Why gun control legislation is so elusive

Regional differences + electoral math:

“There’s just very regional differences in this country when it comes to guns, whether they make you a safer person or a more dangerous person, or a safer community or more dangerous community,” [Jim Kessler, former legislative director for Chuck Schumer] told me. “In January of this year there were 44 murders in the city of Chicago. In North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, there were 40 gun homicides combined. So there’s a very, very different conception of how safe it is where we are and how dangerous it is where we are.”

Universal background checks may enjoy overwhelming support across the country, but gun owners and sympathizers in rural states with little gun crime are less animated by the idea—which means politicians can’t count on them to offset the backlash from high-intensity pro-gun voters.

These six rural states have 12 senators between them. Illinois has two.

Gays, God, But Not Guns — How Culture War Politics Has Changed And How It Hasn’t — TPM

April 5, 2013

Chicago Sun-Times: Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer

Roger Ebert loved movies.

Except for those he hated.

For a film with a daring director, a talented cast, a captivating plot or, ideally, all three, there could be no better advocate than Roger Ebert, who passionately celebrated and promoted excellence in film while deflating the awful, the derivative, or the merely mediocre with an observant eye, a sharp wit and a depth of knowledge that delighted his millions of readers and viewers.

“No good film is too long,” he once wrote, a sentiment he felt strongly enough about to have engraved on pens. “No bad movie is short enough.”

Ebert, 70, who reviewed movies for the Chicago Sun-Times for 46 years and on TV for 31 years, and who was without question the nation’s most prominent and influential film critic, died Thursday in Chicago. He had been in poor health over the past decade, battling cancers of the thyroid and salivary gland.

[Read more]

April 4, 2013

Bearded Entrepreneurs for the Advancement of a Responsible Democracy (BEARD)

The Hill reports on a new PAC with an important mission:

A Political Action Committee (PAC) launched this week to support bearded candidates, according to paperwork filed Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The Bearded Entrepreneurs for the Advancement of a Responsible Democracy (BEARD) was founded by 30-year-old Jonathan Sessions, who sits on the Columbia, Mo., Board of Education, according to his website.

“With the resurgence of beards in popular culture and among today’s younger generation, we believe the time is now to bring facial hair back into politics,” Sessions said in a statement. “We haven’t had a bearded major party candidate run for president since Charles Evans Hughes ran and lost in 1916, and there has been a recent wave of retirements amongst bearded Congressmen, including David Obey and Steve LaTourette. Our hope is that we can start to reverse this disturbing trend.”

via the Dish

See also: Lincoln Had One. So Did Uncle Sam. Why don’t politicians today grow beards? Slate

April 4, 2013

Linda Greenhouse: “Beware of conservatives bearing gifts.”

Ever since last week’s frustrating Supreme Court argument in the Defense of Marriage Act case, I’ve been wondering whether the attack on DOMA will turn out to be a constitutional Trojan horse. It may bring victory: the demise of a spiteful federal statute, enacted by an opportunistic Congress and signed into law 17 years ago by a cowardly Bill Clinton. But at what price?

Striking down DOMA on federalism grounds is a truly bad idea, and the campaign for marriage equality would be worse off for it. To explain the argument is to reveal its dangers. A ruling that left the states to their own devices when it comes to marriage would take the equal protection guarantee out of the picture.

[Read more]

April 4, 2013

The anti-drone hoodie

kottke.org

April 4, 2013

Google issues warning to websites publishing sponsored content

Credibility and trust are longstanding journalistic values, and ones which we all regard as crucial attributes of a great news site. It’s difficult to be trusted when one is being paid by the subject of an article, or selling or monetizing links within an article. Google News is not a marketing service, and we consider articles that employ these types of promotional tactics to be in violation of our quality guidelines. 

Please remember that like Google search, Google News takes action against sites that violate our quality guidelines. Engagement in deceptive or promotional tactics such as those described above may result in the removal of articles, or even the entire publication, from Google News.

If a site mixes news content with affiliate, promotional, advertorial, or marketing materials (for your company or another party), we strongly recommend that you separate non-news content on a different host or directory, block it from being crawled with robots.txt, or create a Google News Sitemap for your news articles only. Otherwise, if we learn of promotional content mixed with news content, we may exclude your entire publication from Google News.

[Read more]

April 4, 2013

Mental Floss: 14 words that are their own opposites

Here’s an ambiguous sentence for you: “Because of the agency’s oversight, the corporation’s behavior was sanctioned.” Does that mean, ‘Because the agency oversaw the company’s behavior, they imposed a penalty for some transgression’ or does it mean, ‘Because the agency was inattentive, they overlooked the misbehavior and gave it their approval by default’? We’ve stumbled into the looking-glass world of “contronyms”—words that are their own antonyms.

[Read more]

April 3, 2013

Architecture for Dogs

The Pointed T by Hara Design Institute:

From the website:

Architecture for Dogs, invented by architects and designers, is an extremely sincere collection of architecture and a new medium, which make dogs and their people happy. Dogs are people’s partners, living right beside them, but they are also animals that humans, through crossbreeding, have created in multitudes of breeds. Reexamining these close partners with fresh eyes may be a chance to reexamine both human beings themselves and the natural environment.

Architecture for Dogs

April 3, 2013

Off the rails

America’s First Freedom is a monthly magazine published by the NRA. Talking Points Memo has compiled the magazine’s last sixteen covers. And wow …

Check Out The Last 16 Covers Of The NRA’s ‘Pure News Magazine’ – TPM

April 2, 2013

The hottest thing in mobile marketing (according to Alex Blagg, thought leader, lunch eater)

Read Quote of Alex Blagg’s answer to What are some new trends in digital and mobile advertisement? on Quora

April 2, 2013

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