The League of Ordinary Gentlemen

My first Friday Night Jukebox. This one is purely self-indulgent so please forgive. The afternoon set from Phish’s legendary Big Cypress concert on NYE 1999. Somewhere in the crowd I am dancing with my friends, optimistic about the new millennium and wondering just how the hell I ended up on an Indian reservation in the middle [...]

I’d like to raise a subject for discussion that is not that walking, talking amalgamation of ambiguity that goes by the name of “Ron Paul” because I think there’s plenty of talk about him going on here already. So I offer for your consideration a very recent case decided by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, Wagner v. [...]

The latest little tempest in a teapot we’ve had here on the internets involves an essay on Parental Licensure written by Andrew Cohen at the usually significantly different kind of crazy Libertarian website Bleeding Heart Libertarians. If you don’t feel like reading the whole thing, the argument in a nutshell begins with the insight shared [...]

I had hoped to avoid a formal foray into the inevitable dissection of Ron Paul, his newsletters, and his ties to the far right that seems to have hit right on schedule.*  As one who at the time was pretty well plugged in to the libertarian blogosphere, the first incarnation of that process, in January [...]

(Previously, Parts 1,  2,  3 and 4) My friend Bob Wise is somewhat of a celebrity in the world of self-built boats. He’s a celebrity because he and his wife commissioned, then built, then cruised a 38 foot sharpie designed by Phil Bolger, the Loose Moose II. The Loose Moose II had a number of somewhat radical, some even say heretical [...]

Responding to the recent decision by House Republicans to agree to a two-month extension of the payroll tax cuts — after an unseemly and unnecessary game of chicken during which, achieving the seeming impossible, Congressional GOPers even managed to enrage the Wall Street Journal op-ed page with their obstinacy — Jonathan Chait snarks about a [...]

I’m not a Ron Paul fan, obviously, but this is the most brilliant foreign policy ad ever.  Absolute kudos for it:

A few months ago James Fallows sent me a photo of his son and new-born grandson, a cell-phone snap from the looks of it, and I was a bit surprised at the intimacy of the gesture. I’ve corresponded with Jim for a few years, and was pleased to guest-blog for him for a week, but I [...]

(Previously, Parts 1,  2,  3 and 4) A pause for some catch-up and dot-connecting. This discursive ramble of mine was set in motion when I read a piece by Reihan Salam and a piece by Megan McArdle.* The key passage in Reihan’s piece: [W]e are in a sense living through a cultural war in which some who’ve chosen, [...]

And so now it’s Ron Paul’s turn. Like all those I’m Not Romneys before him, Paul’s quick rise seems further proof that the GOP base wishes to try on every bridesmaid dress in the store before reluctantly agreeing to get the ugly purple one with the puffy shoulders that makes them look fat… because it’s [...]

(Parts 1,  2 and 3) In 1982 my family moved from La Jolla, California to Ashland, Oregon. This was only a year or two after a terrible crime, and the kids in school were still talking about it, like a ghost story. What happened was quite awful:

(Parts 1 and 2) I have had now, for some several months, a running correspondence with a friend on the idea of discipline as a route to abundance. After our most recent exchange, I found myself at the Wikipedia entry for Mortification of the Flesh. After Ian M.’s comment on my last post, I noticed [...]