The preceding rant was mostly about national politics, though most of it applies at the state level as well. I have a few words about some of the specific Washington initiatives, though.

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I used to be a political junkie, and I was convinced that with the Democrats in full control of the White House and Congress, we'd actually get some stuff done. And we have - health care reform is going to be pretty big once all the provisions come into effect, even though it's going to take another four years for that to happen. Other stuff's ( Read more... )

The presidential nomination process comes to Washington state this month, and it's confusing ( Read more... )

• The Detroit Tigers won game 2 of their 5-game series against the Yankees. They officially have a chance to take the series: they've got home field advantage now.
• According to an AP article, Bush has used signing statements to claim his right to completely disregard (no mere "interpretation") provisions of the bills he signs, in direct contravention ( Read more... )

Congress has passed a bill giving the President unilateral authority to strip the right of habeus corpus from anyone he declares an "unlawful enemy combatant", including American citizens. The bill also effectively legalizes torture by allowing the President to secretly determine his own interpretation of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions ( Read more... )

Today, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that the NSA warrantless wiretapping program is in violation of the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution, as well as (not quite so importantly) of the FISA statute that established the court that the NSA was supposed to be asking for warrants all this time. The ruling also contains an injunction ( Read more... )

They're playing politics with gay rights again.

Frist knows this is likely to fail, but he's pushing the issue anyway, in order to try to rally all the anti-gay-rights voters around the flailing conservative movement.

We need these people out.

Okay, so out in California, Governor Schwartzenegger has a phone system set up wherein people can, among other things, show support for certain bills. One of the bills currently in the system is the marriage equality act that he intends to veto. So, I don't know whether it'll change anything or not, but it's worth a shot, right? Especially since ( Read more... )