Fifty years ago today, on August 29, 1957, Sen. Strom Thurmond, the South’s champion of states’ rights and white supremacy, secured a place in the annals of congressional history when he finally yielded the floor after speaking for 24 hours and 18 minutes straight. His speech set the record for a Senate filibuster.

Exploiting a provision in the Senate’s parliamentary procedure that allowed an individual senator to hold the floor until two-thirds of his colleagues compelled him to relinquish it, Thurmond began speaking at 8:54 p.m. on August 28 and steadfastly refused to yield until 9:12 p.m. the next evening.

…continue reading the article All Through the Night with Strom Thurmond

A blog by a philosophy professor from UD.  It’s been aroung awhile but perhaps you haven’t seen it.

Check it out Kurt’s Nightmare

Some Volusians are angry at County Manager James Dinneen, and they said so during the public-comment portion of the Aug. 23 Volusia County Council meeting.

It was an opening volley in what environmentalists have been calling a “Dump Dinneen” movement.

The group charges Dinneen is too developer-friendly. For evidence, they point to what appears to be the forced departure of an environmentally-friendly senior county planner.

Greens fire volleys at county manager

By Margaret Carlson

Just as it’s never the heat, it’s the humidity, it’s rarely the charge itself, but the hypocrisy it reveals that does a politician in.

If Senator Larry Craig weren’t a supporter of the Defense of Marriage Act, which seeks to guard the institution against people like himself, he might survive his guilty plea to disorderly conduct in a toilet at the Minneapolis airport.

At a press conference yesterday, a day after his plea became public, Craig denied everything. With his wife at his side, he defiantly said it was all a terrible misunderstanding, his plea the result of having endured

…continue reading the article Craig’s in Closet, Republicans in the Dark

Gene Brown made my day last Saturday. I was riding my scooter South on Far Hills Avenue, when I saw a guy with a motorcycle helmet on a bright yellow Schwinn bicycle. Normally, this wouldn’t be any big thing, except for two things- he wasn’t peddling, and he was going about 45mph.

As I got a little closer, I thought he might have an electric drive on the bike, but, no, it was even cooler- he had a paraglider engine on the back driving a prop. He built it in his garage (like all great inventors) with the engine he had

…continue reading the article The spirit of the Wright Brothers lives on.

TUESDAY, Aug. 28 (HealthDay News) — A record number of Americans are without health insurance, according to new U.S. Census Bureau statistics released Tuesday.

Some of the trend can be explained by employers who are curtailing coverage or making it too costly for lower income workers to afford, the report said.

“The number of people without health insurance coverage increased from 44.8 million in 2005 to 47 million in 2006,” David S. Johnson, chief of the bureau’s Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division, said during a teleconference Tuesday.

The percentage of Americans without health insurance rose to 15.8 percent in 2006 from 15.3

…continue reading the article Record Number of Americans Lack Health Insurance

The total spent or allocated for the Iraq War is nearly half a trillion dollars. The cost to taxpayers of Ohio now totals $16.0 billion.

The attached table lists the cost of the Iraq War for each congressional district in the state of Ohio. Alongside the cost is what the people of Ohio could have if the money was spent locally instead.

Cost of Iraq War for Ohio by Congressional District

A state panel charged with developing ways to assist with and prevent further growth of Ohio’s home foreclosure problem closed in on its final recommendations.

Members of the Foreclosure Prevention Task Force engaged in detailed talks about a series of recommendations (draft final report), making several changes the group expects to finalize at its last meeting next month.

The draft largely follows recommendations the task force’s committees have developed in recent weeks. Those include: providing state resources for outreach; encouraging early contact with borrowers facing interest rate adjustments; and raising the possibility of allowing for collective mortgage term renegotiations.

The panel also debated

…continue reading the article Chris Widener Gets Legislative Information from Newspapers

Why try to fight? Corporations have the money and the power. That’s what we’re told. But people across the country are standing up to corporations. If we join forces, we can claim the power that rightly belongs to us.

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