Not that it matters, but I have been consciously resisting the urge to write or comment on the Boston Marathon bombing.  Even when the subject came up in my classes, I fell back on letting students ask questions and express opinions without much input from me, and I avoided this question like the plague:   "Who do you think did it?" Part of my reticence stems from the fact that I don't have anything particularly profound or challenging to say.  I cringe as some of my liberal friends make the heroism of an undocumented worker into an implicit condemnation of our immigration laws , and I flinch even harder when conspiracy theorists (many of whom are libertarians) tie the bombing to the government's plan to disarm the population. I shake my head at the News Journal applauding the excess of surveillance in this country as being one of the redeeming features of the incident , and I disagree with Rob Tomoe's well-intentioned political cartoon suggesting this will br...

Just for the record, from yesterday: Guess this means that Mr. Christina, who ran in 2012 as the LPD candidate against Senator Patti Blevins, and who enjoys trolling this site, will also be soon submitting his resignation as the Secretary of the New Castle County chapter of the Libertarian Party of Delaware.

The first thing you notice about the new Kowalko-Jaques-Baumbach HB 74 calling for single-payer healthcare in Delaware is that they have excised an awful lot of the boiler-plate propagandizing that Dr.  Floyd McDowell put into the original.  There are no more long sermons on the evils of insurance, nor promises to cover every Delaware citizens from "the moment of conception" to death. This actually now reads pretty much like a piece of legislation, which is why opponents need to take it seriously. Having said that, I am using the text of the current HB 74 here , and the old HB 392 here to make these comparisons.  Our old work dissecting HB 392 can be accessed here . On a first read, here are the significant differences: 1.  HB 74 does away with the three County Advisory Boards that previously existed in HB 392, leaving all the power to one centralized state board. 2.  HB 74 eliminates the fraud prevention segment of the old HB 392 without replacing it...

Kowalko reintroduced it today, according to WDDE . It is now officially HB 74 , and while the WDDE story says it is a "similar" bill, we will be reading it to see if Kowalko, Earl Jaques, and new sponsor Paul Baumbach have made any changes. First guess:  not much. And here's the initial challenge for Reps. Kowalko, Jaques, and Baumbach:  publish the studies that you claimed last year proved that the new taxes in the bill would actually pay for the costs of the care. So far you have refused to do so.  How about coming clean with Delaware citizens this time around?

At least according to Doug Beatty, Don has now joined the Independent Party of Delaware. Details forthcoming.

UPDATED : The WNJ finally picks up this story online (but not in print yet) and tells you, essentially, that pretty much everything the police did was justified based on what went on BEFORE the video.  This is accompanied by a narration of the video that is--quite frankly--not what I saw when I looked at it.  [Watch and read and make your own decision.] But my favorite part is that the officers in question are not even being suspended or at least re-assigned to desk duty during an investigation of possible police brutality: The officers remain on active duty, [RB Police Chief Keith] Banks said. Now back to the original post ... You saw the video yesterday of three RB Police officers repeatedly tasing a compliant suspect and even kicking him in the head. Today we discover that Rehoboth Beach Police Chief Keith Banks wants to bury the case with an internal investigation. According to WGMD News: Rehoboth Police Chief Keith Banks tells WGMD he has seen the video [o...

While I never figure out why they are arresting him in this video, it appears pretty clear that the first time they taze him he is standing with his hands behind his head, and that the multiple tazes while he is on his knees appear at best completely unnecessary. What do you think?