Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Gridlock: A Noble Goal

Will a divided government result in the dreaded (by politicians and those who support them) gridlock? Those of use who champion limited government can hope so. A government with their hands tied is a government that can't fuck anything up. At the very least, this might get President Bush to take out his veto pen, and maybe we'll see some investigations into the corruption in Congress.

In other election news, having a look at various ballot measures is always pretty interesting, and tells you a lot more about people's opinions than the lesser-of-two-evils horse race in the elections. The common themes, nost of them discouraging: Americans are still not willing to legalize marijuana (Nevada, Colorado), let people marry who they want to (Virginia, Idaho, Colorado, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Wisconsin), or let workers and employers be free to form a contract that they see fit (Ohio, Nevada, Missouri, Montana). Some apparent bright spots: Missouri passes a bill to allow embyonic stem-cell research (this was the one supported by the add starring Michael J. Fox that got so much attention), Arizona may not ban same-sex marraige (51% against with votes still being counted), and South Dakota rejected a total ban on abortions.

And BREAKING NEWS: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is stepping down! Interesting timing... The liberal bloggers will be having a field day with this one. "It's intended to distract attention from the shift in the balance of power!", "It's to avoid investigations into his mismanagement of the war!", or (probably) "it's because he snorted coke off a 16-year old male Congressional page's stomach!".

UPDATE: I missed an important and encouraging trend in the discussion of ballot measures - property-rights protections via limits on eminent domain passed in 9 states, only failing in 3.

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