tqa | August 23, 2006Two quick things every registered Connecticut Democrat should know:
1: Lieberman has shown his true colors by naming his party "Connecticut for Lieberman." Remember that. You're for him, not the other way around.
2: Republicans have essentially pulled their support from their own candidate, now polling in the low single digits. Lieberman isn't a Republican, but he's the next best thing as far as they are concerned.
tqa | August 23, 2006Over at Retrospectacle, Shelly has a question for all of us:"Are you for or against the death penalty, or (if its conditional), in what cases? Furthermore, do you believe that societies that sanction war are hypocritical for opposing the death penalty?"
Personally, I am more or less opposed to the death penalty. I say "more or less" because every now and then, someone does something so absolutely evil that I have a hard time remembering that I really am opposed to the death penalty. In general, though, I don't think we need it - "supermax" prisons can keep even the worst offenders from being…
tqa | August 21, 2006Dear Senator Kerry:
Last week, I received your letter requesting donations to support the campaigns of Ned Lamont, Bob Menendez, and Dan Akaka. I am gratified to note that you are taking a stand in support of Lamont, and I think that supporting Menendez is also a good idea. I do, however, have a question for you regarding your decision to raise funds for Senator Akaka: have you lost what little remained of your mind?
Although it is true that Senator Akaka currently faces a strong challenger, it is a primary challenge, not a general election challenge. He is, despite having about six times as…
tqa | August 17, 2006Janet tagged everybody, so here goes:
The rules: "Go here and look through random quotes until you find 5 that you think reflect who you are or what you believe."
1) What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)
2) In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.
Carl Sagan…
tqa | August 17, 2006Ed Brayton, over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, has some excellent commentary on the court finding that the warrentless wiretapping of international phone calls (referred to by the White House as the Terrorist Surveillance Program) is massively illegal and unconstitutional. Ed focuses on the possibility that the ruling will be overturned on standing grounds, and the implications if that happens. I'm going to focus on something a little different: the White House response to the ruling, and the fundamental misunderstanding of the President's job description that it demonstrates.
The…
tqa | August 14, 2006I was sitting and thinking earlier today - it's a dangerous hobby, and I try not to do it too often, but sometimes I can't resist - and found my thoughts drifting toward the topic of Pascal's Wager. As some of you probably know, Pascal suggested that it is always a better bet to believe in God than to disbelieve, because if you believe in God but are wrong, you won't ever really know it, but if you don't believe and are wrong you stand to lose a hell of a lot more.
I've never been particularly impressed with that argument, mostly because I've never been able to conceive of a deity that…
tqa | August 8, 2006I just walk in from the airport, turn on the television, and what do I see before me but Ned Lamont giving his victory speech. He's come from nowhere and defeated a once popular senator for his party's (former party's, I should say) nomination. The fight between Lieberman and Lamont isn't over, though - Lieberman has announced that he has absolutely no intention of bowing to the will of the voters, and will file petitions tomorrow to run in the general election as an independent. (That self-serving announcement came during his "concession" speech.)
Lieberman may well manage to retain his…
tqa | August 8, 2006we turn to the Veteran's Administration, which has somehow or another managed to lose another laptop containing the personal information of thousands of veterans. OK, this one contained a couple of orders of magnitude less data, and was lost by a contractor instead of the agency per se, but still...
tqa | August 7, 2006The Conneticut primary is tomorrow, and it's starting to look like Joe Lieberman will need some sort of last second miracle if he is to run as a Democrat for re-election to the U.S. Senate. Recent polls have him trailing Ned Lamont by over ten points. A nearly constant stream of major Democratic personalities campaigning for Lieberman has done nothing to help that number (if anything, things have been getting worse, instead).
