[ Posted Friday, March 13th, 2015 – 16:56 UTC ]
For the uninformed, Pi Day is a yearly celebration of a date on the calendar, for its numerical significance. It ranks up there among geeky holidays with the fourth of May ("Star Wars Day," since you can go around wishing everyone "May the Fourth be with you!"). The significance is it will be "3/14" (at least in the United States, as Europeans write their dates differently). These are the first three digits in the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, or "pi."
But this year's Pi Day will be the best one for the next 100 years, because a whole bunch of digits will come into play. Pi's value is, to 10 digits: 3.141592653. This year's Pi Day will be 3/14/15. Taking it a step further, just before 9:30 AM tomorrow morning, the date and time will read: 3/14/15 -- 9:26:53. Woo hoo! Best Pi Day of the century!
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[ Posted Monday, February 9th, 2015 – 18:18 UTC ]
Roy Moore, the chief justice of Alabama's state supreme court, is making a stand in the courthouse door. This is not literally happening, the way it did back in 1963 when Alabama's Governor George Wallace made a similar stand in the schoolhouse door. But the motivation is similar; a classic standoff between states' rights and federal legal supremacy over state law. In both Moore's and Wallace's cases, high Alabama officials are defying federal civil rights legal orders -- and the United States Supreme Court -- to preserve the state's ability to legally discriminate against a segment of its population.
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[ Posted Friday, January 30th, 2015 – 17:54 UTC ]
That headline certainly does promise a large amount of schadenfreude over the misfortunes of a certain former vice presidential nominee (and half-term governor of Alaska), doesn't it? Well, that'll all have to wait for the end of this column, where we will be supplanting our normal talking points section with a few choice conservative reviews of Sarah Palin's recent speech in Iowa. But before we dive into this snarktastic dessert of vicious quips, we've first got to get through the meat and potatoes of the politics of the week.
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[ Posted Friday, January 23rd, 2015 – 18:21 UTC ]
I have to apologize right here at the start, because that headline is not original. Credit should go to Chuck Todd of NBC, who stated during the State Of The Union coverage this week that President Obama had stolen the traditional post-election "honeymoon" period with the public right out from under the Republican Party's feet. We found this such an apt metaphor that we decided to run with it, so: "Thanks, Chuck!"
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[ Posted Wednesday, January 21st, 2015 – 18:24 UTC ]
Because it is both playoff season in the football world and State Of The Union season in the political world, I felt it was high time to mix a metaphor or two. Because even though we're at the very earliest stage of the 2016 presidential race, it seems like the Democrats are pretty close to locking in "home-field advantage" on the subject of wages and inequality in America. By which I mean Democrats will be debating Republicans on very familiar territory for the Democratic Party, and very foreign soil for the Republicans. As in sports, this in no way guarantees a victory in "The Big Game," but it certainly does help the Democrats' chances.
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[ Posted Friday, December 26th, 2014 – 19:14 UTC ]
Welcome back to our annual year-end awards column!
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[ Posted Tuesday, November 4th, 2014 – 16:20 UTC ]
Happy Election Day, everyone! It being an off-year election, there will be no presidential race to dominate the news tonight as the election returns come in. The biggest races will be in the Senate, with political control of the chamber hanging in the balance. On the House side, the only real question is how many seats the Republicans will pick up. But there are plenty of interesting down-ballot races to watch, while waiting for Alaska's returns to come in late in the night (or, perhaps, the recounting of West Podunk's ballots). I thought, as a preview/guide to tonight's returns, it'd be worth the time to take a quick look at some of the other contests we may be hearing about this evening.
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[ Posted Tuesday, October 28th, 2014 – 17:12 UTC ]
With one week to go until the 2014 midterm elections, almost all of the punditocracy world is absolutely chomping at the bit for this cycle to already be over, so they can concentrate on the much-more-fun 2016 presidential election season. This is pretty obvious, with some media now swooning over Jeb Bush's possible candidacy and the Clintons out stumping for other Democrats (and being covered more in the news than the actual candidates).
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[ Posted Friday, September 26th, 2014 – 17:18 UTC ]
Holder certainly had a momentous term in office. Depending on when he is officially replaced, his will either be the fourth-longest or third-longest record as Attorney General in American history. Liberals found him lacking on civil liberties issues (especially in Obama's first term), and conservatives just despised him because he was serving a president they really, really hated (he's also the first Attorney General to be found in contempt of Congress by the House).
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[ Posted Friday, August 29th, 2014 – 17:25 UTC ]
President Obama gave a press conference recently, and -- since it is still the political Silly Season -- got a lot of media attention. For what he was wearing. No, seriously. Washington was all a-twitter (or even a-Twitter) because Obama wore a suit that was not dark blue or black. While some may smack their heads over the idiocy of what passes as the Washington press corps, the right thing to do is to celebrate how males have finally reached sartorial equality with women, when viewed by political "journalists." This is not a backhanded compliment, I hasten to point out, it is meant as a backhanded insult. Because it is always insulting to a politician to focus on what she (or, now, he) is wearing, instead of reporting on the substance of her words and actions. This has been going on for women in politics for exactly as long as women have been in American politics, right up to Hillary Clinton's pantsuits and Sarah Palin's shopping spree. All women know this -- they will be judged on what they wear, sometimes more than what they say or do. Especially female politicians. President Obama is just getting a tiny taste of what women have had to put up with in the political arena since Day One. So I choose to celebrate this new equality (of the idiocy of the political press), and the closing of this particular part of the gender gap.
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