Twelve hours from now, my beloved basset will be at the kennel while Mary makes a weekend visit to DC. I call the kennel jail. Mary calls it camp. What do you think Dorothy Dog calls it?

Went to a PC(USA) geek event today at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. I say geek event, because really, only church polity geeks go to forums of moderator candidates on such a beautiful spring day. But I am what I am, and I love meeting up with other polity geeks like me. You know who [...]

The Daily Kos has a great post about extended warranties. Simply put, don’t buy them.
I’ve known for a long time they were not worth it and have avoided them, but Kos’ post details just how much profit the big box places make on these things and shows them for the scam they are.
The sad thing [...]

In today’s LA Times, Dave Zirin once again brings the issues of human rights and justice home to Americans in a way we can understand very well. Sports.
IN 1995, I went to Chile’s National Stadium to watch a soccer match. Soccer was something I neither enjoyed nor understood, but the game was hardly on my [...]

Check out the United Nations page on Human Rights Day and celebrate that on this day in 1948 the UN General Assembly adopted Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The focus this year is on poverty. “Poverty is a cause and a product of human rights violations.”
The video is from the intro of the 1998 Amnesty [...]

Earlier this month, before the election, Democrats accused the Bush administration of playing politics with the Agriculture Department’s report on the status of hunger in the United States by delaying its release until after the election. The recent history is that the report is released in October about two-thirds of the time and in November [...]

This article, featuring the views of Charles Rangel, D-NY is getting a lot of action on Newsvine. The premise is pretty simple. We should reinstate the draft so that all of us, including the sons and daughters of lawmakers, would bear the risk of wars we choose to engage. The theory is that would make [...]

Amnesty International is highlighting the story of Shi Tao and asking us to take action on his behalf.
In April 2004, Shi Tao sent an email to a U.S.-based pro-democracy website. In his email, he summarized a government order directing media organizations in China to downplay the 15th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Police [...]

Elections in the US are next Tuesday, but two days before that Nicaragua is holding it’s own national election. Check out this Common Dreams article by Ben Beachy of Witness for Peace on how the US is involved. I traveled to Nicaragua in November of 2004 with WFP and roomed with Ben while visiting coffee [...]

In September Congress passed the Military Commissions Act allowing this and any future President & Sec. of Defense to declare someone, anyone, an enemy combatant and basically strip them of rights we hold dear. In the words of a New York Times news analysis: “In effect it allows the president to identify enemies, imprison them [...]