It's clear that the opposition to Lieberman is fueled largely by anger. You really don't need to do much more than look at the matchup to figure that one out. Ned…
tqa | August 2, 2006After re-reading my post on the latest Plan B foolishness, I think I might have been too angry to make my point clearly. I'm still pretty damn pissed off, but I'm going to give it another shot. There's little about this thing that doesn't make me mad, but right now I'm angriest about the FDA's latest arbitrary decision in this case: to refuse to allow over-the-counter (OTC) sales of the "Plan B" morning after pill to those under 18 years of age. Here's why:
The primary mission of the branch of the FDA that oversees pharmaceuticals is to ensure that drugs, whether prescription or over the…
tqa | August 1, 2006This morning, I find posts at both Terra Sigillata and Pharyngula discussing the FDA's announcement that they are planning to reopen discussions with Barr Labs, the maker of the Plan B morning after contraceptive, regarding Barr Labs efforts to gain permission from the FDA to sell Plan B over the counter. Both of my SciBlings' articles are cautiously upbeat about this new Plan B development, as are at least some news articles. After reading the letter that the FDA sent to Barr, which putatively formed the basis for the release, it seems clear that the optimistic spin the FDA Press Office is…
tqa | July 31, 2006Last week, I wrote two posts on the differences between nation building and nation rebuilding. Toward the end of the second, I said this:I think that a large portion of the problem here is not that we don't have the capability to do enough, but that we have not organized our capabilities in a way that would ease this type of process. As things currently stand, military-based nation building efforts are the worst way to provide comprehensive, broad-based improvements in war torn nations - except for pretty much all the others that have been tried. The military really does have some significant…
tqa | July 28, 2006...and he is us.
Once again, it apears that someone in the service has used the incredibly stupid "don't ask, don't tell" policy as a weapon against another service memeber, resulting in the army forcing out someone that they need. In this instance, the victim was a gay military intelligence [feel free to insert comments about oxymoronity here] sergeant, schooled by the army at great expense as an Arabic linguist. According to the Chicago Tribune/AP article cited in Ed's post, some 800 individuals with critically needed skills have been discharged as a result of "don't ask, don't tell" in…
tqa | July 27, 2006A brief conversation in the car today:
Me: I don't know why, but for some reason grusome threats work with kids. They believe them less the more grusome they get, but they listen a lot more.
My mom: Yeah, I remember when you were little, I used to threaten to boil you in oil or hang you from the fire escape by your toes.
#2 Offspring: Do it, Nana!
tqa | July 25, 2006Over at Pharyngula, PZ highlights a recent comment by Rick Santorum, the best-dressed man in the Senate, regarding Santorum's opinion on scientists and morality:Most scientists unfortunately, those that certainly are advocating for this [embryonic stem cell research], and many others feel very little moral compulsion. It's a utilitarian, materialistic view of doing whatever they can do to pursue their desired goals.
After following the links back and watching the video clip of Santorum's comment, I discovered something that was almost shocking: he actually said other things in response to the…
tqa | July 24, 2006Joseph responded to my last post with a thought-provoking comment on my blog, and added a brief post to his own noting the exchange and wondering if there is any neutral third party who might want to weigh in on our exchange. I'd like to second that request. Of course, since I'm incapable of just letting things rest where they are without further, I'd also like to address a few of the things that Joseph brought up in his comment.
Regarding the question of whether we should stay in Iraq, he writes:Just looking at the situation in Iraq, I would say that I used to hold the same view as you: we…
tqa | July 24, 2006On Saturday, a post appeared over at The Corpus Callosum discussing an article that appeared in the Guardian concerning the rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. The main point behind the Guardian article is that the senior NATO commander in Afghanistan is very worried about the situation there, calling it "close to anarchy." The point to the Corpus Callosum article was a bit harder for me to grasp, and I might have misunderstood it, but it seemed to be that the problems in Afghanistan somehow provide a reason that we should pull out of Iraq - the logic seemed to be that we know…
tqa | July 21, 2006Take a look at this post over at Stranger Fruit. The Santorum quote is good, but the outfit Santorum is wearing in the picture is better. He looks like a refugee from a bad 80s Televangelism special.
tqa | July 21, 2006It's been said that an army may travel on its stomach, but it moves through a morass of paperwork. There's a form for everything, and nothing gets done until the proper form gets filled out. I wouldn't be surprised if some soldiers are happy to finally get on the plane to head into the combat zone, if only because it means that they've finally finished all their pre-deployment paperwork. (Little do they know what awaits them when they arrive.) The paperwork for deployment isn't limited to the soldier, either. Us spouses get to do some too. Yesterday, I had to update what is probably the most…
tqa | July 20, 2006Over at The Loom, Carl Zimmer tells us that a group of academics and a Conneticut biotech company are about to begin sequencing the Neandertal genome. Sequencing the Neandertal genome gets them all of the possible "Damn, that's cool!" points, but it's also got the potential to greatly increase our understanding of human evolution - particularly if it's the start of a project to sequence more ancient hominids.
Sequencing the Neandertal genome is one of those things that would have been pure science fiction just a couple of years ago. If they manage to pull this off, it will be an absolutely…