Hammer Mill Days

Matt... can you talk to him this time? He's freaking ignoring me. Give it a try, damnit. I need to get some sleep. We've got the governor coming in the morning and.... well, you know. Oh, hi. As per my usual affectation, I will act surprised at my discovery of your presence. What-WHAT ? Okay, now that that's out of the way. Just trying to get Matt to speak to Mitch Macaphee, our resident mad science advisor, about keeping the noise down a little bit, just for one night. One night, Mitch! That's all I'm asking! Man does not live by tofu alone! He needs socks, too, and occasionally a couple of ounces of baby oil ... so, my point is that it's more complicated than you think! Oh, what's the use? What's he doing that makes so much noise (i.e. more noise than a rock band)? Well, I made the mistake of leaving last Wednesday's paper lying about. Mitch picked it up and zeroed in on an article about the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland ... yo...

G.O.P. congressional fiscal policy wunderkind (somehow) Paul Ryan was talking about rights on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos the other day, and he said this: We [Republicans] disagree with the notion that our rights come from government; that the government can now grant us and define our rights. Those are ours. Those come from nature and god according to the Declaration of Independence. I've heard similar stuff emanating from the heads of various conservatives over the years, of course. It just amazes me, though, that this creature they present as such an intellectual heavyweight in the area of legislative statecraft can seemingly lack the knowledge a pre-teenager might glean (between naps) from civics class. Rights are given to us by god and nature just as food and water are; which is to say, not really at all. Rights exist; we may (or may not) be aware of their existence. But they are not "given" to us in any respect. Government is, at its best,...