Armed border militia mistakenly confronts group of bat conservationists on the border.
I should mention I’ve been waiting years for the Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show team to take a crack at the militia movement. But that’s just how I am.
I’m still waiting to hear whether the law is on his side. But hard not to notice that the nation’s top voter suppression advocate, Kris Kobach, is the guy who just got to decide that the dropped out Democrat’s name must stay on the ballot in Kansas.
Democrats are going to fight to keep their former Kansas senate candidate, Chad Taylor, off the ballot (an odd turn of events to put it mildly). This comes after Kris Kobach, Secretary of State, announced that Taylor must stay on ballot. Kobach is intensely political and is likely the most successful and outspoken voter suppression advocate in the country today. Rick Hasen says the law is not dispositive. But life’s hard. Kobach’s the Secretary State. He gets to make the decision, or at least he gets the first pass at it. A Court will likely have the final say over whether he gets his way.
But here’s the thing: I don’t think it matters that much.
The Economist notes that we can’t take the testimonials of slaves who say slavery sucked at face value. Because, did they really speak for all slaves?
After publishing a book review that disdained treating African American slaves as “victims,” The Economist “apologises” and concedes that “slavery was an evil system.”
Postscript: I’m thinking there’s one person especially who’s really happy this morning that The Economist still doesn’t use bylines. –jm
Is narcissism the independent candidate’s major comparative advantage?
From TPM Reader EF …
Josh, I think you’re right that money was the main arbiter in deciding who would drop out of the Kansas Senate race, but I suspect that another factor was nearly as important, maybe even more important. Independent candidates tend to be more narcissistic than major party candidates.
Though McDonnell wiped his tears and said his “trust remains in the Lord” as he left the courthouse after his guilty verdict on 11 counts of corruption, his trust will likely also remain in the legal appeals process and his lawyer said as much. Catherine Thompson looks at the grounds on which the McDonnells are likely to appeal. Mainly, they seem to center on what constitutes an “official act” and how the jurors were asked to interpret that question.
I’ve defended what is often al Jazeera’s great coverage of a number of international stories – at least in English. But stuff like this and some other recent decisions makes me wonder. The network quietly pulled a story suggesting that the beheadings of US reporters Foley and Sotloff had actually been faked, perhaps by Foley himself to create a pretext for Western intervention. Even retraction emphasized that the step was taken out of “respect to families of the victims.”
We’re on the cusp of a vote that may signal the end of the United Kingdom. And somehow it’s treated as just another news story. And that just strikes me as strange.
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