Isn't there a UPS? FED EX?

Has social security prevented banks from offering retirement accounts?

Don't private/parochial schools exist?

Since when has a 'public option' destroyed the private sector from making its buck? I'm glad libraries, the postal service, and public schools where off the ground long ago - if they didn't, and were proposed today, they would all be labeled socialist job-killers, and would never see the light of day.

The guy's a rising star of the GOP thinking of running for prez in 2012, and this disappearance act is the height of irresponsible governance. I work in an lowly academic department and if my chair is away from the office for a single day, he officially appoints an acting-chair in his absence. It's the responsible thing to do. Stanford disappears for over a week - no one knows where he is or can contact him - and he doesn't turn over power to the lieutenant governor? He's either an idiot, or nuts. To sum up: I hope he wins the GOP nomination.

please!!!

Next up:

Socialized book-lending

Socialized education

Socialized postal service

I just spent the last 20 minutes on NPR trying to find contact info for Anna Christopher, to no avail. No contact info, and couldn't find her listed among the following variety of "NPR People":

On-air Staff and Contributors

Behind-the-scenes Staff

Corporate Team

NPR Community Staff Profiles

A search of her name turns up a mention in one article. Pretty funny for an "NPR Spokesperson." Who does she (or Shepard) speak to if not the 'national public'?

"Fiscal conservatism," like "states rights," is typically a stance of convenience just when it happens to coincide with some pro-business or culturally neolithic position.

Just like we should do with evolution. Some people think he was born in Hawaii, and some think he was born in Kenya. It is not the role of journalists or educators to take sides on such an obviously controversial issue. As with so called "climate change," maybe Obama really was born in Hawaii, but surely he could not have been man-made. And there's nothing we can do about it now.

this issue sticks around for Blunt's senatorial run. Missouri might be conservative, but the other senator and the governor are democrats. "Insanity" is not a good campaign platform.

...gives us a clue as to how it all ends (hint: it involves directing scarce resources to excessive fundamentalist beliefs, and cannibalism).

...is exactly why the democrats should have come out swinging for universal single-payer health care in the beginning. The republican reaction would have been the same as it is now, except there would be actual compromise space ("OK, OK, we'll let you keep your private insurers along with our little government plan"). Just as they did 16 years ago, the democrats have placed all their bets on the compromise package from the get-go, and there's no negotiating space left.

I seem to be fashionable again!

But the problem is that he is certain to tack even farther to the right to hold on to his seat, and perhaps win.

Moreover, usury is one of the worst 'sins,' repeatedly decried in the bible, and according to Dante puts one in one of the lower circles of hell. Now, how may Christian conservative, biblical literalists are out in the streets protesting the sinfulness of the banking industry?

And "At least we're not as bad as Y" are not good defenses of one's actions. If you best you can come up with is "we could have tortured more," then you have a losing argument. I think when someone robs a store, they're not set free when they argue "at least I didn't cut the head off the cashier."

I haven't seen anything. It's a bit ripe for them to continue mocking Taitz for a belief shared by one of their regular writers.

He sure seems like he'd be objective on the question of whether burning fossil-fuels causes global warming. On another note, tobacco companies have proved cigarettes are good for you.

They're always complaining about how they never have car insurance, causing everyone else's insurance costs to rise. It's the same for health insurance. Would they rather undocumented immigrants skip out on ER bills, which then get rolled into the insurance costs of everyone else? The larger the risk pool, especially if it is spread out over those who will use health services less than average (which is typical of undocumented workers), means lower premiums for all.

JSM was another 'inventor' of capitalism who would be considered a wide-eyed liberal/socialist today. Capitalism was seen at the beginning as a way of redistributing wealth from the nobility to 'the people' by letting them own the land on which they toiled (control the means of production, in socialist terms - he also later advocated many socialist principles). That is, our modern conception of 'capitalism' looks like the economic system it was originally imagined to fix: just replace 'nobility' with 'corporations.'

Which is kind of ironic. The Catholic Church is trying to enlist conservative (anti-gay marriage, ant-gay bishops) Episcopals by arguing that they can then band together to fight the 'anti-reason' scourge that is Islam? Pot, kettle, blah blah blah.

Heads up, Iceland.

*I realize this is probably not true anymore

Somehow, its need to find new readers has twisted into a permanent disdain for its past readers. Two reader suggestions have been a constant over the years: get a better comment system, and get rid of Paglia. Now, they've redesigned the entire site EXCEPT FOR the comment section, and elevated Paglia to a permanent perch on the mast-head. The comments are now regularly flooded with right-wing wackos lured over by Paglia, and are deeply unpleasant places.