That Other Political Blog

Thank you, Katie, for giving me the perfect title for today's blog post. I have moments of wondering if I'm living in the same world some political figures are talking about.  I had one of those moments this week, reading about Newt Gingrich's speech at the Values Voter Summit.  Here are a few choice tidbits about Newt's own version of McCarthyism. "...on the other front we have radical Islamists who would fundamentally change this country into a system none of us in this room would recognize." "We as Americans don't have to tolerate people who are supportive of violence against us, building something at the sight of the violence."  "This is not about religious liberty, they want to build that mosque in the South Bronx, frankly they need the jobs," he said. "But I am totally opposed to any effort to impose Sharia on the United States, and we should have a federal law that says under no circumstance, in any jurisdiction...

I promised yesterday I'd post about campaign money today. This is one of those issues I'm always "fired up" about! With the Supreme Court handing out individual liberties to corporations like I hand out Halloween candy, the time has come for our legislators to address the issue of campaign finance once and for all. I have some common-sense recommendations for them. My friends tell me they are entirely too reasonable, so there is no chance they will ever become law. Hey, a girl can dream, right? 1) Public funding of campaigns. I don't think campaigns should be solely funded by tax dollars, but there should be some sort of matching so that campaigns get an amount consistent with their level of support from individuals. Perhaps $X match per unique contributor to a campaign. The reason I like this idea is that I am not willing to publicly fund dozens of candidates in a general election. To qualify for public funding, a campaign should have to be viable, an...

I usually have to get fired up about some political issue to write a decent blog post. It's difficult to come up with potent rhetoric when I'm just lukewarm about something. I'm also one of those people who gets mad, then gets over it -- so I generally have to strike while the iron is hot or I can't muster enough energy to do my topic justice. But there are some perennial issues I'm always passionate about, and a few of them have popped up on my radar over the last several days. In no particular order, they are: 1) Don't ask, don't tell, and don't DREAM. DADT has already been ruled unconstitutional by the 9th Circuit, and it is on its way out. Even the highest-ranking military officers want it gone. Over 60% of the population supports its repeal. It resulted in the firing of 14,000 military personnel over the last 10 years, when we are having huge recruiting challenges. But its repeal is getting stuck in a filibuster today. (A local aside...

In Colorado, the right fringe has all but handed the gubernatorial election to the Democrat on a platter. The mainstream republican lost in the primary to a "Tea Party" candidate, Dan Maes, and then our resident nutjob, Tom Tancredo, threw his hat in the ring, too, running under a last-minute nomination as the Constitution Party candidate. (If you don't remember him, he is a former US congressman who had an abbreviated presidential campaign, and said that undocumented immigrants "need to be found before it is too late. They're coming here to kill you, and you, and me, and my grandchildren.") Maes, the Republican candidate, also has some really weird positions and history. He opposed itemizing taxes on utility bills because if they are itemized, people are more likely to express an opinion about them. (?) Also, he got a lot of attention for criticizing a bicycle sharing program (promoted by the Democratic candidate, John Hickenlooper, who is the mayor)...