Vote For Benefits

If we want to require people on public assistance to do something for their benefits, it shouldn't be a drug test, it should be a requirement to vote.

On Refugees: Being The Worst We Can Be

This entire sentiment about barring Syrian refugees is disgusting.

It is no secret that the circumstances that resulted in the formation of ISIS are largely due to the policies and actions of the U.S. and other Western nations. The Syrian civil war is just one awful result. For people to freak out over promising to accept a mere 10,000 people fleeing that war over the next year is perverse. We already accept over 1 million immigrants per year. Ten thousand more is nothing. If we really wanted to do the right thing, we'd be taking a lot more and apologizing to the world for having be such a major cause of what's going on.

Violent Justification

If there is a philosophy of humanity it would certainly include the sentiment that there is no justification for violence unless you are the one perpetrating it.

Death And Democracy

Story: 400,000 People Could Lose Their Health Care Because No One Turned Out To Vote Yesterday

We actually invade other countries, kill people and destroy countless lives on the claimed premise that it's worth it to impose democracy, yet we fail to take part in our own, voluntarily letting it die. This bizarre reality always makes me cringe.

The Presidental Test We The People Deserve (But Won't Get)

With the attention being paid to Republican claims the CNBC debate was too tough for them to handle, I have developed a short list of questions anyone who wants to occupy the White House should be able to easily answer during a future debate. I hope a future moderator will offer these, but I doubt it as the answers would be more telling about each person's qualifications than anything else being asked.

1. Name as many federal agencies as possible represented in the president's cabinet.
2. Summarize the 12th Amendment (or any other generally unknown amendment) to the U.S. Constitution.
3. What is contained within Article VI of the U.S. Constitution?
4. Name as many differences as you can between a president and a prime minister.
5. Name countries with nuclear weapons.
6. How many countries does the U.S. maintain a military presence?
7. There are how many federal district courts; explain how they are connected to individual Supreme Court justices.
8. Explain the importance of the Gideon v. Wainwright Supreme Court decision.
9. What was the structure of the U.S. Government under the Articles of Confederation?
10. Talk about the president's foreign policy powers as outlined in the Constitution.

The questions could be a little different and could be expanded, but a civics-based test is something the public should demand. I doubt it will happen, but We The People deserve it.

A Fear of Seven-Headed Dragons

Story: Ben Carson's Church Believes the U.S. Government Will Team Up With the Antichrist

This entire topic always makes me want to put humanity in therapy.

The beginning of Revelation, the book where all of this comes from, tells the reader that everything in there is to happen "soon" and "the time is near." I think time ran out not long after the ink dried on the papyrus. At most, the lifetimes of the people who were live at the time would be the end of "soon" and "near."

To still be talking about this as valid literally makes me look at people like they are dragons with seven heads.

Dictatorship Template New GOP Playbook

Story: 'Daily Show' denied credentials to Iowa GOP event

This, along with the cancelling of an NBC event, shows the GOP continues to move away from the very idea of a democracy of We The People. Instead, they are becoming a paranoid and closed group motivated by fear of anything or anyone challenging their claims. This is the model of a dictatorship.