Criminalizing homelessness?

 Yesterday, April 22, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in what is likely to be a landmark case about the criminalization of poverty and homelessness. The case, City of Grants Pass, Oregon v Johnson, involves a town that passed ordinances prohibiting people from sleeping outside in public while using bedding materials such as blankets, pillows, or sleeping bags. Those found violating the ordinances could be subject to fines and jail time. 

The court’s decision will have far-reaching impacts on cities around the U.S. with growing homeless populations. If the ordinance is allowed to stand, it would basically outlaw an essential biological function for people unable to afford conventional housing—a violation of human dignity even more extreme than homelessness itself. 

Fortunately, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the town from enforcing the ordinances. The court found that punishing homeless people where no other housing options were available constituted cruel and unusual punishment, which is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. Now the case is headed to the Supreme Court.  

AFSC joined diverse faith-based organizations in filing an amicus brief opposing the punishment of homelessness on both constitutional and religious grounds. The brief states in part: “The universal bedrock beliefs of faith traditions have affirmed for centuries that punishing poor and homeless people for the effects of their poverty and homelessness fails to honor the holy nature of creation, and thereby fails society as a whole.” 

Among the groups that joined in filing this brief were the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Justice; Friends General Conference; Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice; Hindus for Human Rights; Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness and Housing; Metropolitan AME (African Methodist Episcopal); National Council of Jewish Women; National Clergy Council of the National Union of the Homeless; NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice; Riverside Church; Sisters of Mercy of the Americans; and the Unitarian Universalist Association. 

AFSC has a long history of working on issues related to housing justice—including addressing, preventing, and attempting to end homelessness, from supporting public housing for displaced workers in the Great Depression to challenging evictions and predatory mortgage practices in the Great Recession of the 2000s and beyond. 

Today, AFSC’s work for housing justice involves struggles for tenant rights; advocacy for adequate funding for housing assistance at the local, state, and federal levels; support for housing options for people dealing with issues of recovery and reentry; and the development of housing alternatives such as community land trusts and cooperatives. 

However the court rules, we know that long-term solutions to problems associated with homelessness will not be found in punishment. Instead, we must make investments in affordable housing, supportive services, mental health, recovery and reentry programs, and economic policies that end poverty and promote shared prosperity for all.  

Interested in learning more about the court case and how you can advocate for the rights of homeless people?  

Check out this recap of a webinar hosted by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the National Alliance to End Homelessness, and the National Homelessness Law Center. 

In addition, several of these organizations are hosting a national week of action this week to oppose the criminalization of homelessness and advance long-term solutions. To take part, use this toolkit, which includes tips for meeting with legislators, hosting educational events, and raising awareness through social media.  

The Supreme Cult strikes again

 As a native and lifelong resident of West Virginia, I find it particularly galling that the disastrous Extreme Court Supreme Cult Supreme Court EPA decision bears the name of a state suffering from the impacts of climate change and urgently in need of a transition to just and sustainable economy.

 West Virginians are intimately familiar with the human and natural consequences of not adequately regulating industries that harm our people, land and rivers.

 The history of this state is punctuated by industrial disasters and the slower but potentially more devastating impacts of pollution and environmental degradation. This SCOTUS decision will only make things worse. The struggle continues...

Along those lines, here's a link to a response to the decision from the national AFSC and here's the accompanying call to action.  

And when you pray...

The US Supreme Cult is on a roll lately, privileging gun rights over public safety and local democracy, and rating reproductive rights for rapists over the same for women.. The latest one is an affirmation of the kind of religion that gets rammed down people's throats whether they want it or not.

This statement on reversing Roe from the American Friends Service Committee, previously posted here, sums up my position on that issue. As for the latest ruling on prayer, I'll defer to a higher authority.

“Take care not to practice your righteousness in the sight of people, to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven...And when you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they will be seen by people. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But as for you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you." Matthew 6:1, 5,6 New American Standard Bible

Or, if you prefer the King James version: 

 "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." Matthew 6:5, 6

I can hardly wait to see what they roll out next, but I'm especially dreading the ruling on climate change in a case that embarrassingly bears the name of West Virginia, which could have devastating consequences for the environment and public health.

It looks like a long and ugly road ahead.

 

AFSC statement on US Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision

 The American Friends Service Committee issued this statement yesterday in response to the US Extreme  Supreme Court's decision:

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating federal protection of reproductive rights. This concerns us all. Reproductive rights are critical to guaranteeing many fundamental basic human rights. AFSC unequivocally supports reproductive freedom – and has for decades. In 1969, our report “Who Shall Live?” stated that no one should be forced to bear an unwanted child. 

