This past Wednesday, I went to a vigil and march commemorating the tenth anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo Bay Prison.  As part of the event, people told stories through a megaphone about several probably-innocent long-term detainees at both Guantanamo and Bagram Prison in Afghanistan-dark tales of senseless brutality and torture.  An Iraq ( Read more... )

From a Climate Solutions action email I got today: "The Home Star bill (HR 5019) will come up for a vote in the House of Representatives tomorrow.  This bill will create incentives to accelerate home energy efficiency across the nation."  And here's a news article about it.  Now, I know HR stands for "House Resolution" rather than "Homestar Runner ( Read more... )

Well, now I know where the derogatory term "sophomoric" comes from.  My sophomore effort at organizing a political event was a stupidly pointless failure.  I tried to get people to stop by a U.S. Senator's local district office for just long enough to drop off a photo and ask a staffer to make sure the climate bill gets strengthened and passed.  ( Read more... )

"He's bugging your room,
And reading your mail,
He's keeping a file
And running a tail
Santa Claus is tapping
Your phone."
- Anonymous

Okay, now that I've got that image in your head, imagine that instead we had eco- Santa Claus, giving out lumps of coal to folks who used too much coal-fired electricity over the past year--"Especially ( Read more... )

This article seems to be on some kind of blog-based chain mail, but I heard about it from bdunbar, who agrees with me on very little else about Obama's policies.

"WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is asking the Supreme Court to overrule a 23 year-old decision that stopped police from initiating questions unless a defendant's lawyer is present, the ( Read more... )

Within his first week as President, Barack Obama has made serious steps on what I see as the two most critical issues our nation faces: the challenge of turning the threat of climate catastrophe into a driver for a new green economy, and the thorny issue of reversing the frightening erosions of our democratic values made by the Bush Administration ( Read more... )

Okay, this one's fairly nonpolitical: Go see WALL-E. it's not just a funny movie about a cute little robot who gets to go into space--it's also a devastating satire about the effects of unchecked consumerism, especially on the global environment. (You'd never realize this from looking at the official movie website, but the film itself is very ( Read more... )

"He had that sense, or inward prophecy -- which a yong man had better never have been born, than not to have, and a mature man had better die at once, than utterly to relinquish -- that we are not doomed to creep on forever in the old, bad way, but that, this very now, there are the harbingers abroad of a golden era, to be accomplished in his own ( Read more... )

Speaking of famous Churchill quotes (though according to the linked page, Churchill claimed to have gotten this one from somewhere else): if you feel like a heaping helping of disillusionment, check out this post by bdunbar, summarizing what is probably the true story of Love Canal, despite the fact that Reason Magazine is the major source cited.*  The ( Read more... )

Reading bdunbar's livejournal hasn't been easy lately, because while an opposing view is always useful for refining one's own beliefs, political opposition tends to make me unreasonably angry and defensive.  I'm not alone in this; I once read an article about a psychological study that found that challenging someone's political beliefs causes an emotional ( Read more... )