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Let’s Sue The Federal Government About Torture!

Many of you will know that one of the Dog’s major issues is torture, it repercussions on us as a society and the absolute need to investigate and prosecute those that ordered it and those that carried it out. If you are interested in what the Dog has said on this before, you can read about it here, here and here.  

Why We Should Stay In Afghanistan

There are many on the Dog’s side of the political spectrum who want to end our war in Afghanistan right away. They are not cold or heartless; in fact they make their arguments from good, sound humanitarian principals. They will tell you that we have, through our neglect of Afghanistan gone too far down the road to ever get back. They will ask, and to the Dog’s point of view, really want to know what it is we can “win” there if we can indeed win. They will point to the fact that we are broke as a country and that these foreign wars are taking money that could be spent in places where Americans are suffering, in Detroit, in Florida, in California and Nevada.  

Campaigning 101 – Training And Gut Check

If you are a going to be a candidate you have a lot of things to do, but there are even more that are not yours to do at all. That is kind of a cryptic way of saying you have to know your role and stick to it if you are to achieve your goal of being elected so you can make the changes that the people need. How much you need to delegate depends on the size of your race, but make no mistake unless you are running for Dog Catcher of a one dog town, you are going to need other folks to help you.  

Friday Constitutional 16 – Amendments 13 and 14, Slavery And Equal Protection

It is Friday, so it must be time for a Constitutional! Welcome to the 16th of the Dog’s series on the United States Constitution. It is hard to believe that the Dog has been writing about the Constitution for 4 months now, but as the Dog’s Mom said (with infinite and constant repetition) anything worth doing is worth doing correctly (she has a bit of a proper English fetish, the Dog blames the Nuns). If you have not been reading this series or missed any of them, you can find all of the previous ones at the following links:

Sorry, the Dog is still having some technical difficulty with the links to the previous installments in this series, he does promise to resolve it one way or the other by next Friday!  

Mr. President, Have I Been Rolled On Torture?

Mr. President, have I been rolled? I write today to ask this question, because it is truly, critically important to me as a citizen and a voter. All my life I have derided single issue voters, after all can’t they see that there is a bigger picture beyond their issue? That they find it compelling and are sincere in their commitment is not in doubt, but there has to be a balancing of the issues in any democracy. Now, I find myself in the position of being a single issue voter. It is due to the fact that there is finally an issue that is so overriding, so critical to the very notion of what it means for all of us to be Americans that I find myself in this position. That issue, Mr. President, is the extra legal holding, rendition and torture of prisoners in the so-called War on Terror.  

On Data, Truth, Emotion And Persuasion.

There is a fallacy that the Dog falls into far too often, and he bets there are lots of other folks that do it too. The fallacy is that if you have the facts on your side you always win in persuading people. Yeah, when you write it out like that is seems pretty silly to anyone over the age of say 15 but it is still a problem that the Dog runs into on a regular basis. What is strange is that we, as Dems, run into this problem a lot as well.  

Tactics And Strategy, What’s The Difference?

This post may fall in the “teaching your grandmother to suck eggs” category, but today the Dog would like to talk about strategy vs. tactics. It is really important to know the difference, not just for your quest to take over the world (h/t Pinky and the Brain) but so that you don’t make yourself crazed in our expanding and information dense political discourse. One problem is that no one (with the exception of some of the Republicans that don’t understand that Twitter is really public) is going to tell you when they are acting tactically or strategically. Hopefully by the time the Dog is done pounding 1,000 words or so, you will be able to spot the difference.  

Friday Constitutional 15- Amendments 11 And 12

Happy Friday and welcome to the 15th installment (does this feel like a 30 year mortgage to anyone else?) in the Dog’s series on the United States Constitution. This series is taking a layman’s look at the Constitution and talking about what each part means. If you have never read the whole thing before, the Dog recommends that you do. After all it is the foundational document of our entire system of law, so it is worth knowing. If you have not been following this series you can find the previous installments at the following links;

Um, The Dog is having some technical difficulties this week, so there will not be any links, hopefully by next Friday we can get this resolved.  

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