Month: March 2014

Texas Tea Party Politician Steve Stockman Threatens to Sue Anyone Who Publishes the Mugshot from His 1977 Drug Arrest

Jon Ponder

Mugshot from tea party pol Steve Stockman’s 1977 drug arrest
Mugshots are made at taxpayer expense and are therefore public records — a fact that anyone who serves in a high position should know.

Apparently, however, tea bagger Rep. Steve Stockman, who was soundly defeated on Tuesday in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat in Texas, does not know this. He has has threatened to sue anyone who publishes the mugshot from his 1977 drug arrest.

In 1977, a young man who would later serve in Congress was charged with possession of Valium in Madison Heights, Mich.

[…]

Too Much Talk of a ‘Frontrunner’ When There’s Not Even a Race Yet

Buck Banks

Look, y’all. I ain’t even trying to put the kibosh on discussing the relative strengths and weaknesses of potential 2016 candidates. I’m even OK with making comparisons. But we have to stop abusing this poor word, ‘frontrunner,’ before the English-language’s version of Sarah MacLachlan starts making sad teevee commercials about it. There is no ‘frontrunner’ at this point. There isn’t even a race.

— Jason Linkins, in Huffington Post.

Florida Legislative Session Opens Today (Lord Help Us)

Buck Banks

60

Number of days the Florida state legislature is in session, beginning today. “Republicans are looking for a smooth session,” said Rep. Mia Jones, D-Jacksonville, as reported by Tampa Bay Times. “I believe they want to be able to walk out and say that we had kumbaya going downstream through this entire process.”

2013 Budget Deficit Drops Dramatically

Buck Banks

$680 billion

The fiscal year’s federal budget deficit, which fell more sharply than in any year since the end of World War II. The Treasury Department reported Thursday that the “deficit for 2013 dropped to $680 billion, from about $1.1 trillion the previous year,” the New York Times reports. “In nominal terms, that is the smallest deficit since 2008, and signals the end of a five-year stretch beginning with the onset of the recession when the country’s fiscal gap came in at more than $1 trillion each year. As a share of the nation’s economy, the budget deficit fell to about 4.1 percent, from a high of more than 10 percent during the depths of the Great Recession.”

We Have Seen the Sixth Extinction, and It Is Us!

Buck Banks

Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us.

— Elizabeth Kolbert, from her book, The Sixth Extinction.