Barack Obama
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Obama gives military’s interrogation rules to CIA (More here from NRCAT.) Obama orders CIA prisons, Gitmo shut Obama blocks some of Bush’s last-minute environmental decisions More of this, please. Read more
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Despite living six blocks from the Capitol, the wind chill and a bug that I’m trying to fend off kept me inside watching the proceedings from the comfort of my sofa like a real American. I’m not a fan of the imperial presidency and all the pomp that has grown up around it, but only Read more
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Jennifer asks what I think of Obama’s pick of Tom Vilsack for Secretary of Agriculture. Doesn’t she know that the question of who gives the invocation at the inauguration is much more pressing than our country’s food system? Sheesh! I only know what I’ve read, and the general impression I get is that Vilsack is Read more
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If I could put one recent political book in the hands of conservatives trying to rebuild their movement and liberals irrationally exuberant about all the “change” that’s about to take place, it’d be Andrew Bacevich’s The Limits of Power. Heck, as long as I’m wishing, I’d like to get it in President-elect Obama’s hands too. Read more
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Since content will likely be light this coming week, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to offer up some representative posts from the previous four Decembers since I started blogging, as a kind of retrospective. (Note: some of these originally appeared on my first blog, “Verbum Ipsum,” but have been imported to WP; Read more
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Quick: name the people who gave the invocations at the last five presidential inaugurations. Four…? Three…? Anyone…? Bueller…? Bueller…? This is something that everyone will forget about on January 21st. Just because a lot of pundits and bloggers are talking about it doesn’t make it hugely important. That said, I don’t think it’ll come as Read more
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In light of all the “Obama the pragmatist” talk, Chris Hayes offers a few words for ideology: But privileging pragmatism over ideology, while perhaps understandable in the wake of the Bush years, misses the point. For one thing, as Glenn Greenwald has astutely pointed out on his blog, while ideology can lead decision-makers to ignore Read more
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I don’t know when I became such a Bill Moyers fanboy, but I enjoyed watching this interview with Sen. Russ Feingold (via Gaius). Feingold, as you probably know, is one of the most progressive members of the Senate, voted against the Iraq war, and was the only senator to vote against the PATRIOT Act. He’s Read more
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Bill Moyers interviews Michael Pollan about food policy, public health, climate change, and what, if anything, Barack Obama can, should, or might do to reform our food system. Read more
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Catholic Obama supporter Melinda Henneberger makes the case against the “Freedom of Choice Act” (FOCA), which, it appears, could result in Catholic hosptials (a third of all hospitals in the US, according to Henneberger) shutting their doors rather than being forced to provide abortions. Many of these hospitals rely on Medicade and Medicare funds to Read more
A Thinking Reed 