give it up for rand paul. it's kind of amazing that the objections to, say, homeland security deploying predator drones, are actually coming from what is thought of as the far right, and it should make you re-think the shape of the american political spectrum. rand would be saying the same about a republican admin, like his daddy did. i'd like to see the situation fall apart into several political parties; obviously the republicans are at least two even now. if they split and the dems don't, of course, then the dems will control the government for quite some time. but i personally mind that no more than the other way round, and it would certainly be worth it to compromise the two-party system. one problem is, in a world of talking points, media is completely boring when there are only two emails, two sets of consultants, two pollsters, and so on. you want the thing to disintegrate just to create a minimum standard of variety in entertainment.
i've heard many a progressive just laugh off the whole question of whether something is or is not constitutional as anachronistic. but the constitution can be extremely practically useful, because of the many good things that are in it due to, um, the intentions of the framers and, in particular, the meaning of the text. look seriously, i guess plenty of people argue that there's no fact of the matter about what any text means. i say that's just silly, though obviously questions arise. i don't know, are you going to read a jane austen novel and then say you have no idea what happened or what any of the characters are like, or that no one in principle could? well, better stop reading stuff, then,
