buckdata – news and views for an unquiet age

After the Supreme Court’s opinion last year in Citizens United, which effectively declared that corporations can be treated as humans, I urged that votes be given to dogs, as well. Now, having observed the Republican frontrunners, I realize I may have done my dog a disfavor. It shouldn’t just be votes for dogs. Porschy should […]

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Serve and protect are noble words, suggesting nurturance and safety. They make me think of a good Mommy, or perhaps an excellent babysitter. However, as a motto, these two verbs exist in a kind of linguistic vacuum: They are profoundly ambiguous. Are they infinitives or commands? Ideals or marching orders? Further, both verbs are transitive. […]

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I peek at Twitter periodically, but haven’t done so steadily. In the last weeks, that’s changed. I’ve been glued to the Twitter feed on my iPod Touch since the democracy protests heated up in Egypt. Ironically, I first signed up for Twitter some years back because I had heard a tale about a journalist who […]

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Proposed legislation adding a public option to the health care legislation enacted earlier this year was introduced in Congress July 21, sponsored by Representative Lynn Woolsey (D-CA). HR 5808, introduced with 128 co-sponsors, would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to begin offering affordable health benefits as a public option as part of […]

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Once again, a scant majority in the country’s highest court has handed down a decision on a subject the justices know too little about. They have decided what a person is. It turns out a legal filing– not a jolt of electricity in some Central Europe lab– can shock a stitched-together bundle of documents, capital, […]

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Why can’t health care be more like firefighting? Firefighters, you did great. California’s Lockheed Fire, which extended over more than 12 square miles,  is 100% contained.  It took the labor of thousands of you to battle back the blaze before it spread to homes, injured people, and destroyed farms. Although outbuildings and some seasonal cabins […]

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There is heated debate in Washington these days over what to do about our country’s recent unsavory dabbling in torture as an information-gathering strategy. As with many other instances during the George W. Bush administration in which legitimate duties of government (such as statesmanship) became conflated with and ultimately displaced by punishment, pure and simple, […]

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Friends, family, and acquaintances are raising questions about whether President Obama  can accomplish  what we helped elect him to do. Will the wars end in Iraq and Afghanistan? Will clean energy really be funded? Will Bush-era wiretap and other privacy violations be sufficiently curtailed?  Will single payer health care get endorsed or merely sidelined? Will […]

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It’s all over the news. The Vatican has been busy naming some new sins to bring that old bunch of seven big ones up to date. This is a wonderful idea, but why should the Vatican have a monopoly on the concept? I decided to help out the Pope by proposing a few more sins […]

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