it.

(* NOTE: I say expensive because most people already pay for tap water from their municipality…so all bottled water is expensive because you’re paying again for something you already have.)

Go check out (or buy) the new issue of The Believer (always a good magazine), which features Opensewer associate Jana Prikryl's essay "ABU GHRAIB: A Gobal Family Portait."

"Good writing comes from good reading. All literary criticism should be accessible to the general reader. Criticism at its best is re-creative, not spirit-killing. Technical analysis of a poem is like breaking down a car engine, which has to be reassembled to run again. Theorists childishly smash up their subjects and leave the disjecta membra like litter." Camille Paglia is talking about poetry (but I feel her right now because I am dealing with this crap in art school these days).

Because our government(s) can't be trusted to examine the efficacy of their own policies and programs, others do it for us(them)... Marijuana prohibition fails to produce intended results. Total US marijuana arrests increased 165% during the 1990s, from 287,850 in 1991 to 755,000 in 2003. However, these increased arrest rates have not been associated with a reduction in marijuana use, reduced marijuana availability, a reduction in the number of new marijuana users, reduced treatment admissions, reduced emergency room mentions of marijuana, any reduction in marijuana potency, or any increases in the price of marijuana. From NORML's new report on US Marijuana Prohibtion. (I'm blogging more b/c I'm on spring break!)

"Let’s put aside all of the procedural problems with enacting it. Forget about the fact that there was no debate. Forget about the fact that most members of Congress didn’t even have an opportunity to read it. It is a direct assault on at least three amendments to the Constitution: the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, and the Fifth Amendment. The PATRIOT Act legitimates the notion that if we give up certain freedoms, the government will keep us safer. I reject that notion from a moral and legal point of view. I also reject it from a practical point of view. It doesn’t work. The government doesn’t need our freedoms to keep us safer. No one—no lawyer, judge, or historian—can point to a single incident in American history where national security was impaired because someone insisted on their right to free speech or their right to privacy or their right to due process." Nick Gillespie interviews Judge Andrew Napolitano. Would you have guessed from that quote that Napolitano has a job on Fox News?

One argument for the "fat" tax on food is that it is cheaper for people to eat unhealthy junk than it is for them to eat well. So how much would it cost to reach the 2,000 calorie goal and follow the official USA's dietary guidlines? About five bucks a day. (more from me in the comments section)

On the death of the good doctor Hunter S. Thompson... That you sought fit to take your leave now could only mean that you felt it truly was time for you to check out. However your judgment in the past has strayed from even the most generous definition of reasonable, of your own charter and fortune we cannot question your command. Because you gave so much you will be missed. Because you gave so much you will not be forgotten. So drive off into the night, good doctor, and godspeed.

It cannot be a good omen for the American economy that the most compelling reality shows echo the class tension and overnight success fantasies of movies produced in, or set in, the Great Depression. But the unquenchable appeal of "The Apprentice" and "American Idol" lies at least in part in their poignancy: both series combine the preposterous feel-good optimism of "42nd Street" with the desperation of "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?"

One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the oval office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

--From Bill Moyers' acceptance speech for the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School's Global Environment Citizen Award. (PDF version here. Thanks Maria for pointing this one out...)

For the first time, a scientific study has statistically shown that eating fast-food predisposes you to Type 2 diabetes and heart troubles.

I don't think there's much to talk about in the world right now except this.

Peace on earth, goodwill to all men.

With all the shit that goes down in this world, it's important to remember that there are many wonderful people working on many amazing things.

Remember folks, on the "biggest shopping day of the year", it's important to Buy Nothing.

For the religious right, Bush was like any other stealth candidate. No matter his unqualifications, he delivered for them in his first term, and so they rewarded him with their votes in record numbers.

"In a critical commentary, the Australian medical research scientist Raymond Johnstone noted that the annual death rate from lung cancer among the non-smoking wives of non-smoking men is around six per 100,000, whereas among the non-smoking wives of smoking men the corresponding figure is eight per 100,000. Now this may be reported as an increased (relative) risk of 33 per cent. Yet in absolute terms it amounts to an absolute (or exposure) risk of one in 50,000, which is, for practical purposes, negligible."
Because the war on smoking anywhere at all is all about science, right?

Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important. --Eugene McCarthy

Ignore the internal politics and scroll down to Radley Balko's excellent point by point dissection of David Frum's suggestion of a fat tax on soda. Also, what the hell are conservatives doing planning for more taxes? I though the one thing that you could count on them for was opposing taxes?!

Is Wal-Mart Expansion A 'Moral' Issue?

Greens for Impact is a group of Green officials trying to convince Greens and independents in swing states who might vote for Nader or Cobb to support Kerry instead. Take a look.