Election Day is upon us. Many readers have voted already. Good, and that is “good” however you voted. Voting is an extraordinary right, and one that far too many people ignore.

Before I make some highly partisan comments about the election—my blog; my perspective, but comments are certainly welcomed—I want to stay with voting for a moment. Paul Hogarth wrote We Want Everybody to Vote, but Republicans Explicitly Don’t for Daily Kos on October 31. It dovetails with Crazy Tea Party Congressman Suggests Only Property Owners Should Be Allowed to Vote, written by Justin Baragona for Politics USA on May 20, 2014, featuring Congressman Ted Yoho (R-Fla.), and The Conservative Case to Limit Voting by Zachary Roth for MSNBC,

Where’s the suit? (A long, long time ago, 30 years ago, an old lady a sweet older woman named Clara Peller did advertisements for Wendy’s restaurants, asking “where’s the beef?” Ms. Peller was looking for substance—red meat, not buns—from Wendy’s competitors, and the theme was picked up by former Vice President Walter Mondale in his primary fight with Senator Gary Hart.)

I’ve written about the suit on July 11, August 2, and on August 10 in Where’s the Lawsuit? For those with short memories, the suit is the lawsuit the House Republicans made all kinds of noise about all the way back in the summer of 2014. Well, it snowed in Chicago on October 31. (My daughter, who

I was at my desk on Monday at 11:52. I eat out most days, but on this day I had a lecture on my calendar and my workout bag in the car. Lunch, lecture, or workout? After some teetering and the slightest of nudges, the lecture won!

Khalil Shikaki spoke for about an hour at UA Hillel on “The Gaza War and the Future of Palestinian-Israeli Relations.” Dr. Shikaki is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, and a Senior Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. He reported on polling his organization has done in Gaza. (Pollsters in Gaza? Who knew!) And the

I’ve been watching and listening as the 2014 campaign unfolds. It’s not pretty, to the eyes or the ears.

If you’re a liberal like me and you’ve written checks from time to time to candidates and groups like Act Blue and MoveOn, your inbox gets a deluge of emails every day. Once in a while an email brags about success; mostly, though, they share “sky is falling” imagery, with a $1,000,000 this and $7,000,000 that (being spent against one of the good ones), plenty of mentions of Boehner and the Kochs, etc. Apparently, it’s working, for the Democrats have raised lots of money off their direct “mail” efforts.

On the other side, we have Ebola-fear. Best example? Congressman Peter King