One of the many ideas that is wholly laughable here is that somehow the pittance that families getting TANF can be used to buy drugs in a meaningful amount. I represented hardcore heroin addicts who would often use a full bundle of heroin (20-25 packets) a day. That’s like a $250 a day heroin problem. The idea that…

Most of these same commentators who now want to get a detailed report on exactly what food the poors are eating are the exact same people who were caps-lock-with-italics outraged that the First Lady was promoting (not mandating, just promoting) healthy lunches at school and exercise for kids. To them, Michelle Obama…

Oh, I am happy to forgive her one drunken tantrum. I am much more responding to the apparently very calculated way she is presented in the photograph and tweet, and more generally in her publicity surrounding her buddy pic with Sofia Vergara. The public perception of Reese Witherspoon has been generally negative for a…

While I’m generally a skeptic about how much the DOD spends, these kinds of training exercises seem like comparatively good expenditures.

“I am a pleasant human person. I have a likeable persona and I do nice things. I do not scream at police officers. I single out humble municipal workers as a totally natural and not at all calculated thing. I am definitely not counting the minutes till I can go home and bathe your plebian filth off of my body. I am so…

Some people really take the whole “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” to an unpleasant extreme.

While there are some minor differences tolerated in drawing districts, most congressional districts are roughly the same size (around 700,000 people). The big difference is usually the political composition of your local district and whether it tends to be a safe district for one party or another.

Being within a foot of the batter would almost certainly constitute interference with the batter, since the batter could not take a full swing (“Defensive interference is an act by a fielder that hinders or prevents a batter from hitting a pitch.”). If you backed up the fielders to a distance where the batter could…

Joan is 10?

Everywhere you’ve written east, you mean west. While you can get from Nepal to the Persian Gulf by going east, (or from the Persian Gulf to Texas), it’s a lot closer going west. And the LA river is certainly 1500 miles west of Texas, not 1500 miles east.

Being skeptical about mental health research is one thing. Pronouncing your own obviously uninformed opinion to be better than theirs on a subject on which you are completely unfamiliar is another. Try learning more.

You need to actually read up on what prolonged solitary confinement does to people. You clearly don’t understand anything about solitary. Protracted solitary confinement is essentially a form of torture. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/fro…

Just because you hold elections doesn’t make you a democracy. Israel holds elections, but I am not sure if we can properly call it a democracy while millions of people under its control have no real democratic voice over their treatment. The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza have continued for almost 50 years with…

There are verses to Margaritaville?

Strange to me that both the Belgian and Dutch jets have English writing on them (although maybe that was a safe compromise for the Belgians).

This is part of a very serious national problem. Police officers are being taught that tasers are basically risk-free tools to get compliance out of people they’ve arrested. As such, they are used very casually and with little provocation. An Amnesty International study revealed that one-third of taser usages were for…

I don’t think Portman is way off in terms of resemblance.

There are people who legit believe that re-marrying after divorce is a continuing (and thus unforgivable) sin because your spouse is still out there, whereas murdering your spouse is a one- time event and is thus forgivable. Essentially, you can’t repent of a sin that you’re continuing to engage in, but you can repent…

If he’s right, I REALLY misunderstood Contracts in law school!

So, you don’t remember the scene in Mean Girls where she takes her sweater off and her shirt comes with it? You don’t remember the scene on 30 Rock where she poses for fake-pregnancy pictures to cover for Avery? You somehow have a deep sense of Tina Fey, but are unfamiliar with maybe a dozen times when she has gotten…