Month: May 2009

Inhaling Your Cocktail

This sounds fun:

The concoction was top-shelf–Hendrick's gin and Fever Tree tonic–and when shot through a humidifier the gin's cucumber and juniper aromas came through to full effect. It was a pleasant scent, and I could imagine the boozy facial being a hit at a girl's spa weekend. But in a small subterranean room, lit by a single, bare bulb and filled with strangers in baggy white jumpsuits, it made for a decidedly strange, Willy Wonka Saturday night bar scene.

Where's my golden ticket?

The Marriage and Marijuana Moment

David Boaz sees glimmers of hope for libertarianism:

The “shift to the left” that we seem to observe on economic policy is depressing to libertarians. But that’s mostly crisis-driven. When the results of more spending, more taxes, more regulation, and more money creation begin to be visible, we may see the kind of reaction that led to Proposition 13 and the election of Ronald Reagan at the end of the 1970s. Meanwhile, this cultural “shift to the left” is far more encouraging. And don’t forget, at 90 days into the Obama administration, Americans preferred smaller government to “more active government” by 66 to 25 percent.

Hoekstra Challenges Pelosi

This is getting more involved. Sargent:

“He has seen documents that would clarify exactly what the Speaker was briefed on,” Ware tells me, “including whether she was briefed on all enhanced interrogation techniques that had been used.”

Asked if those techniques included waterboarding, Ware replied: “Yes.”

We should all reserve judgment on the specifics at this point, I suppose. But the emergence of the possibility of Pelosi's and Rockefeller's enmeshment in the torture program could have, to my mind, a salutary effect on the debate.

Responsibility for creating and perpetuating the torture program lies with Bush and Cheney – but if they brought in senior Democrats who did not complain or do all they could to stop it, then those Democrats bear some responsibility as well.

And that perhaps helps the case for accountability.

If the investigation includes the current Democratic speaker as a potential target, it can hardly be dismissed as partisan. And it isn't partisan. God knows I would prefer it if the president I supported in 2000 had not committed war crimes. God knows I wish people I respect had not found a way to ignore, defend or even praise thesm. But the truth is as it is. And we need to know all of it, in context, with time, with the chips falling as they may.

Saving The GOP

Jon Henke makes a start:

The Republican brand does not merely need a little tinkering.  The Republican brand is not the victim of Democratic rhetoric and framing.  The Republican brand is so bad because people accurately perceive the state of the Republican Party. Rhetorical contrition and promises are insufficient.  Fixing that problem requires actual, painful, reform.

!

Stuart Jeffries considers the exclamation mark:

Carol Waseleski's unexpectedly diverting paper, Gender and the Use of Exclamation Points in Computer-Mediated Communication, found that women used more exclamation marks than men. But why was this?…[Waseleski] concluded that exclamation marks were not just marks of excitability but of friendliness, and suggested that one reason women use them more than men is because they were, as a gender, less likely to be socially inept, funless egotists …

Ha!!