bicameralism

Ok, I understand why the federal government has a house of reps and a senate (foolish though it might be -parliament anyone?) but why on earth does my state have a senator and two reps from each state district?  What, as they say, a "silly waste of resources" read: Christmas Vacation.  Wouldn't two reps from each district suffice?  Lets consider eliminating some redundancy and bloat and shut the senate down.  All in favor raise your hands.  Thank you.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled broadcast.

the stupid, please make it stop

http://www.washingtonpost.com/

politics/obama-puts-marines-on-umbrella-duty-irking-conservatives

who is Mr. Jonathan Karl?

Is it true that Mr. Karl put quote marks around something he paraphrased and not from an actual, you know, "quote"?  This is what passes for journalism these days?  Thank you, Ms. Walsh.  I too look forward to ABC explaining why "...the paraphrased depiction of notes about an email from a hostile source wound up within quotation marks attributed to Rhodes, and whether that’s the news organization’s policy." http://www.salon.com/2013/05/15/two_scandals_deflated_one_persists/

on controversies

Honestly, Washington Post?  i don't think one should be allowed to equate a politically driven, dribbly witch hunt (Benghazi!) with a controversy or scandal. A search for a controversy does not a controversy make.

Monday morning quarterback

borrowing liberally from the minds of Mr. King and Mr. Bernstein, here's some good stuff to read on a Monday morning:

1. from Mr. Drum http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/05/who-will-own-our-future-robot-overlords I for one look forward to working with our new robot overlords
2. from Mr. Bernstein http://plainblogaboutpolitics.blogspot.com/2013/05/watergate-and-conspiracy-theories.html love the watergate posts.  i was pretty young when it all went down so it's really interesting to read what transpired.
3. honest to god, do these people not understand how to document things? great article from Mr. Benen http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/05/13/18228634-from-bad-to-worse-at-the-irs?lite     it's ok to review applications for tax-exempt status.  it's not ok to explicitely put on paper the group names you are targeting.  seriously.  

time to retire

looks like the president should start looking for another Supreme Court justice.  I've got to believe Ms. Ginsburg would never drop her guard on roe if she wasn't contemplating stepping down.  And, what an odorous interview.  worst case scenario if roe overturned that some states go back to how it was.  What about the women in those states?  seems Ms. Ginsburg doesn't have much sympathy for them.

IRS targets tea party

the more i think about it, was it wrong for the IRS to investigate teaparty groups non-exempt status?  what other organizations did they investigate?  is this all about the fact these groups were "targeted"?  should the apology be for the search name and not the search?  I guess I haven't dug into this enough to know.  thoughts?

Update, if the president is going to go off on the IRS, couldn't he have done this earlier?  Was he worried about being accused of being too hasty to throw staff under the bus?  Like in the past?