The impact of this decision will disproportionately affect low-income, Black and Brown women and people who can become pregnant, migrants, and survivors of sexual violence and further expose them to inhumane, unsafe, and degrading treatment. 

Today’s Dobbs decision is a further erosion of rights and opens the door to criminalize access to contraception, interracial relationships, same-sex relationships, and more, as well as abortion. This is a huge setback to hard won, historic gains in promoting and preserving the rights of all people. We should all be empowered to make decisions about our own bodies, health, and sexuality. 

AFSC is committed to being an active part of movements to promote and preserve the rights of all people. With solidarity, spirit, and determination, we can work together to set our society on a better course.

AFSC is also encouraging people to sign this petition to Congress to protect reproductive rights.

 

More of a rant really

I'm still shaking my head by the hypocrisy and...other stuff...shown by some members of the US and WV senate. The majority in the former couldn't be bothered to come up with a workable COVID relief bill for the last two months or so but is racing to stack the Supreme Court deck before the election. 

Of course, WV senator Shelley Moore Capito is all on board, despite saying this four years ago when President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the court:

“Before a Supreme Court justice is confirmed to a lifetime position on the bench, West Virginians and the American people should have the ability to weigh in at the ballot box this November. My position does not change with the naming of a nominee today.”

This time around, she had this to say:

 “I support the choice to move forward with the confirmation process and will consider President Trump’s nominee on her merits as West Virginians would expect me to do. In these trying and polarized times, it is important to exercise our constitutional authority and move forward with the process.”

Then there's this: 17 Republican members of the WV Senate signed on to a letter sent to the presidents of WVU and Marshall University that among other things expressed outrage over WVU football players putting BLM stickers on their helmets. Oh yeah, and the senators referred to Black Lives Matter as a "domestic terrorist group," basically saying the assertion that Black lives indeed matter amounts to hate speech.

Apparently this tantrum kept the senators too busy to express outrage at the death of over 200,000 Americans to COVID due in part to a botched response from the Trump administration.

Can't wait to see what happens next...

 

One to watch

If you care about the future of health care, pay attention to tomorrow's election in Oklahoma, where Medicaid expansion is on the ballot. This would be the first state to consider expansion since the COVID-19 pandemic took off. If it passes, it could bring health care to around 200,000 adults.
Needless to say, there's a lot of dark money opposing the measure.

According to the Kaiser Family Fund, 37 states (including DC) have adopted the expansion. In general, I think every state that expands the program makes it a little bit harder to undo the whole thing.

Medicaid expansion has been a huge benefit to West Virginia, bringing in billions of dollars, supporting thousands of jobs and providing coverage to around 200,000 low income adults in any given year. At any given point lately around 160,000 are covered by it.

This vote takes place in the shadow of an impending US Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. Overturning it and taking away health care from millions of Americans seems to be a priority of both the Trump administration and WV Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, (which makes me want to reread the first volume of Dante's Divine Comedy to see which circle that would qualify one for).

Just thinking

There's nothing like a good outbreak of some kind to make you think about things. Here are some things I'm thinking about these days:

*WV attorney general Patrick Morrisey joined the lawsuit to repeal the Affordable Care Act. How's that going down with the coronavirus outbreak?

*The US Supreme Court has taken up the case to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It would be...interesting if they did that with all this going on.

*Whatever happens, this highlights the importance of things like paid sick days for all workers, universal health care, investing in public health (and science education), and things like plans for feeding kids when they're out of school for whatever reason. We've got a lot of unfinished business.

Courting

This week's Front Porch is about the controversy surrounding who will succeed the late justice Scalia on the US Supreme Court.

In case you missed it...

...this rather lengthy NY Times article on former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship came out while I was traveling. I agree with Ken Ward at Coal Tattoo that it's a bit odd an article of that length didn't mention the role of federal prosecutor Booth Goodwin.

Speaking of coal, WV's ruling class is celebrating the Supreme Court ruling on the EPA. I'm not sure that this will be enough to bring back a booming economy in southern WV, however.

Is it over yet?

The "it" above refers to the obsession by certain people in Congress to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. Last week's Supreme Court decision was a major setback to the dead-enders, but as this NY Times editorial suggests, it's still not over.

Then again, these are some of the same people who would like to also undo the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, New Deal era legislation like Social Security, and the outcome of the Civil War.

Say what?

I guess there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth in some circles today in light of the US Supreme Court's ruling on marriage equality. I tend to be of the opinion that those who are opposed to same sex marriage could maybe just not marry someone of the same sex. I think that would take care of it.

Meanwhile, I found the reaction of some WV politicians to the court's ruling on the Affordable Care Act to be bizarre. Case in point would be Shelley Moore Capito's expression of disappointment that the court upheld. Among other things, she said "Thousands of West Virginians have lost or had to change coverage because of this costly and complicated law."

I'm not sure whether she's referring to the 163,000 working West Virginians who gained coverage through Medicaid expansion or the 26,000 who gained coverage through the exchange or the thousands of young adults who thanks to the ACA are able to stay on their parent's insurance until age 26.

A growing movement

It's really not all bad news these days. One encouraging trend is the growth of the local food movement, which can be a way to rethink our relationship to the basics and to revitalize our communities. An AFSC program run by my co-worker in Logan WV gets young people involved in a community garden. The kids are even becoming junior master gardeners.

Two recent items in the Charleston newspapers provide some other examples. The Daily Mail recently reported about the Growing Jobs Project of KISRA (Kanawha Institute for Social Research and Action), which teaches former prisoners gardening skills while also providing fresh and healthy produce for the community.

In an article from today's Gazette, there's a story about an ordnance moving to Charleston city council which would encourage urban farming. Among the features of the ordnance are provisions allowing city residents to own up to to six laying hens as well as backyard beehives. It also encourages community gardens.

It didn't, alas, make any provision for goats.

THE RACIAL WEALTH GAP just keeps getting bigger.

LOCKING THE BARN AFTER....retired US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor now seems to think the Supreme Court's decision to take up the Bush v. Gore case may not have been the best idea to roll down the pike. As the Spousal Unit likes to say in such cases, what was her first clue?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Anybody's guess

It looks like June 28 2012 will be a historic date as the US Supreme Joke I mean Court is supposed to rule on the constitutionality of health care reform. Here's one take on that.

And here's another: a friend of mine recently pointed out that the individual mandate is less like requiring people to buy broccoli and more like making it harder for people in a restaurant to run out without paying their bill and forcing other customers to fork it over.

The deeper issue here is that of legitimacy. I wonder whether the current majority on the US Supreme Court is totally overcome with partisan frenzy or whether it might be able to take a long view and recognize that being perceived as being totally biased totally undermines the whole idea of having a Supreme Court to start with.

I guess we'll see soon enough. I'm not sure, alas, that the smart money is on the long view.

Another proof

Some people are convinced of the generosity of the universe. They believe that everything was pretty much put there for their convenience. As a pretty strict Darwinian, I have my doubts.

But there is someone on Goat Rope Farm who has no doubts whatsoever. That would be Arpad, our (sort of) Great Pyrenees and general security chief. Arpad is about as close as you can get to a canine incarnation of the Dude on The Big Lebowski.


He abides.

And he is utterly convinced that the universe set things up just for him. In his mind, further proof, if any were needed, came in the form of yet another  partial deer skeleton he he found in the woods which appeared at the proper time.

I really wish he was right about this.

FIGS. Here's the latest edition of the Rev. Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree.

JUST SOS YOU KNOW. More Americans believe in witchcraft than agree with the Supreme Joke's...I mean Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.

BUT WHAT DID IT LOOK LIKE? An amateur paleontologist in Ohio found a weird sea beast.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The good old days

Trajan.

El Cabrero is musing these days about Edward Gibbon's massive Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which I just finished after a prolonged assault. As I mentioned last time, he was inspired to undertake that gargantuan project while visiting Rome on a grand tour of Italy and looking at ancient ruins.

His sense of lost glory also included the idea that, for a little while any way, a large segment of European humanity had it pretty good. These days many people are rightly skeptical of the benefits of empire and are more attuned to the sufferings of its victims--the case of Judea comes to mind. And when we think of Roman emperors, we may often think of whack jobs like Caligula and Nero. But he believed that there was a stretch in the 2nd century AD (or CE if you prefer), when living under Rome meant a certain degree of peace and fairly good government, at least by the standards of what came before and what was to follow after the collapse.

"In the second century of the Christian era, the Empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilised portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valour. The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence: the Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government. During a happy period (A.D. 98-180) of more than fourscore years, the public administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines. It is the design of this, and of the two succeeding chapters, to describe the prosperous condition of their empire; and afterwards, from the death of Marcus Antoninus, to deduce the most important circumstances of its decline and fall; a revolution which will ever be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the earth." 

