Today draws to a close, with the beginning of October, the Summer of 2023, my first in Washington state. And oh, boy! What a summer it has been. Where to begin… I moved in May and we sorta hit the ground running. Hiking and camping every weekend—before we added kayaking into the mix—pretty much all…
So… I did something silly. I traded the Cherokee and bought a 2017 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon Unlimited. And I love it so much!
The No Labels “Movement” No Labels bills itself as a responsible and bipartisan third-party alternative, although they eschew the idea that they’re a party. But, it can’t be “bipartisan” if it’s a third party, technically that would make it a coalition party. But I digress… Their major flaw, in my opinion, is that they frame…
If you’re a regular visitor to CleanUpAfterYourDog.com, you may notice a few changes today: the title and “about me” are different and the header image has changed. I’m starting a new adventure in Washington in April and I wanted to get things in place to reflect these changes. For a while now I’ve felt like…
I don’t believe in forgiveness because it’s bullshit. I don’t. I don’t believe in forgiveness, primarily because humans are incapable of absolution, which is what forgiveness is. We are emotionally vulnerable animals capable of rational thought, and as such we can’t simply forget about something that has wounded us. There is no undo button, nor…
Call me a policy wonk. Call me a politics junkie. Call me crazy. Call me a progressive, a socialist, a fool. Call me whatever you want, frankly I don’t really care. But what I’m about to tell you is the unabashed, unadulterated truth: American fiscal conservatism is an unapologetically implausible ruse; it’s a fairy tale;…
The Civil Competency and Qualifications Act SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE; TABLE OF CONTENTS; PURPOSE. SHORT TITLE.—This Act may be cited as the “Civil Competency and Qualifications Act” or the “Civics Act of 2023”. TABLE OF CONTENTS.—The table of contents for this Act is as follows: Sec 1. Short Title; Table of Contents; Purpose Sec 2.…
There’s a long, complicated debate online right now about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and generated imagery. Is it art or not? Can you copyright it? Is it theft? Etc… And it’s pretty simple, actually. AI images are not art, you can’t copyright them, and they’re, essentially, theft. Let’s dive in. Art art [ ahrt ] noun the quality,…
Elon Musk is not the tech-bro messiah. Full stop. Twitter is Imploding by the Whims of an Idiot First there was the mass layoff. Then the Blue Check Saga. Then the readmission of Donald Trump and the wave of racists and NAZIs. After which we saw the banning of Jack Sweeny and ElonsJet. And then…
02 September – 09 September 2022 Our trip to Yellowstone was planned in March, originally for May, but we decided to postpone the adventure because we needed far more time to appropriately prepare for the journey, the adventure, and the return. So we chose to schedule our departure for the first of September. Little did…
So, I want to talk about 6 January 2021 and the attack on the US Capitol building in Washington, DC. There are a few reasons for this: 1) It’s important that we, as a nation, bring clarity to what happened and maintain focus on the attack until justice is served; 2) There is a concerted…
Juries are the second, fundamental participatory element of the People in Government. Juries are important because the Rule of Law, while set by Representatives of the People and enforced by an indirect Representative of the People (the President), must be administered by the People from whom its authority is derived. Judges, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Peoples’ Representatives, are not accountable to the People. Juries are the People.
The answer is simple: Democrats are lazy. And, no, I don’t mean the politicians, I mean the voters. Democrats are lazy and disengaged, reactionary voters. And that’s a major problem because it allows the minority—and, again, that’s the Right and the far-Right combined—to win elections, appoint judges, and set policies. The system of government we have isn’t broken, even if the Government itself is. (And it’s only broken because Republicans like it that way.)
For half a century, Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973), and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992), have protected the liberty and equality of women. Roe held, and Casey reaffirmed, that the Constitution safeguards a woman’s right to decide for herself whether to bear a child. Roe held, and Casey reaffirmed, that in the first stages of pregnancy, the government could not make that choice for women. The government could not control a woman’s body or the course of a woman’s life: It could not determine what the woman’s future would be.
In Heller, the Court held, in a 5–4 decision, that (1) the Second Amendment granted an individual right to keep and bear arms unconnected to service in a militia; (2) the right to keep and bear arms is not unlimited; and (3) handgun bans and trigger lock requirements such as those instituted by the District of Columbia are unconstitutional. And they were stupid wrong.
