It is not legal, and would overwhelmingly be considered anathema, for lobbyists to lobby judges or juries. Why aren’t we asking why we allow them to lobby our legislators?

Why? For the same reasons one needs to deal with Mitch McConnell differently than with Elizabeth Warren.

For all their endless prattle about freedom,

The Right has been honing the Orwellian uses of language and mass psychology for decades. And it has been working very well, indeed. Witness those Tea Partiers who believe in individual liberty, and align with a Republican party that’s all about the wealth and power of the 1%.

Recalling the phrase “Communist Dupe” for the McCarthy era, I think they may be accurately described as “Corporate Dupes.” But, just as the term “dupe” was infrahumanizing then, so it is now.

These people are allies, not enemies. But the wool is snugly pulled over so many eyes. How will those eyes be opened?

The film opens on February 1st across the U.S., and anyone who want to see it can create an event through TODpix.com. If at least 50 tickets are sold, the film will screen.

I visited the web sites yesterday. Will there be a posting to announce screenings as they are scheduled? In particular, here in Portland, OR?

It always was the Fiscal Bluff.

And, as to Jon’s last sentence, most of the people who bought into the scam will continue to believe. Reality is not enough to overcome most trance states.

Good grief, people. I stand second to none in my sense of betrayal by the Obama administration (including failure to appoint Warren to head CFPB), but not every Democrat elected to high office is craven. No, Warren will not be bought. Marginalized, perhaps. But there are indeed a few who have, and keep, their integrity. My belief is that she is one of them.

Ron Wyden (Duh-OR), AWOL. And on his colleague’s bill.

Maybe Obama saw the movie, Lincoln, and has compared/contrasted what he got with the ACA vs. what Lincoln got with the 13th Amendment.

It makes me wonder if he really means it whenever he says “I believe in America.”

The full quote is “I believe in Idiot America.” (h/t Charlie Pierce)

Even more troubling to me are those people who don’t really hold completely to the conservative worldview but are willing to abandon their more compassionate values out of fear. These are the people lifting Mitt Romney from, say, no more than 30 percent of the vote to half the vote.

Thanks, Glenn, for naming the core driver of so much of our politics: fear.

Charles Pierce wrote passionately a few days ago about the death of innocents and the moral cost to us of this undeclared war:

Who Are The Others? It Is Long Past Time We Met the Victims of the Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama

Washington’s mistaken belief in this case is tragically mistaken.

Not being Carnac, an answer to your question eludes me.

I hope my point – that we are not to throw up our hands and walk away – was understood.

The Constitution was written in order “to form a more perfect Union.” Regardless of what Rove et al think or say, that remains our charge.

I see politics as the imperfect tools we have for creating and refining the structures of our self-governance. The tools we are currently using have become cruder, and thus less productive. But we are not to be mistaken for our tools.

Agree that Coulter’s lunatic ravings cannot be taken seriously. But it’s whistling past the graveyard to not recognize that many people do give her credence. And I believe that, as with most narcissistic psychopaths, she takes herself seriously, and so is not just a hustler out for a buck.

Portland seems to have got The Gang That Couldn’t Raid Straight. According to the landlord of one of the houses raided, as The Oregonian newspaper reported yesterday, the activists the Raiders of the Lost Tenancy were seeking had moved out more than a year ago, after they lost their lease. A simple check with the owner/landlord would have discovered this.

Imagine the 6:00 am surprise of the current tenants. Try to imagine why the FBI was reported to still be there as of 10:15 am.

Yes. Paying additional Medicare taxes, and getting health care coverage as a result, is preferable to paying a tax penalty and getting nothing for it.

Let’s be clear on one important point: the ruling does not require anyone to pay health insurance companies anything. The refusal to buy health insurance will trigger payment of a tax to the IRS.

From Justice Roberts’ opinion, pg. 32:

Under the mandate, if an individual does not maintain health insurance, the only consequence is that he must make an additional payment to the IRS when he pays his taxes. See §5000A(b). That, according to the Government, means the mandate can be regarded as establishing a condition—not owning health insurance—that triggers a tax—the required payment to the IRS. Under that theory, the mandate is not a legal command to buy insurance. Rather, it makes going without insurance just another thing the Government taxes, like buying gasoline or earn- ing income. And if the mandate is in effect just a tax hike on certain taxpayers who do not have health insurance, it may be within Congress’s constitutional power to tax.

When we die, most people recognize that “we” transcend space – at least the three dimensions we experience. The recognition of time as integral in “Space-time” opened for me the realization that we also transcend time.

Hence, The End is just one more mental construct, one more part of what Eastern mysticism calls trance, maya, samsara . . .

Can you imagine a language without a past tense?