Tennessee state judge throws equivalent of temper tantrum over Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision: claims he can’t grant divorces any more because it’s not clear what marriage even is.
A great read on the macho world of “tactical training instructors,” who for a nice fee purport to train, berate, and bullshit you into taking on terrorists and other active shooters on your own.
Last fall I was walking along a Long Island Sound beach with my eight-year old son looking at driftwood. He asked me if we could collect some driftwood to build something with. This was the latest in a series of weeklong summer hobbies. A bit earlier it had been stone working, which had led to several stone chisels still sitting in the garage. But as we were talking something began to take hold of me. We talked about building a model boat. And then, as we talked this over father and son, something turned in my head and I asked myself: if we could build a toy boat maybe we could build a real boat? Nothing grand, mind you. Just something – anything – that could keep a father and son afloat on the water.
The concept is not that complicated. The simplest boat can be not much more than a rectangular box, open on the top, with just a little bit of curve to it to help it move on the water. How hard could it be?
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While I’ve been away I’ve seen how the story of Kim Davis, the county clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky, has become the news of the moment, a sort of comical afterbirth to this summer’s historic Supreme Court decision in favor of marriage equality. The Christian right lauds her as a martyr to religious liberty while the pro-LGBT rights community lambastes her as hypocrite who is herself on her fourth marriage. For myself, I have a hard time taking either line very seriously because Davis’s argument, claim, hill to die on or whatever is so absurd it simply lacks the drama to mean anything more than a solitary ignoramus who will soon be crashed on the rocks of her own ridiculousness.
If you weren’t around over the holiday weekend, here’s a post I wrote about how and why I spent several months building a small wooden sailboat and what I learned about woodworking and myself doing it.
Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz each expected to be in Kentucky today to visit with/pay homage to/rally support for jailed county clerk Kim Davis.
One of the world’s most notorious eccentrics openly ponders run for the White House.
After the early dog whistle on immigration, Trump has actually toned things down. Here’s a smart explanation on why.
I was on vacation last week. But I didn’t miss that the White House finally secured enough votes to block any attempts to scuttle the Iran Deal negotiated by the US, Iran and other world powers. We now know the Iran Deal antis have definitively lost. And today we have news of the final indignity: The White House has secured 41 votes for the deal in the Senate, which means that in all likelihood the GOP and Netanyahu and Ambassador Dermer won’t even get the vote they were hoping to use to embarrass the President and delegitimize the deal even if they couldn’t block it. But even more than in whip counts, which have been bubbling up over recent weeks, you could see this coming watching the social media accounts of the key propagandists and pressure group operatives as things went south and they made their journey from frustration, to disbelief and rage, culminating finally in a species of spittle-based vitriol and vainglorious derp.
Confusing reporting coming out on just what is prompting the federal judge in Kentucky to release Kim Davis from jail and what comes next. Apparently her lawyers are saying she will block her deputies from issuing same-sex marriage licenses after she is released. Does that mean the judge may scuttle her release? Haul her right back to court as soon as she gets back to the office and starts causing trouble? Will Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz shackle themselves to her flowing tresses and insist on being jailed, too? Stay tuned!