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Please excuse the Kubrick reference…but sometimes it feels like we are approaching a “Strangelovian” catastrophe.

Welcome to the age of incumbent superpowers, where the rules that apply to the everyday American citizen don’t apply to the people who work for us in the government. Perhaps it is a symptom of the “Old Boy” network in Washington, which continually seeks to protect its own ranks and insulate those in power from the full scope of the law. That is partially true. What is closer to the truth is that in Washington our politicians believe they are above the law. Just because they help draft laws does not mean they are above them (which might be obvious to us common folk).

The most recent news on the corruption in Washington is Representative Charlie Rangel, who was charged with 13 counts of corruption by the House Ethics committee. According to the New York Times, Rangel’s charges included”

“…his improper use of his office to solicit donations for a City University of New York center to be named in his honor; his failure to report rental income from his villa in the Dominican Republic and to pay taxes on it; his omission of some $600,000 in assets on his House financial disclosure forms; and his acceptance from a Manhattan developer of four rent-stabilized apartments, one of which he used as a campaign office.”

One might think that this is enough to put one of our politicians in jail (because it surely is enough to bag someone like me for at least tax evasion). However, the Ethics committee recommended only a “reprimand” for Rangel and not an ousting. The NY Times defends this by saying that other recent ethics hearings, Barney Frank and Newt Gingrich, were also resolved with reprimands. What it doesn’t tell you is that Frank’s crime was the use of Federal stationary and 83 of Gingrich’s 84 charges were dropped and the hearing was inconclusive (they left the determination of criminal activity up to the IRS). So, if those two cases ended in reprimands how can Rangel’s possibly be treated in the same way?

Representative Charlie Rangel should be ousted for disgracing his office and the Federal Government of the United States.

The United States has a storied history in land wars: it has met success in World Wars One and Two on land in Europe, fought to stalemate against the Chinese in Korea, and was defeated by irregular forces (and domestic unrest) in Vietnam. This history of U.S. involvement in land wars could confuse exactly what [...]

This was reported in the NY Times today: “A majority of the people polled, 57 percent, said the federal government should determine the laws addressing illegal immigration. But 51 percent said the Arizona law was “about right” in its approach to the problem. Thirty-six percent said it went too far and 9 percent said it [...]

I was reading the most recent issue of The Economist yesterday and came across an article I had to blog about. The article is called “African Moonshine: Kill me quick” and discusses the state of alcoholism and alcohol consumption in Kenya, but also Africa in general. This is what they said: “The equivalent of $1 [...]

Louisiana seems to be headed for disaster…again. An underwater oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is spilling out uncontrollably and a massive cloud of oil is moving for the Louisiana coastline. If you didn’t have satellite photos showing a black spot in the ocean you would think everyone was talking about a new hurricane: [...]

When the going gets tough in international politics, it becomes clear exactly who the great powers are and which relationships are the most important to a country. In the wake of a North Korea human torpedo attack on the South Korean Corvette Cheonan, the South Korean government met with China. That is, China, as in [...]