Liberal Talk Radio

Now that the academic world is supremely conscious of fair-labor practices, universities are having trouble finding enough suppliers to churn out that endless stock of sweatshirts, t-shirts and shot glasses bearing the logo of dear old State U.:
Five months after Columbia joined a national effort to enforce labor standards in the factories that produce its [...]

In a pre-taping discussion this Sunday, the Prof and I talked a bit about the supreme court races in Washington State. they’ve garnered a lot of attention because the BIAW (among others) has dumped tons of cash into the elections as a way of (I believe) pre-empting the pro-developer I-933 initiative. 933 is going [...]

There was a rumor floating around a while back that President Bush had started watching early episodes of The West Wing on DVD.
Perhaps that explains why, this week, President Bush took some time during his first speech to the NAACP to talk about the estate tax, noting “the death tax will prevent future [...]

Do you reserve the right to allow your kid to die from cancer? A Virginia court weighs this idea:
A teen cancer patient fighting to use alternative medical treatment for his illness said he told a juvenile court judge in a two-day, closed-door hearing what it’s like to go through chemotherapy and that he didn’t want [...]

Bruno’s post inspired me to comment on why I think initiatives are a terrible thing for democracy.
Bear with me through a little setup. In our information-driven economy, you’re essentially paid based on how much information you can process, and how effectively you do that — i.e., your efficiency (or “productivity” as it’s sometimes called [...]

I kind of hope we are in for a redistricting boom in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to uphold most of the DeLay Texas map.
I hope that all state legislatures (both Dem- and GOP-controlled) take this opportunity to shamelessly re-draw districts to their advantages every chance they get. Several good things [...]

Check this poll out, that gives player ratings for US v Italy.
Note the ratings of the Italian players. Note also that many of the voters on this site are likely to be US fans. So …
Take a look at the ratings of the users vs the “experts” on Soccernet’s panel. Generally, [...]

Since comments aren’t working right now (some jerk seems to have cracked our security systems), I’m going to respond to The Contrarian’s post on partisanship below.
Mark Schmitt’s argument is basically that American politics is “devolving” into a parliamentary democracy, where the President acts in harmony with congress when his party controls it, and [...]

In a word: regulation.
The simple fact is that without drug legalization, users are subject to the vagaries of a market that does not have their best interests in mind. Legalization ensures that this market and its products can be regulated and inspected, preventing quiet tragedies like the one that’s happened among heroin users in Detroit [...]

This is my favorite sentence in the big Hillary-Bill relationship article:
“Over time she came to consider Chappaqua home, too, and she likes spending time there with the president when they can find the time,” said one longtime friend of the couple’s, who was granted anonymity because the Clintons did not want this person to speak. [...]