William Burton offers one more reason to chose Senator Edwards over Senator Kerry.
Yes, it’s shallow, but that’s America today.

“Bush Is Said to Seek More Money for Arts“:

President Bush will seek a big increase in the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts, the largest single source of support for the arts in the United States, administration officials said on Wednesday.
The proposal is part of a turnaround for the agency, which was once fighting for its life, attacked by some Republicans as a threat to the nation’s moral standards.
Laura Bush plans to announce the request on Thursday, in remarks intended to show the administration’s commitment to the arts, aides said.
Administration officials, including White House budget experts, said that Mr. Bush would propose an increase of $15 million to $20 million for the coming fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. That would be the largest rise in two decades and far more than the most recent increases, about $500,000 for 2003 and $5 million for this year.

A couple more years of similar increases and Bush will have undone the damage of the 1995 Republican congress.

Eugene Volokh points us to an enlightening article by former Reagan administration Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts, which argues that today’s taxpayer has less freedom than 19th century slaves.
Those lucky slaves. Imagine their horror if they found themselves condemned to a lifetime of dividend and captial gains taxation. I’m sure bondage was the good life in comparison to today’s suffering.

You can’t keep secrets forever.
One of the intriguing political stories of the 2000 election was the relationship between President Clinton and Vice President Gore. From outward appearances, the two didn’t seem to like each other very much. Or at least Gore didn’t seem to like Clinton. Gore rarely solicited his superior to speak on his behalf on the campaign trail, a decision which may have been fatal to the vice president’s chances.
Why the fall out between Clinton and Gore? Did Gore believe Clinton was a liability on the stump? Was he still mad over that little Lewinsky affair? Was there a policy dispute over NAFTA? The environment? Kosovo?
Four years later, the truth finally comes out. Gore didn’t like Clinton because he felt under-appreciated for his service. You see, during his entire eight-year stint in office, Clinton only sent two e-mails. And for a guy who put all that work into inventing the Internet, that one had to hurt.

The World Around You reminded me that today is the 18th anniversary of the Challenger explosion.
The Challenger disaster is one of my more vivid memories of that period. I was home at the time–I believe it was a snow day–and I had the radio on. The DJ broke in with a news announcement that there had been an explosion on the shuttle. Initially, I thought it was some minor affair in the payload bay. But when I flipped on the TV, I discovered that tragically that was not the case.