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Ezra Klein has a bunch of great stories on the filibuster today (one introducing the problem, and then several interviews, with Sen. Jeff Merkley, Sen. Tom Harkin, the president of the SEIU, and academic Barbara Sinclair).
I wrote about the issue a few weeks back for my column. The thing's a mess, and presently the Senate is where good bills go to die (or at least get serious leprosy).
Following a fortuitous Christmas (Left 4 Dead 2! Look out, zombies) I'll be heading to Las Vegas for a few nights starting tomorrow. On the agenda: Trader Joe's, In-N-Out Burger, The Beatles Cirque show, some pokers, and other unmentionables.
I first got an iPod in the spring of 2006, spending $199 for a gizmo without Internet access or video playback, featuring a 1.5" screen and 2 GB of storage space.
It is not hyperbole to say it was a life-changing purchase.
I started to get really into music when I was in high school. I became a big Dead Kennedys and Smashing Pumpkins fan early on, before getting into Radiohead, DJ Shadow and other less-popular music.
But for the first time in my life I didn't have to carry around a portable CD player, constantly feeding it batteries and carrying obnoxious, breakable plastic with me. I went through a CD player per year, on average, besides, between thefts and breakage. Suddenly, I had many, many hours of music in a tiny gadget.
My first iPod did not last long.
It suffered a tragic fate known to so many college students: death by drunken mishandling. Specifically, I was being taxied in California, and we stopped for micturition. I had the iPod when I left, but not when I returned. Alas. I blame a particular redhead whom I shall not name.
Later that year, however, my generous mother replaced that dinky 2 GB thing with a 30 GB, traditional iPod (now called "Classic," which signifies a certain telescoping timeframe -- it's only an eight-year-old design).
And so I soldiered on with that iPod, throwing it in a slightly East German-looking padded aluminum case.
It served me well for three years, or well enough. I used it regularly when preparing thematic radio shows, for the Man Date with Marcus Kellis on KUOI. It came with me to Los Angeles, Seattle, Austin, Chicago and Portland.
Last summer, the headphone jack started to tweak, and I replaced it with a part shipped from an eBay seller in Hong Kong. When the problem cropped up again earlier this month, I decided to take advantage of the new lineup and get the 160 GB iPod Classic.
It's a beast. It feels less responsive in the scroll wheel and I can't effectively use that aluminum case with it.
But, I'm also in the enviable position of not having to delete anything from it for a long time. I have enough music that I could fill it twice over, but for the first time in my life with iPods, I have a legitimate surplus of space -- still about 80 GB free, even with tons of podcasts and several movies and every Pavement album and so forth.
Just as space is cheaper, and I'm more able to afford it, I find that I cannot dedicate time to my music player as I used to. Netflix, work, class, girlfriend -- more things compete for my time now than ever before (especially work).
Such is the drag of modern life. I become more sympathetic to the view that all people can really stand is farming and a little bit of religion, maybe. But then I like my iPod too much to become a Mennonite.
Idaho's full of Republicans. Few places in the country have one party dominate statewide politics to the degree the GOP does in Idaho (Utah's obviously one of our brethren, and on the other side, Maryland and Hawaii elect Democrats like few other states.)
But just as often as you hear that Idaho's Republican do you hear that Idaho Republicans lean toward libertarianism. If they are libertarian, it is indeed a strange libertarian.
To pull but a few examples: public disclosure laws, gay rights and liquor licensing all share a thread of paternalism -- exactly contrary to accepted libertarian ideals.
Idaho legislators are not required to disclose their sources of income, nor list their assets such as real estate. I suppose we're meant to take it on faith that Idaho's politicians are not corrupt (and Iran doesn't have any gay people), because the Speaker of the Idaho House called a bill to mandate the release of such information unnecessary. Transparency should be virtuous across partisan lines.Perhaps some libertarians would argue disclosures for income and assets are unnecessary, but more, I think, would agree it's a sensible rule for those who seek the public's trust. The Center for Public Integrity had Idaho tied for last place with Michigan and Vermont in public disclosure laws this year.
With regard to gay rights, Idaho is one of those states whose sodomy laws were overturned by Lawrence v. Texas in 2003. The "infamous crime against nature" still remains on the books, Idaho State Code 18-6605, punishable by up to five years in prison, though it is now unenforceable. (An adultery law is also still on the books, as well.)
And, finally, to liquor: I suppose it is a religious teetotaler influence, but the number of licenses to dispense spirits is a population-based quota system in Idaho. There are legitimate reasons why governments should seek to discourage intemperate drinking, or smoking, or obesity, but we don't limit cigarette sales per capita or McDonald's franchises per capita. Nor should we so limit liquor licensing, which has spawned a market in license speculation, where the certificates are treated as investments not because of any natural scarcity but because of a legal monopoly by the state.
Libertarian-leaning GOP, indeed. I appreciate that the GOP has so far not completely decimated the public school system, though they did react to a Democrat's election as the state's superintendent of education by transferring authority from her department to the State Board of Education. When Republican Tom Luna was elected to the post they transferred the authority back.
Governor C.L. "Butch" Otter, while a Representative, voted against the Patriot Act. I wish he and his party would transcend party lines a little more often.
To get some more content in here aught-quick, I'm going to republish some of the columns I've written for The Argonaut, the University of Idaho's student newspaper. My column, The Dilettante, runs Fridays. Once the spring semester reconvenes I'll link and republish.
Here is Paul Krugman on the filibuster. It's important to note that there's nothing in the Constitution about it (or health care, blah blah blah -- point being, it's a rule the Senate made for itself).
Nobody cries for the single senator unable to bend the other 99 to his will, or any two such senators. Or any twenty such senators. And the history of the filibuster in the U.S. Senate acknowledges a gradual relaxation of the rule, with the 60-vote cloture having receded from a 67-vote cloture while Robert Byrd was the Democratic leader, which itself was relaxed from higher totals.
There are plenty of other problems: Lieberman, the apparent Catholic bishop veto some congressmen allow, the media that indulges Lieberman and McCain every week, etc., but that one of the two Congressional bodies has a routine 60-vote hurdle is among the top.
On the verge of passing a ginormous health care bill in Congress, some folks online and off -- Howard Dean, Markos Moulitsas among them -- have aligned themselves along a continuum of positions softly through firmly against the bill, as written.
Mostly this isn't for things the bill has, but for things the bill does not have. To drop a quote that's been dropped a lot lately, the good ought not be the enemy of the perfect. Who would get anything done? Sixty votes is quite a hurdle and I wish it weren't there, but as it is the bill should be good enough to pass. Simultaneously there should be efforts to dismantle this unprecedented obstructionism, and since it doesn't look like the Republican tent is getting any bigger, the only option remaining is to cripple the minority in the Senate. I'm fine with that, do or die, because a supermajority requirement made common cannot bode well for the republic.
I'm in favor of the bill, and the claims of the CBO and its proponents are enough to sway me. I'm insured right now only through my school, while I'm attending for another semester. I'd like fewer barriers to insurance, and that's what the bill affords.
A public option, expansion of Medicare, single payer, etc. would be great, and I hope that we could implement them one day. But to employ another saying, politics is the art of the possible. This appears to be what's possible. While there have been mistakes made, God knows, I'll agree with Ezra Klein and others -- Paul Krugman and Matt Yglesias, among the folks I tend to read -- in supporting the bill's passage.