Politics and other nightmares

Here's an anomaly for you -- a real debate in a sound-bite world:

With the attack ads of Mayor Tom Henry and challenger Paula Hughes getting nastier and more cartoonish, here's something that might pass for an actual issue:

Wrapping up our candidate videos, today's feature is the at-large City Council race. It's so long that decided to break it up into two parts, and one of them still tops 15 minutes. Not much to do about that, though -- it's hard to get six candidates answering five questions in a much shorter time. A few notes:

• The video of Gordon Anthony is too dark (but he's still visible). That's an equipment malfunction.
• The text has candidate Tom Freistroffer's last name misspelled. That's a Leo malfunction.

Well, by golly, if George Will says it's a mystery why conservatives are mad at Richard Lugar, then it must be so:

It's been 235 years, and the British still aren't over the Declaration of Independence. A bunch of American and British lawyers had a debate in Philadelphia recently over whether the declaration was "legal." The British viewpoint:

The Declaration of Independence was not only illegal, but actually treasonable. There is no legal principle then or now to allow a group of citizens to establish their own laws because they want to. What if Texas decided today it wanted to secede from the Union?

Here is a chart I copied from a Tim Cavanaugh post at Reason magazine's hit & run.

I was just going to ignore Joe Biden's silly "pass this bill or you're in favor of rape" argument:

Mitt Romney succumbs to the Guilty Republican Syndrome:

Today's video focuses on the City Council's 4th District race between incumbent Republican Mitch Harper and Democratic challenger Mike Avila. This may be my favorite set of answers. Both candidates answer succinctly -- about six minutes total -- but not too briefly.

Well, duh:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid finally let the fat-cat out of the bag yesterday, confirming what's been apparent for some time:

Democrats, led by President Obama, aren't interested in more jobs for all Americans. They just want more government jobs.