Live from the Nuke Free Zone

The 2006 State of the Union address fulfilled most of this author’s expectations — the President strode boldly to the middle, seeking the political center for his fellow Republicans in Congress with few new ideas and a lot of defending his ground. Several ideas were repeats of old ground.
(Quick pre-game note: bleh, they assigned […]

I didn’t get home today until the speech was largely over, so I have
to content myself with googling and waiting for a transcript.
It turns out there was an interesting and newsworthy occurrence before the speech, and another major world leader’s annual speech took place today with potential repercussions on world affairs. Read below the cut […]

The Zone will publish analysis of the President’s State of the Union speech following its airing tonight. We always try to involve our audience in the give and take of necessary public discourse, so in preparation for the annual event we’d like to set you up with a State of the Union Drinking Game!
(The […]

The State of Washington recently passed a bill. Its opponents, infuriated, are vowing to push a referendum this fall to see it overturned. What does the bill do?
State law bans discrimination based on race, sex, religion, marital status, disability and other categories. The bill, which takes effect 90 days after adjournment, adds sexual […]

Floating around the Internet of late is the Buffalo Beast’s list of the 50 most loathsome people in the US last year. It’s fairly mean spirited as can be guessed from the title, but it’s pretty funny (You are #4 on the list, by the way). Other articles on the site that are worth a […]

Seen on BoingBoing: For those interested in old short educational movies, back in 1946 the Encyclopedia Britannica produced a guide to identifying signs of despotism in your community with an understandable emphasis on a well-known then-recent outbreak of fascism in Europe. It’s worth a view and some thought. The same site hosting this film has […]

A couple of weeks ago, a Republican congressman from Louisiana, apparently known locally for his free-market philosophies, acknowledged reality and proposed a plan for New Orleans redevelopment: a federal agency, similar to the savings & loan bailout, would buy up damaged parcels from homeowners at decent prices, oversee cleanup, and either resell them or, if […]

(Just a warning: Canadian politics increasingly activates my inner Cynical Bastard, in both good and bad ways. This is an exemplary case of that.)
So. 1:30am Atlantic time:
125 Conservative seats
102 Liberal seats
51 BQ seats
29 NDP seats
1 independent

I should be more upset about this than I am, especially considering Martin’s resignation as Liberal party leader just now. […]

Forget my flying car, I’ll be happy if there are rocket races on the tube. For now.
Congratulations to New Mexico’s forward-looking Governor Bill Richardson, who announced a while back that Las Cruces, New Mexico was going to be first out of the gate in the private spaceport industry in the U.S. Its dry […]

(Before I get in to my article today, I want to remind our readers to keep an eye out for the Zone’s traditional coverage of the State of the Union address January 31st. The Zone tends to post a bit later than other blogs, doing some background research and presenting some analysis of the […]