– Democrats mounted an admirable effort to stop the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. – The vote finally passed today with Vice President Mike Pence casting the tie-breaking vote.  This was a historic near-win for the Democrats and shows promise for the millions of people who have spent their own time pressuring their representatives to reject DeVos. It is a heartening defeat. But when you look at the track record of Democrats who occupy seats in the House and Senate, there is clear evidence that many of […]

Read More →

The Economist released this opinion piece (with no byline, so I guess it’s an editorial?) describing how the failure of the US to directly intervene with air support, and potentially troops on the ground, in Syria led to the current situation in Aleppo.  Similar pieces have been flooding well-meaning blogs like Upworthy, mainstream news sites, and saturating the pages of left-leaning commentary like the Atlantic and Salon.  All of them express the same regret – that Western nations and their militaries failed to “do something” to prevent the horrors in […]

Read More →

As protests ramp up in coastal cities, police prepare to quell them, by looking the other way.   People unsatisfied and angry at the outcome of the election have been staging daily protests in metropolitan areas with varying levels of success.  This has not gone unnoticed by the national press and the President Elect himself, ranging from between disdain and calls to crush the protests with police powers.  And while organizers against an authoritarian president expect the police to fight back, hard, they also know that one of the strongest weapons […]

Read More →