If the purpose of the current Trump impeachment hearings were simply to fulfill Congress Members’ oaths of office and do their jobs, it would be difficult to explain the past many years. Jerrold Nadler, Chair of the Judiciary Committee for the past 11 months, has known since inauguration day that Trump was in egregious violation of the emoluments clauses, and has since declared other Trump actions impeachable without moving to impeach him. Impeachable offenses by Trump, Obama, Bush, and read more

When the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia, the weather was unusually hot. People in the streets of Philadelphia beat a woman to death for being a witch and causing the heat in an attempt to kill them.

I’m reminded of the popular claim that climate change causes war. This is generally taken to (somehow) be an antiwar claim, even when the Pentagon makes it, and certainly when environmental groups that wouldn’t touch peace activism with a ten-foot pole make it.

But what about “Climate read more

It’s impossible in U.S. society not to frequently encounter the demand to vote, no matter what, no matter for whom, as a basic civic duty. Voting is supremely important, we’re told, a right, a responsibility, a moral requirement, something people died for which if you don’t use (even if it’s useless) you will effectively be pissing on their graves. I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said “If everyone would vote, it wouldn’t matter what the billionaires read more

The New York Times would like to clear up your misunderstandings about Joe Biden and Ukraine via the following

“When Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2014, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. pressed President Barack Obama to take decisive action, and fast, to make Moscow ‘pay in blood and money’ for its aggression. The president, a Biden aide recalled, was having none of it.”

Of course, here in the real world, the people of Crimea voting to rejoin Russia was not somebody’s read more

So the state of Virginia is going to be run (House, Senate, and Governorship) by members of the Democratic Party for the first time in decades.

This means either that the go-to excuse of elected Democrats is going to become something other than “It’s the Republicans’ fault,” or that change is actually upon us.

Why not take this opportunity to consider what a changed government might look like?

The state of Virginia could, if it chose, take any number of progressive steps. read more

November 11, 2019, is Armistice Day 101 (or 102 if you want to be all mathematically accurate and elitist about it). Anyway, it’s been over a century now since World War I was ended at a scheduled moment (11 o’clock on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918).

For decades in the United States, as elsewhere, Armistice Day (in some countries it’s called Remembrance Day) was a holiday of peace, of sad remembrance and the joyful ending of war, and of a commitment to preventing war read more