For a while, several "good" emperors not only ruled fairly well but managed to pick successors not based on kinship but on merit. Ironically, that string was broken by none other than the famous Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, whose Meditations can still be read with profit today. Instead of picking a good successor--or even better, coming up with a lasting procedure for selecting one--he chose his worthless son Commodus, as viewers of the movie Gladiator will no doubt remember. This, in his view seemed to set up a whole range of bad consequences that would play out in the years and centuries to come.

It's hard to walk away from Gibbon without thinking about how much misery could have been avoided if they had just come up with something on the order of a constitution.

TAXING ISSUES. Here's an op ed by a friend of mine on the need for tax justice.

AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT, here's one by another friend of mine on the US Supreme Court and the future of health care reform.

KOCHED UP. Here's another look at some well known right wing "philanthropists."

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Musing amidst the ruins-updated

El Cabrero recently passed a literary milestone. After several years of effort, I finally made it through an unabridged version of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. My "secret" for getting through big books like that is to read a couple of pages from each volume daily, then take a break when a volume is finished, then repeat as necessary. I've found that you can get through almost anything that way...although I have yet to try my method on Joyce's Ulysses.

I was inspired to try Gibbon after three people I know did the same (one, however, told me that if he had to do it over again he'd do a one volume condensation). As the story goes, Gibbon was inspired to take up the task while visiting Rome on the "grand tour" of Italy made by so many upper class Europeans. As he put it,

It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted fryars were singing Vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City first started to my mind.

I got a bit of a chance to muse amidst the ruins of the Roman capitol myself last summer, so I can relate.

Was it worth it? What with cognitive dissonance and all I'd have to say yes, especially since saying no would mean fessing up to wasting a bunch of time. Still, it was a grand tour of its own. Over the next few days I may share some impressions.

A FAVORITE TARGET OF MINE gets whacked by Paul Krugman here.

IN PRAISE OF HAVING A SPINE. Here's E.J. Dionne's latest while we're at it.

OLD SCHOOL BIRDS can be seen here.

PERSONAL NOTE. We're back in WV after a bit more than a week on the road. It's always nice to come back to the farm and find that approximately the same number of animals are still alive as were there when we left.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Napoleon again

Watching the WV legislature is an occasionally enjoyable spectator sport. Earlier today, which is almost yesterday at this point, I watched an interim committee meeting in which the staff person for an anti-gay "religious" group dug himself in deeper and deeper in a rambling speech.

A line from Napoleon which may well have appeared here before came to mind: "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

(Of course El Cabrero has no enemies. He may, however, have any number of euphemisms.)

THIS IS GOING TO BE INTERESTING. The Supremes vs health care reform, that is.

EXTREME INEQUALITY makes for bad economics.

THE WHOLE REGULATIONS KILLING JOBS THING isn't all it's cracked up to be.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A little more than kin, and less than kind

Russian actor Nikolai Massalitinov as Claudius with Olga Knipper as Gertrude in the Moscow Art Theatre's production of Hamlet (1911), by way of wikipedia.

For first time visitors, the theme lately is Hamlet, but you'll also find links and comments about current events. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts.

We first get to meet what's left of Hamlet's family in scene II of Act I, which opens with the usurper Claudius justifying the hasty marriage to Gertrude that followed Old Hamlet's mysterious death:

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him,
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
The imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,--
With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole,--
Taken to wife: nor have we herein barr'd
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along.

Young Hamlet isn't exactly wearing a party hat and is chided for his excessive grief. In what would turn out to be a big mistake, he is asked by Claudius and Gertrude to stay in Elsinore rather than resume his studies in Wittenberg. Note to Claudius: dude, you screwed up there big time.

Along with family hassles and political intrigue, the scene also contains Hamlet's first soliloquy in favor of death. Here's a taste:

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely...

I've had days like that...

FROM THERE TO HERE. Here's Jared Bernstein on how bad the Great Recession is (was?) and how far we've moved back from the brink.

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH, over 60 percent of Americans opposed the US Supreme Court's Americans United ruling, which opens the floodgates for corporate contributions in political campaigns.

UNLIKELY ALLIES. For the last few years, some of the usual suspects have been trying to get a bill passed in the WV legislature that would set up voluntary employee retirement accounts for workers without pensions. It would be handled by the State Treasurer's office through payroll deductions and workers could continue to build savings as they moved from job to job. Recently, the WV Center on Budget and Policy teamed up with the Heritage Foundation to build support for this measure, something that doesn't happen every day.

