[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.] Loyacita, age 4: [during an evening thunderstorm] “Daddy, where does rain comes from?” Me: “Well, you see…” Loyette, age 5½: [interrupting] “It comes from clouds, [Loyacita]. Clouds are made of tiny water droplets, and when the water droplets get close to each other, they come together—sort of like magnets—and turn… Read more »
[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.] Above is a “word cloud” by Wordle, created via manipulation of the CSV file included in my personal Twitter archive, showing the 350 most frequently used words in the 79,787 tweets that I published – “new-style retweets” excluded – between August 26, 2008 and July 25, 2013. You can get… Read more »
[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.] Later today, the U.S. House of Representatives will vote on an amendment that would repudiate and defund the executive and judicial branches’ secret, lawless abuse of the Patriot Act’s “business records” provision. It needs to pass. I don’t use words like “lawless” lightly, nor do I regularly throw around allegations… Read more »
[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.] Merkley: “Cast it into the fire!! DESTROY IT!!!” Reid: “No.” Merkley: (years later) “It should have ended that day. But the Filibuster was allowed to endure.”
[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.] Last Thursday, the SyFy network aired an absurd, low-budget, deliberately campy made-for-TV movie called “Sharknado.” It was a ratings bust, but a Twitter blockbuster, starting on Wednesday when the final trailer hit the Interwebs, causing a frenzy of anticipation, commentary and snark – a “snark-nado,” if you will. As Thursday… Read more »
[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.] They were once judges. Great sages of justice. Then Congress the Deceiver gave to them a Secret Court of Power. Blinded by their patriotism, they joined it without question, one by one falling into darkness. Now they are slaves to the Executive Branch’s will. They are the FISA-gûl, Judge-wraiths, neither… Read more »
[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.] I’m in Salt Lake City this 4th of July weekend, attending FreedomWorks’s “Free the People” event (a.k.a. #FTP2013) and the closely associated Glenn Beck event, #maninthemoon, as well as the speaker series put on by #M1Charity. My family and I drove in from Denver on Wednesday, and we will be… Read more »
[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.] Firefighters are heroes. They always insist they’re not heroes. They say they’re just doing their jobs – nothing heroic about it. And they do those jobs so professionally, making extremely dangerous feats look so routine, that it’s easy to almost believe them. But then something like the tragedy in Arizona… Read more »
[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.] VICTORY. Good riddance, #DOMA.
[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.] With one hour until we finally get to the gay stuff, I might as well post my thoroughly underinformed, wild-guess predictions for what the Supreme Court will decide. Here goes: DOMA: Struck down by a vote of 7-2. Chief Justice Roberts writes the majority opinion, striking down the law on… Read more »