Barack Obama has been elected the 44th president of the United States, an election announced around 8:00 pm Pacific time. The Associated Press reported that John McCain called Obama to congratulate him on the victory. He delivered his concession speech shortly after.
"The American people have spoken and they have spoken clearly," McCain said to a booing crowd in Arizona. He commended Obama, calling the election "historic."
"Democracy" has become afetish in American political discourse. People complain constantly thatparticular Presidents/legislators/judges/dog catchers follow policies which areunfriendly to "democracy" and expect that to constitute a refutation ofthe policies proposed by those individuals.
Today, California's voters will go to the polls to make very important decisions that will affect the lives of all their neighbors. Let's take a look at the presidential race:
Never have we Americans had such a distinction in color and age and sex to choose from.
The passage of Proposition 1A will allow the state to sell bonds to fund a state-of-the-art high speed rail network that will send passengers from the top of the state to the bottom in hours. It will be quite the feat, considering this isn't Rhode Island.
The fact that opponents of abortion are so demoralized as to introduce a sad sack of a bill like Proposition 4 is surely evidence of a fundamental problem with the Pro-Life cause.
Unlike the fire-breathing Pro-Lifers of the past who had the guts to call Roe v. Wade the Constitutional fanfiction that it was, it seems that today’s advocates for Life are more interested in putting self-evidently pointless legislation in the docket and then receding to the wilderness of irrelevance when that legislation fails to pass.
In the 2006 Parliamentary Debate World Championship finals, American debater David Denton snapped that the other side "has a heart, but they simply don't have a head." Fittingly enough, Denton was arguing the invalidity of animal cruelty laws at the time, and especially in the case of Proposition 2, his accusation rings ominously true.
Conventional political sentiment tells us that we are either for a particular proposition, or against it. We are told to support Proposition 8 if we believe in traditional marriage, or against if we believe in equality. What about those who believe that a government authority empowered by a simple majority, should not have the authority to tell dissenters that they have to share the majority’s proclaimed moral virtues?
For those of you who have been following the non-partisanprimary initiative submitted by Steve Peace on September 29th,you may have heard that it was recently withdrawn from submission. However, we have received word today that the initiative is merely beingrevised, rather than revoked.
Let's propose a thought experiment. Suppose someone approaches you and offers you the following deal: "If you sign my petition, I will give you ten thousand dollars, your car will crash in five days, your children will start skipping school, your church will burn down and your wife/husband will leave you." Let's also assume that you know that the person offering you this deal is in a position to deliver all the promised consequences. Would you take the deal?