Good Times, Bad Times
Oh paper of record, how you keep us on our proverbial toes. I’m a day late on this, but Stanley Fish’s close reading of the Supreme Court opinions is the smartest thing I’ve read about the Citizens United case. And Gail Collins… we love Gail Collins, especially in full attack mode on the federal budget shenanigans:
Before the budget document even went out, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York had issued a scathing press release attacking plans to eliminate $5 million in grants to manufacturers of worsted wool.
“I will fight to make sure this proposal never sees the light of day,” said Schumer, who claimed that dropping the grants could ruin “Rochester’s iconic Hickey Freeman,” a men’s clothing company. It turned out that Hickey Freeman gets a different wool-manufacturer break entirely. Rochester is saved!
My own favorite target for extinction is a $9 million annual appropriation for museums and educational programs that highlight the “shared culture and tradition” of Alaskan Natives, Native Hawaiians and “children and families of Massachusetts.”
In other words, whaling.
This was originally the idea of Ted Kennedy and two colleagues from Alaska and Hawaii. Perhaps they had all just finished rereading “Moby-Dick” in a Senate book club.
Arr! Man the braces! However, in the same edition as Fish’s piece, the editors let this modifier dangle (since corrected):
Not the place for accidental humor. English class is the place for accidental humor. This is the example I use:
Before you feed meat to your dog, be sure to chop it up into little pieces.