NICE KITTY. Here's video of a wild Sumatran tiger and her cubs.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Out Heroding Herod

Herod "the Great."

Lately the theme at Goat Rope is Shakespeare's Hamlet, but you'll also find links and comments about current events.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the Elizabethan theater was a direct descendant of the miracle and mystery plays of the Middle Ages. These were examples of art-from-below and featured amateurs performing about biblical themes. In these plays, there were often stock characters as well as stock villains, which helps explain on odd expression from Hamlet.

In Act 3, there is an amusing scene in which [an actor playing] Hamlet gives acting instructions to [an actor playing] the First Player of the theater troupe that showed up in Elsinore who are about to present the play-within-the-play.

Here's the whole passage:

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to
you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it,
as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier
spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with
your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very
torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of
passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance
that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the
soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear
a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the
groundlings, who for the most part are capable of
nothing but inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would
have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant;
it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.

(The term Termagant, by the way, in medieval European folklore was a deity that some erroneously supposed Muslims to worship. By the Renaissance, it came to mean a bully or even a "shrewish" woman.)

In the medieval miracle plays, the Herod family provided two great stock villains, Herod the Great (circa 74-4 BC) and his son Herod Antipas (circa 20 BC-39 AD). The former, according to the Gospel of Matthew, was the ruler of Judea who ordered the slaughter of the innocents after hearing of the birth of the Messiah.

The synoptic gospels portray Antipas as the one who arrested John the Baptist and was tricked into a promise that involved serving up John's head on a platter. In Luke's Gospel, Pilate sent Jesus to Antipas after his arrest. According to Luke 23:

When Herod saw Jesus, he was exceedingly pleased, for he had been wanting to see him for a long time, having heard a great deal about him; and he was hoping to see some sign given by him. So he questioned him at some length, but Jesus made no reply.

Meanwhile the chief priests and the teachers of the law stood by and vehemently accused him. And Herod, with his soldiers, treated Jesus with scorn; he mocked him by throwing a gorgeous robe round him, and then sent him back to Pilate.

Anyhow, medieval actors who got to play either Herod tended to really ham it up. That is part of the fun of playing a bad guy after all. That tradition survived well into the 20th century, as is shown by King Herod's Song in the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar.

AND LOSE THE NAME OF ACTION? Health care reform is no longer a "rush" item in the US Congress.

COURTING DISASTER. Here's Dean Baker on the recent US Supreme Court goat rope.

MORE ON THAT from E.J. Dionne here.

UNEMPLOYMENT would have been much worse--1.2 million jobs worse--without the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, according to a USA Today survey of economists, but most agree more needs to be done.

MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL. Here's a link to the Science magazine article about the effects of this kind of mining.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE WV CAPITOL, the rush is on to pledge allegiance to coal and oppose climate change legislation.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A heat-oppress'd brain

El Cabrero is in Shakespearean mode lately with a special emphasis on Hamlet. As mentioned earlier this week, self consciousness has been a major theme of the "modern" period, which as strange as it may sound is often considered to have begun around 1500. You can see it in paintings (like Las Meninas), in literature (like Don Quixote) and even in philosophy (Descartes' "I think, therefore I am").

Hamlet himself has got to be one of the most self conscious characters in all literature (with the possible exception of Spider-Man). This shows up in all kinds of ways, the most obvious being his long solitary speeches or soliloquies.

I find it interesting that Shakespeare has him before the action of the play studying at Wittenberg, birthplace of the Luther's Reformation (Protestantism is all about individuality and self-consciousness). Like Horatio, he has obviously been trained in philosophy, although he admits that there are more things in heaven and earth than it might imagine.

This shows up particularly in his capacity for self doubt. Even after seeing his father's ghost in the presence of witnesses on the battlements in the beginning of the play, he continues to question its veracity. As he says in Act 2, scene 2,

The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil, and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me.

I've always found one of his most endearing traits was the fact that he knew he might be wrong, although he might have taken it too far. Hamlet may have had a bit too much self consciousness and self doubt, while George W. Bush could have used a bit more. The Golden Mean is difficult to attain.

ONE DOLLAR/ONE VOTE. The US Supreme Court overturned a previous ruling on contributions to political campaigns.

HEALTH CARE. It looks like the US House won't pass the Senate version of reform.

BIT THE BULLET. Krugman's latest op-ed urges the House to do just that.

WHATEVER HAPPENS, here are 10 things you can do to improve your own health care.

IN THIS CORNER...Here's coverage from the Charleston Gazette about a debate between Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship and environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED