Looks like RILF is going to be a running feature.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Rep. Aaron Schock bares his muscles for the cover of Men's Health magazine
Looks like RILF is going to be a running feature.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Speaker Emerita
I worked as a research analyst for a few months in 2010. On my first day, all the new RA's were introduced to the permanent staff and we played an ice breaker. We each said our names, the school we went to, a wild animal we would domesticate, what we would name it, and why. When came to my turn, I said, "I'd get a cougar and I'd name her Nancy Pelosi."
I said it to break the ice, but I only half intended it as a joke. I have a very complex adulation for Nancy, but she's a complex intersection of some of my favorite things. Maybe it's because I'm a gay guy, and it is a truth universally acknowledged that gay men are attracted to powerful women. Maybe it's that she's a Californian, or that she's the Congresswoman for my beloved gaysian San Francisco. Or maybe it's because Nancy Pelosi is single most effective, unwavering champion for liberal causes in national politics since I became politically conscious.
It's not just that I want to differentiate myself by worshipping at the altar of someone other than the president. I admire President Obama, but when the White House wanted to abandon comprehensive health care reform in favor of a piecemeal approach after RILF Scott Brown's election to the Senate, it was Nancy who famously rejected the White House capitulation and declared, "You go through the gate. If the gate's closed, you go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we'll pole-vault in. If that doesn't work, we'll parachute in. But we are going to get health care reform passed for the American people."
via the Economist
Along with Russ Feingold, Nancy's speakership was the biggest casualty to liberals in the 2010 midterm elections and it's a travesty. I'll never forget that November day when Democrats took back Congress just a few years ago in the 2006 midterms. Bush and the Republicans had been running around unfettered for 6 years - really as long as I knew anything about politics - when Nancy Pelosi appeared on television to declare that "Democrats are ready to lead." It was the first time I remembered a big electoral victory, and the speech was music to my ears. And boy did she give Bush a hard time for the remainder of his presidency. Nowadays, John Boehner calls the shots in the House, but I for one will keep trumpeting the awesomeness of the first woman Speaker of the House until she gets that gavel back!
via the Economist
I said it to break the ice, but I only half intended it as a joke. I have a very complex adulation for Nancy, but she's a complex intersection of some of my favorite things. Maybe it's because I'm a gay guy, and it is a truth universally acknowledged that gay men are attracted to powerful women. Maybe it's that she's a Californian, or that she's the Congresswoman for my beloved gaysian San Francisco. Or maybe it's because Nancy Pelosi is single most effective, unwavering champion for liberal causes in national politics since I became politically conscious.
It's not just that I want to differentiate myself by worshipping at the altar of someone other than the president. I admire President Obama, but when the White House wanted to abandon comprehensive health care reform in favor of a piecemeal approach after RILF Scott Brown's election to the Senate, it was Nancy who famously rejected the White House capitulation and declared, "You go through the gate. If the gate's closed, you go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we'll pole-vault in. If that doesn't work, we'll parachute in. But we are going to get health care reform passed for the American people."
Along with Russ Feingold, Nancy's speakership was the biggest casualty to liberals in the 2010 midterm elections and it's a travesty. I'll never forget that November day when Democrats took back Congress just a few years ago in the 2006 midterms. Bush and the Republicans had been running around unfettered for 6 years - really as long as I knew anything about politics - when Nancy Pelosi appeared on television to declare that "Democrats are ready to lead." It was the first time I remembered a big electoral victory, and the speech was music to my ears. And boy did she give Bush a hard time for the remainder of his presidency. Nowadays, John Boehner calls the shots in the House, but I for one will keep trumpeting the awesomeness of the first woman Speaker of the House until she gets that gavel back!
Thursday, May 5, 2011
The Fourteenth Amendment and Incorporation
It isn't often that a TV show causes me to have flashbacks to the constitutional law course I took as a freshman at Berkeley. Or maybe I'm fundamentally uncomfortable with the expository form and need to grasp at any tenuous excuse to segway into a topic of my choice.
On last night's episode of the Daily Show, Jon Stewart had as his guest David Barton, an advocate of what he calls "historical reclamation." In essence, he argues that at the time of the founding of the United States, religion was a far more central and accepted feature of public life than it is today; the part where reclamation fits in is that as we've turned away from overt displays of religion in the public sphere, we have also forgotten or tended to downplay its contribution to early US history. I think that's a very fair description of DB's views. I also think it's fair to say that he considers the legal banishment of religion from government an affront to Christians, whose right to worship is being ever more tightly encircled. Jon, being the "secular humanist" that he is, pretty much disagreed about everything DB said, so from start to finish the entire interview consisted of challenging each other's little factoids, citations, and the context of the citations dating back to founding of the US.
I tend to think that, for the purposes of teasing out questions of present day morality and constitutional law, arguing over the historicity of society and values in early America is a distraction from the real meat. For one, practically everyone at the time could agree that they were Christians and Christianity really did pop up everywhere (sorry Jon). Secondly, - and I know I make this point way too often - I've never been able to understand why we debate ourselves breathless to make the point that the Founding Fathers agree with me and not you, as if having a bunch of 18th century slaveholders on our side vindicates our beliefs or lends us moral credibility. I admire the Founding Fathers for what they are: men - they were all men - who were far ahead of time with revolutionary ideas about liberty and justice. But it's far too easy to get sucked into the originalist/strict-constructionist trap and begin taking every single one of their ideas at face value.
For me the most interesting moment of the debate came when David Barton pointed out that the First Amendment actually reads "Congress shall not pass any law respecting the establishment of religion." This supports DB's claim that the Founders were intentionally silent on the question of whether the individual states could do so. In fact, he's correct that states historically could pass laws establishing or impeding the free exercise of religion in ways that we would today consider unconstitutional. Of course, DB's larger point was that once upon a time, sub-federal jurisdictions could make community decisions to worship in public space with the preference of the law. Never mind that communities can still worship together even without the backing of force of law... In the originalist construction, giving preference to the local religion before the law is just dandy, because there's at least some historical evidence that this was practiced in the early years of the republic.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court came to apply the First Amendment against the states in a process known among jurists as "incorporation of the Bill of Rights," and I wish either Jon or DB had given more context about it because it's a wonderful illustration of the Constitution evolving with country. This process basically interprets provisions of the US Constitution's Bill of Rights, which enshrines principles like equal treatment and due process before the law, and applies them more broadly than we had previously understood by holding not just the federal government to it, but state governments too. Before the First Amendment was incorporated (that is, for most of American history) state governments could issue certifications granting religions the right to proselytize or require that public school students pray together.
Throughout the legal history of incorporation, most cases have occurred through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. According to my con law professor Gordon Silverstein, the 14th has been described by some scholars as a new constitution, because of how dramatically it shifted the balance between federal and state power. That's not surprising, given the historical context of its ratification. The 14th was passed in reaction to the Civil War, which saw the most strident partisans of states' rights defeated by the Union. Among other things, the 14th Amendment expressly reverses the infamous Dred Scott decision by granting US citizenship and its rights to all persons born in the US and codifies the right to equal protection and due process before the law. The idea of amendments itself poses a fatal process to DB's reclamationist logic, for the Constitution's own framers provided for a built-in amendment process to ensure that it evolves with time. And as the capstone of Reconstruction(ism), the 14th Amendment constitutes a real paradigm shift that the original constructionists can't quite account for.
On last night's episode of the Daily Show, Jon Stewart had as his guest David Barton, an advocate of what he calls "historical reclamation." In essence, he argues that at the time of the founding of the United States, religion was a far more central and accepted feature of public life than it is today; the part where reclamation fits in is that as we've turned away from overt displays of religion in the public sphere, we have also forgotten or tended to downplay its contribution to early US history. I think that's a very fair description of DB's views. I also think it's fair to say that he considers the legal banishment of religion from government an affront to Christians, whose right to worship is being ever more tightly encircled. Jon, being the "secular humanist" that he is, pretty much disagreed about everything DB said, so from start to finish the entire interview consisted of challenging each other's little factoids, citations, and the context of the citations dating back to founding of the US.
I tend to think that, for the purposes of teasing out questions of present day morality and constitutional law, arguing over the historicity of society and values in early America is a distraction from the real meat. For one, practically everyone at the time could agree that they were Christians and Christianity really did pop up everywhere (sorry Jon). Secondly, - and I know I make this point way too often - I've never been able to understand why we debate ourselves breathless to make the point that the Founding Fathers agree with me and not you, as if having a bunch of 18th century slaveholders on our side vindicates our beliefs or lends us moral credibility. I admire the Founding Fathers for what they are: men - they were all men - who were far ahead of time with revolutionary ideas about liberty and justice. But it's far too easy to get sucked into the originalist/strict-constructionist trap and begin taking every single one of their ideas at face value.
For me the most interesting moment of the debate came when David Barton pointed out that the First Amendment actually reads "Congress shall not pass any law respecting the establishment of religion." This supports DB's claim that the Founders were intentionally silent on the question of whether the individual states could do so. In fact, he's correct that states historically could pass laws establishing or impeding the free exercise of religion in ways that we would today consider unconstitutional. Of course, DB's larger point was that once upon a time, sub-federal jurisdictions could make community decisions to worship in public space with the preference of the law. Never mind that communities can still worship together even without the backing of force of law... In the originalist construction, giving preference to the local religion before the law is just dandy, because there's at least some historical evidence that this was practiced in the early years of the republic.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court came to apply the First Amendment against the states in a process known among jurists as "incorporation of the Bill of Rights," and I wish either Jon or DB had given more context about it because it's a wonderful illustration of the Constitution evolving with country. This process basically interprets provisions of the US Constitution's Bill of Rights, which enshrines principles like equal treatment and due process before the law, and applies them more broadly than we had previously understood by holding not just the federal government to it, but state governments too. Before the First Amendment was incorporated (that is, for most of American history) state governments could issue certifications granting religions the right to proselytize or require that public school students pray together.
Throughout the legal history of incorporation, most cases have occurred through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. According to my con law professor Gordon Silverstein, the 14th has been described by some scholars as a new constitution, because of how dramatically it shifted the balance between federal and state power. That's not surprising, given the historical context of its ratification. The 14th was passed in reaction to the Civil War, which saw the most strident partisans of states' rights defeated by the Union. Among other things, the 14th Amendment expressly reverses the infamous Dred Scott decision by granting US citizenship and its rights to all persons born in the US and codifies the right to equal protection and due process before the law. The idea of amendments itself poses a fatal process to DB's reclamationist logic, for the Constitution's own framers provided for a built-in amendment process to ensure that it evolves with time. And as the capstone of Reconstruction(ism), the 14th Amendment constitutes a real paradigm shift that the original constructionists can't quite account for.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Bounce
I was going to write something about Obama's inevitable (and apparently already measurable) approval ratings bounce on the heels of Mr. bin Laden's termination, but I'm so lazy and approval ratings are so intro-level politics that I can't be bothered. No one thinks this uptick will last very long anyway, unless the employment environment improves appreciably. Nevertheless, history will regard probably regard this as one of Obama's signature achievements as president, along with healthcare reform. Voters, though, tend to have shorter political memories than professional historians.
That's why the cynic in me is bemused to read reports that Obama is travelling to Ground Zero as early as Thursday to bask in triumphant glory and milk this story for all it's worth.
via Discovery Channel
I hope he'll say something about how different the World Trade Center complex is looking 10 years out.
That's why the cynic in me is bemused to read reports that Obama is travelling to Ground Zero as early as Thursday to bask in triumphant glory and milk this story for all it's worth.
I hope he'll say something about how different the World Trade Center complex is looking 10 years out.
Monday, May 2, 2011
On Osama bin Laden's death
September 11th will always be seared into my memory as a day when our nation lost a little bit of its innocence. This sentiment is perhaps most vivid for those of us for whom this moment was also a coming of age. The attacks occurred on my second day as a freshman in high school, and marked in a very pronounced way the start of a sobering new stage in my life. I think we mostly agree looking back that compared to the decade that preceded it, the years after 9/11 saw a renewed patriotism and sense of solidarity, but that the attacks brought us together while fanning the flames of our fear and distrust of outsiders. In some ways, I actually do miss those days of a nation united by its shared outpouring of emotion - whether it was grief, fear or defiance. It gave us an identity. But I think the net effect, apparent after just a few months, was debasing rather than uplifting, with defiance supplanted by righteousness and grief evolving into wrath. The rash, unmeasured reaction to 9/11 took us to war in Iraq within two years - a decision that had no relation to the war on terror and whose disastrous prosecution continues to overstrain our military even today.
Now that the initial shock of hearing that Osama bin Laden was killed by US forces has worn off, those of us who remember 9/11 this way might be left to contemplate the kinds of emotions on display among some of the celebrating crowds. The mostly young people who turned out to cheer bin Laden's death probably feel, as I do, that al-Queda's actions robbed us of our childhood insouciance, or at least precipitated its loss. I too feel relief that an ugly chapter in history has come to an end, if only symbolically. However, the ecstatic cries of "USA! USA!" in celebration of a death struck me as inappropriate, if not deranged. And as others have pointed out, their zeal for death bears a chilling resemblance to that of anti-American extremists' celebrations (complete with jingoistic banner waving and chanting) following 9/11 and other murders of American civilians in the Middle East.
via TalkingPoints Memo
Have we already forgotten the unmeasured, emotionally-charged foreign policy disasters of the past decade? David Sirota wrote a great piece today criticizing the untempered displays of joy and the media for condoning it:
We can all understand jubilation in victory but it would have been a little more human to see some solemnity in remembrance of those who lost their lives in this conflict.
Now that the initial shock of hearing that Osama bin Laden was killed by US forces has worn off, those of us who remember 9/11 this way might be left to contemplate the kinds of emotions on display among some of the celebrating crowds. The mostly young people who turned out to cheer bin Laden's death probably feel, as I do, that al-Queda's actions robbed us of our childhood insouciance, or at least precipitated its loss. I too feel relief that an ugly chapter in history has come to an end, if only symbolically. However, the ecstatic cries of "USA! USA!" in celebration of a death struck me as inappropriate, if not deranged. And as others have pointed out, their zeal for death bears a chilling resemblance to that of anti-American extremists' celebrations (complete with jingoistic banner waving and chanting) following 9/11 and other murders of American civilians in the Middle East.
Have we already forgotten the unmeasured, emotionally-charged foreign policy disasters of the past decade? David Sirota wrote a great piece today criticizing the untempered displays of joy and the media for condoning it:
This is bin Laden’s lamentable victory -- he has changed America’s psyche from one that saw violence as a regrettable-if-sometimes-necessary act into one that finds orgasmic euphoria in news of bloodshed. In other words, he’s helped drag us down into his sick nihilism by making us like too many other bellicose societies in history -- the ones that aggressively cheer on killing, as long as it is the Bad Guy that is being killed.
Our reaction to the news last night should be the kind often exhibited by victims’ families at a perpetrator’s lethal injection -- a reaction typically marked by both muted relief but also by sadness over the fact that the perpetrators’ innocent victims are gone forever, the fact that the perpetrator's death cannot change the past, and the fact that our world continues to produce such monstrous perpetrators in the first place.
When we lose the sadness part -- when all we do is happily scream "USA! USA! USA!” at news of yet more killing in a now unending back-and-forth war -- it’s a sign we may be inadvertently letting the monsters win.
We can all understand jubilation in victory but it would have been a little more human to see some solemnity in remembrance of those who lost their lives in this conflict.
Friday, April 29, 2011
RILFs and RINOs
Anyone who knows me knows that the most important part of my life is my daily perusal of political porn. Last night, I was reading a particularly saucy piece on Politico about the townhall backlash against Rep. Paul Ryan's budget proposal when the tightness in my pants made me aware that the accompanying photo really showcased the House Budget chairman's best, uh, assets. Dreamboat Paul Ryan has already been noted for his youthful good looks and wonkish dedication to policy, but this is the first I've seen or heard of his tight ass.
And as exciting as it is for the politics junkie in me to catch a glimpse of the taut and supple amid the parade of wrinkled and grey, I'm noticing a disturbing trend: all the hot members of Congress are Republicans. Remember Republican Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts? If you didn't know that he was the successor to liberal icon Ted Kennedy, you might remember him as the senator who once posed nude for Cosmo. I may have been dismayed to see the conservative "dark horse" candidate come from behind to win Kennedy's old Senate seat, but if I had to admit defeat to anyone, it would be the dark stud coming at you from behind. The Tea Partiers who elected him are now calling him a RINO over his vote to keep funding Planned Parenthood, but to me, anyone to the right of Mary Landrieu is fascist, so he's squarely in the Republican camp in my book. If anything, he's a RILF.
I saved the Congressman that I'd most like to fuck, Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Illinois), for last.
With pecs and six-pack abs like that, one could almost overlook his medieval, virulently homophobic positions. Is his chest waxed?
Then there's this photo of Congressman Schock at a White House picnic, where the dress code probably demanded that he cover up that delicious torso of his in clothing. After this picture made the rounds in all the gay Hill staffers' inboxes, Aaron Schock took to twitter to proclaim, "Never thought a pic of me w/ my shirt on would go viral. Learned my lesson and burned the belt." Burn the cerulean belt? That's so dramatic! Why doesn't he just set himself on fire? That's the only sure way to get rid of the flamingo pink shirt, crisp white pants, and sculpted Adonis body too.
And as exciting as it is for the politics junkie in me to catch a glimpse of the taut and supple amid the parade of wrinkled and grey, I'm noticing a disturbing trend: all the hot members of Congress are Republicans. Remember Republican Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts? If you didn't know that he was the successor to liberal icon Ted Kennedy, you might remember him as the senator who once posed nude for Cosmo. I may have been dismayed to see the conservative "dark horse" candidate come from behind to win Kennedy's old Senate seat, but if I had to admit defeat to anyone, it would be the dark stud coming at you from behind. The Tea Partiers who elected him are now calling him a RINO over his vote to keep funding Planned Parenthood, but to me, anyone to the right of Mary Landrieu is fascist, so he's squarely in the Republican camp in my book. If anything, he's a RILF.
I saved the Congressman that I'd most like to fuck, Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Illinois), for last.
With pecs and six-pack abs like that, one could almost overlook his medieval, virulently homophobic positions. Is his chest waxed?
Then there's this photo of Congressman Schock at a White House picnic, where the dress code probably demanded that he cover up that delicious torso of his in clothing. After this picture made the rounds in all the gay Hill staffers' inboxes, Aaron Schock took to twitter to proclaim, "Never thought a pic of me w/ my shirt on would go viral. Learned my lesson and burned the belt." Burn the cerulean belt? That's so dramatic! Why doesn't he just set himself on fire? That's the only sure way to get rid of the flamingo pink shirt, crisp white pants, and sculpted Adonis body too.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Problematique
Do competitive general elections harm House incumbents further down the line even if they win them (in much the same way as a nasty primary harms candidates in the next general election)?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)