On ABC’s This Week, Mr. Roger Ailes said that the Obama administration is “sort of tromping around on the Constitution” because it tried to “ban” Fox News.  Since when is not wanting to be interviewed by a bunch of jerks masquerading as journalists tromping around on the Constitution?

The Constitution provides for freedom of speech which guarantees that even the lunatic fringes of our society can speak their mind.  It does not guarantee that the administration of a sitting president has to appear on the talk shows of a network pandering to those fringes.

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We have a winner for Contest #1.  Chris Lennon of Bedford, MA has correctly identified the pub in my bio pic as The Stag’s Head, a Dublin institution.  Congrats to Chris.  He will undoubtedly enjoy Full Medical, Soldiers of God, and The Midas Bomb.  Contest #1 is closed.

There are still other contests open.  Try your luck…and keep reading.

…and a sorry state it is.  Perhaps you viewed the President’s speech.  Maybe you stayed tuned for the Republican rebuttal.  It’s one of the few times I desired a TIVO so that I could fast forward past the obvious platitudes and the stand-up ovations, both of which put me to sleep.  So I watched a replay on the internet (it still had the platitudes and ovations, but it was almost as good as TIVO).

While Mr. Obama’s rhetoric was up to snuff, I still found it boring, but blessedly shorter than Mr. Clinton’s and much more intelligible than Mr. Bush’s.  My perception of the Republican rebuttal was that it was content free, while surprisingly Mr. Obama’s speech actually had some content in comparison to many SoU speeches.  As was expected, he focused on proposals that would generate jobs.

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The resistance to the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth’s acquisition of the Southern New England School of Law is yet another example of how wrong the rest of the U.S. is about Massachusetts.  This acquisition is intended to give students for the first time access to a law program operating in the public domain.  It is yet another example of the preference for the private over the public in this state.

The last election for filling Senator Edward Kennedy’s seat (and it was his seat for a long, long time) taught the rest of the U.S. that Massachusetts is not always reliably blue, i.e. not steadfastly liberal.  From blue laws to fighting windmill farms to calling their prisons “houses of corrections,” the state is full of snobbish and hypocritical liberals that are willing to give someone a step up as long as it doesn’t require a step back for them.  Surprise, surprise, but the Commonwealth is one of the most conservative states in the nation in many respects, and education is one of them.

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Note that I didn’t say “forces of darkness,” but I might as well call all the people that are sucking the middle class dry by that term.  Strongly correlated to this are three alarming news items from last week:  (1) Mr. Scot Brown’s election to the Senate; (2) Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) opening a new review of Wall Street bank controls; and (3) the Supreme Court saying it’s all right for unions and corporations to spend freely on election propaganda.

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…they didn’t support the Libertarian candidate, Joseph L. Kennedy, in the Massachusetts Senate election.  They supported with great fervor the GOP candidate, Scott Brown, who as a state legislator supported health care reform in Massachusetts (flip-flop #1) and urged the state’s voters to defeat the Tea Party’s unsuccessful 2008 ballot initiative to eliminate the state income tax (flip-flop #2).  Like many politicians, Scott Brown’s positions on issues are changeable and respond to which way the political winds are blowing.

I think that the Tea Party should get very little credit for Scott Brown’s election in spite of their claims to the contrary.  That large amorphous block of indie voters is the culprit (see my previous post).

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Some political analysts seem surprised at the results of the Massachusetts special election for the seat left vacant by Senator Ted Kennedy’s passing.  They shouldn’t be.  While Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one, indie voters outnumber both Democrats and Republicans.  And this block is notoriously fickle and emotional, voting against its own self-interest as often as not.  It sways to the left or the right in an apparently random fashion.

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While there are specific provisions of the House and Senate healthcare bills that I’m unhappy about, it’s the ultimate irony that the race to fill Senator Edward Kennedy’s seat may end in killing healthcare reform’s one chance of passage.  AG Ms. Martha Coakley has created such apathy in this race that Massachusetts, a state that is Democratic by a three-to-one margin, may elect its first Republican Senator in some thirty years.

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With the coming holiday that honors Dr. Martin Luther King and his civil rights struggle, it is interesting to reflect on human rights in general.  Different cultures interpret human rights differently.  Sweden calls more things human rights than most countries, where China has a much more limited list.  Given this broad spectrum, how do we know which rights are, as in the words of the founding fathers, inalienable?

I present Sweden as an example of a country that thinks healthcare is the right of each of its citizens.  Clearly many in our own country don’t agree with Sweden.  On the other hand, NRA members think that they have a right to bear arms.  Ignoring the fact that the amendment to the Constitution really only talks about militias (something Justice Scalia, constitutional expert, can’t get through his head), is it a “right” like healthcare?  Whether we are deprived of these rights or not, are they on an equal footing?

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Sometimes I just want to disappear into the woods (especially this time of year when my bear genes kick in for lack of sunlight) and hide from what many consider to be a wonderful give and take in our American media scene.  I’m referring to political talk shows.  My feelings are completely bipartisan with respect to them.  In fact, my opinion of them is generally independent of their content (or lack thereof).  I can’t stand any of them, in general.  Period.  Especially our modern versions where the goal is to see who yells the loudest and who insults the most people.

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