History

John Kerry recalls his 1971 appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

This is interesting -- "Why Martin Luther King was like Picasso":

When people talk about “modern art,” they don’t mean (despite what the words suggest) the art being made today; that’s contemporary art. The phrase “modern art” refers to a particular set of styles that flourished during a specific time period, roughly from the early 1900s to the 1960s. It’s a historical term, like impressionism.

When Joe Weiler was editor here, he and I used to have a recurring debate about whether a constitutional convention should be called. The strongest arugment for one is that the federal government is clearly out of control and needs to be reined in. The strongest one against is the possibility of a runaway convention that could stick us with all sorts of mischief.

Want to wade into a thorough examination of positive rights vs. negative rights? Of course you do. Here's the case for positive rights, from a salon.com piece by Michael Lind:

Administration Consigliere Attorney General Eric Holder, Dream Stealer:

No revolution for old men:

This isn't exactly a shocking headline; it could have been written any time in the last 50 years and, come to think of it, has been, many times: The war on drugs has been a failure:

Cellphoneless and proud of it:

Gadzooks, it's Walker, Indiana Ranger!

A belated happy Indpendence Day with some "final" words of wisdom from Calvin Coolidge, smarter than 99 percent of the politicians around today: