Having had the filibuster wielded against them so effectively in the 103rd Congress, Democrats, now in the minority, made full use of their prerogatives under Senate rules; major legislation frequently encountered extended debate-related problems. The minority Democrats because increasingly adept at using extended debate and the Senate’s loose amending rules in combination to get their issues onto the Senate agenda. By threatening or actually offering their bills as often non-germane amendments to whatever legislation the majority leader brought to the floor and using extended debate to block a quick end to debate, Democrats forced Republicans to consider a number of issues they would rather have avoided–most prominently the minimum wage, tobacco taxes, campaign finance reform, and managed care (Sinclair, Unorthodox Lawmaking, 107)

Sinclair, Barbara.  Unorthodox Lawmaking: New Legislative Processes in the U.S. Congress (CQ Press: Washington, D.C.), 2000. 

Manual Labor

I am not a manual labourer and please God I never shall be one, but there are some kinds of manual work that I could do if I had to.  At a pitch I could be a tolerable road-sweeper or an inefficient gardener or even a tenth rate farm hand.  But by no conceivable amount of effort or training could I become a coal-minter; the work would kill me in a few weeks (Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, 32-33).

Four Texts on Socrates

If Socrates was right in holding that the desire for gain, for distinction, and for knowledge are inherent in human nature, then a Marxist regime will necessarily be at constant war with the most powerful as well as the most noble propensities of man.

-Four Texts on Socrates, ed. Thomas G. West and Grace Starry West (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), pg. 11.

Constitutionalism and the Separation of Powers

Western institutional theorists have concerned themselves with the problem of ensuring that the exercise of government power, which is essential to the realization of the values of their societies, should be controlled in order that it should not itself be destructive of the values it was intended to promote.  The great theme of the advocates of constitutionalism, in contrast either to theorists of utopianism, or of absolutism, of the right or of the left, has been the frank acknowledgement of the role of government in society, linked with the determination to bring that government under control and to place limits on the exercise of its power

Ville, M. J. C., Constitutionalism and the Separation of Powers (Oxford, Clarendon Press: 1967), pg. 1.

Right to Obtain Happiness

CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION

ARTICLE 1 DECLARATION OF RIGHTS

SECTION 1. All people are by nature free and independent and have

inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and

liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing

and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy.

Wonders abound.

"Believe It or Not"

I am not—honestly, I am not—simply being dismissive here. The utter inconsequentiality of contemporary atheism is a social and spiritual catastrophe. Something splendid and irreplaceable has taken leave of our culture—some great moral and intellectual capacity that once inspired the more heroic expressions of belief and unbelief alike. Skepticism and atheism are, at least in their highest manifestations, noble, precious, and even necessary traditions, and even the most fervent of believers should acknowledge that both are often inspired by a profound moral alarm at evil and suffering, at the corruption of religious institutions, at psychological terrorism, at injustices either prompted or abetted by religious doctrines, at arid dogmatisms and inane fideisms, and at worldly power wielded in the name of otherworldly goods. In the best kinds
of unbelief, there is something of the moral grandeur of the prophets—a deep and admirable abhorrence of those vicious idolatries that enslave minds and justify our worst cruelties.

But a true skeptic is also someone who understands that an attitude of critical suspicion is quite different from the glib abandonment of one vision of absolute truth for another—say, fundamentalist Christianity for fundamentalist materialism or something vaguely and inaccurately called “humanism...”

A truly profound atheist is someone who has taken the trouble to understand, in its most sophisticated forms, the belief he or she rejects, and to understand the consequences of that rejection. Among the New Atheists, there is no one of whom this can be said, and the movement as a whole has yet to produce a single book or essay that is anything more than an insipidly doctrinaire and appallingly ignorant diatribe.

-"Believe It or Not" in First Things by David B. Hart.

Peter Hitchens Lays Out The Case Against the Roman Catholic Church:

Hitches writes,

Let's go through the case as it stands in general.

Did Roman Catholic priests engage in abuse of children? Yes.

Were these crimes sometimes covered up? Yes.

Does the Church admit this? Yes.

Does anything in Roman Catholic theology or belief mandate or excuse such behaviour? No.

Is the RC Church the only institution in which such abuse has taken place? No.

Have the transgressors been punished and have steps been taken to prevent them having renewed opportunities to transgress? Yes, though not as swiftly as it should have been, some are now beyond the reach of the law, or dead.

Has the Church admitted that it was at fault? Yes, unequivocally and repeatedly.

Have steps been taken to prevent a repetition? Yes.

Has the current Pope in any way condoned the crimes? No.

Has he repeatedly and explicitly condemned them and those who failed to act against them? Yes.

So what I want to know, in detail, is what those who now call for the prosecution of the Pope specifically allege against him?

From the Mail on Sunday, April 19, 2010 (emphasis mine).

Grading Exams

I'm grading my students' mid-term exams. I remember writing my first student paper. When the professor handed it back it looked like he had bled on it, as it was so covered in red pen marks. I think I received a "C" or a "B-". All but one of my grades that freshman year was a "B-". I think that's what gentlemen got for just showing up.

As mine isn't an English class, I'm trying to be generous and to understand that this may be their first sustained piece of writing.

The adoption of the First Amendment, which accords religion (and no other manner of belief) special constitutional protection. (Munoz, Vincent Phillip. "THOU SHALT NOT POST THE TEN COMMANDMENTS? MCCREARY COUNTY, VAN ORDEN, AND THE FUTURE OF RELIGIOUS DISPLAY CASES" in Texas Review of Law and Politics)

George Washington, First Inaugural Address

Such being the impressions under which I have, in obedience to the public summons, repaired to the present station, it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow-citizens at large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency; and in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted can not be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seem to presage. These reflections, arising out of the present crisis, have forced themselves too strongly on my mind to be suppressed. You will join with me, I trust, in thinking that there are none under the influence of which the proceedings of a new and free government can more auspiciously commence (George Washington, First Inaugural Address).