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Category Archives: Politics

Vote Today Ohio–Day 3–Shuttling in the Rain

After nearly two months of on-campus work by various organizations, almost all students at Kent State University now say that they’re registered to vote.
The temperature is in the low 50s. The sky is light gray. And a hard rain falls intermittently.
This is my third day on campus, standing beside the Vote Today Ohio van outside [...]

Vote Today Ohio–Day 2–Tach It Up

Yesterday was our first day on the Kent State campus.  We arrived with a 15-passenger van festooned with signage that invited early voting and positioned it right in front of the Student Center. Under cloudy, often rainy skies, hundreds of students passed by.
“How would you like to avoid the long lines on Election Day and [...]

Vote Today Ohio–Day 1–On the Ground

Ohio election law permits voter registration through October 6.  But Early Voting begins September 30.  This means that for one week, Ohio residents may register and vote early in all of Ohio’s 88 counties.

Secretary Paulson Wants a Section 8

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson

Wall Street’s financial mess is complicated. The bail-out is complicated.
But one thing is clear: whatever is to be done must be done in the sunshine with full recourse for chicanery and self-dealing.

Another Conservative for Obama

Columnist George Will

Yesterday, I wrote about one prominent conservative’s support for Barack Obama. My conclusion was, “I cannot imagine that many conservatives, ‘true’ or ‘neo,’ will read [about that support] and vote for Obama.”
Maybe I spoke too soon.
In his 9/23 column entitled “McCain Loses His Head,” the uncompromisingly conservative George F. Will wrote:
Under the pressure [...]

A Conservative for Obama

Wick Allison

I have long thought that the Republicans in power do not act like true conservatives.
“Conservatives,” posits Wick Allison, owner and editor-in-chief of Dallas’ D Magazine and former publisher of National Review, “are skeptical of abstract theories and utopian schemes, doubtful that government is wiser than its citizens, and always ready to test any political [...]

Vote Today Ohio–A Grassroots Effort

My wife and I are going to Ohio to register voters.
Ohio recently changed its voting laws in a way that creates an extraordinary opportunity to register new voters.  For one week only (Sept 30—Oct 6), Ohio residents may register and vote early in all of Ohio’s 88 counties. They need make only one trip to [...]

“If You Don’t Vote, You’re a Moron!”

On September 10, CBS Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson, a Scotland-born, recently naturalized American citizen, delivered an impassioned rant about the importance of voting. Airing immediately after Obama appeared on Letterman’s show, Ferguson’s screed was trenchant, funny, and exactly right.
“If you don’t vote, you’re a moron!”
At the end of this month, I’m heading to [...]

Vetting the Candidates

“Has she been thoroughly vetted?” they ask. It’s an apt question. But do they know what the word actually means?

Calvin Coolidge, Lyndon Johnson, and George W. Bush

An event like this occurs every 40 years, just about as often as it rains in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

Silent Cal

LBJ

In 1928, after making his famous statement (”I do not choose to run for president”), Calvin Coolidge skipped the Republican convention in Kansas City. In 1968, with much of the country agitated about the Vietnam War, [...]