By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Mar 2, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET  Biblical origins of Democrats and Republicans?
A few years ago I had the honor of sitting next to former Ohio Representative Tony Hall who spoke at Kentucky’s prayer breakfast.
He’s a faithful and inspirational leader and we discussed a range of serious topics before I inevitably had to try to inject some humor into our heavy topics.
Rep. Hall had a wonderful sense of humor and inevitably the discussion turned to the bitter partisanship that was dividing our country.
There was a mix of Republicans and Democrats at the dinner. Actually more Republicans…and we wondered aloud where this division started.
I offered my theory that the Biblical story of the Prodigal Son may help answer that question.
The Prodigal Son was wasteful and extravagant and disrespectful but returned home humbled and wiser and was embraced and forgiven by his father who welcomed the lost son back and called for a celebration at his son’s return.
The Prodigal Son also had a brother–an elder brother–who had stayed home, worked hard and was respectful and not wasteful but who watched on with jealousy and bitterness as the father embraced the formerly wayward younger son.
My theory is that Democrats descended from the Prodigal Son. And Republicans descended from his brother.
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Fri Mar 2, 2012 at 9:00 AM ET The Pittsburgh Steelers have released DE Aaron Smith, who is widely regarded as one of the best 3-4 defensive ends of all time. Smith’s release comes on the heels of the release of Hines Ward. As the Steelers work to control their cap space they have cut two potential Hall of Fame players in as many days. [ESPN]
By RP Staff, on Fri Mar 2, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET From Mediate.com:
Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele‘s tumultuous tenure as head of the national GOP was marked by his tendency toward outspokenness, a tendency that earned him little reward. Since he become a contributor for MSNBC almost a year ago, however, that tendency has become an asset. Although still a strong critic of President Obama, the Chairman isn’t afraid to tell uncomfortable truths about his own party. In part two of our exclusive interview, Chairman Steele discusses one such truth: the Republican Party’s rocky relationship with racial politics.
One of the more remarkable moments of Michael Steele’s stint as RNC chairman was his stunning admission that, by virtue of the decades-long, race-based Southern Strategy, his party had given black voters very little reason to vote for them.
Click here to read the full piece from Mediaite.com.
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Thu Mar 1, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET
Wolfram Alpha is an amazing tool. Here are 10 even more amazing uses of it. [How-to Geek]
How to escape the search engine filter bubble you are most definitely stuck in (whether you know it or not). [DuckDuckGo]
“Six ways that Congress could fix copyright, now” [ars technica]
Yep, Facebook has been caught spying on its users again. This time they have been shown to read users personal text messages. [news.com.au]
Are you a hacker? Do you want to make $1 million? Well, Google will give you $1 million, all you have to do is prove you can exploit Chrome. [ars technica]
Ever wondered the differences between 3G and 4G, this article explains them quite well. [PC Mag]
By RP Staff, on Thu Mar 1, 2012 at 2:00 PM ET The RP is criss-crossing the country for No Labels’ effort to encourage Congressman to pass “No Budget, No Pay” legislation.
OK, he is doing his country-crossing in his office, on the phone.
Here’s his latest radio interview on one of Missouri’s most influential radio talk shows, Missouri Viewpoints with Mike Ferguson.
Click here to learn more about “No Budget, No Pay.”
Click here to take action — with easy links to your Congressmen
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Mar 1, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Sometimes when I’m in a long line at Starbucks and in a hurry, I wonder to myself, “Who was the annoying customer who kept complaining that the Barista never asked if he wanted ‘room for cream?'” That person was probably the cause of the blanket Starbucks policy to ask every customer ever time that same question ad nauseum.
That question, repeated millions of times a day seems to take a lot of time for the Barista to ask, the customer to think about, the customer to answer, the Barista to process and the Barista to respond to. And I’m not sure it’s an important enough question to ask millions of times daily.
I think Starbucks should post a “Room for cream opt out” policy. In other words, it will be assumed that all Starbucks customers want room for cream unless the order otherwise (e.g. “No room for cream, please” or “I don’t need room for cream” or “I’m utilizing the ‘opt out’ policy for room with cream”—or something like that).
I suggest a pilot project for Louisville. I suspect we’ll see a lot of freed up time to Starbucks customers that is currently time being drained from our local economy. And wouldn’t it be interesting if we discovered that this inane question asked of everyone passing through Starbucks turned out to be the primary cause of our current recession?
Of course, I don’t really believe the “room for cream” question contributed to the recession.
Just aggravated it a little.
I do think that the new additional –and more complicated—Starbucks question, “Would you prefer light or dark roast?” has the potential to seriously undermine out economy.
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Thu Mar 1, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
The NFL Scouting Combine has just concluded and it is once again proof that the NFL knows how to market itself better than just about any entity in the world. [The New Yorker]
Now that the Combine is finished what are some things that we have to look forward to? [ESPN]
Take a look at 10 players who came out of the Combine having improved their draft stock. [Yahoo! Sports]
On the flip side, here are 10 players that likely saw their draft stock fall due to a poor Combine performance. [Yahoo! Sports]
You saw Dontari Poe on the list of 10 Combine winners, but it deserves to be said again how impressive his workout really was. [CBS Sports]
There are two weeks left until the NFL’s free agency period. Here is some info to get yourself prepared. [ESPN]
Rumors are that the Washington Redskins are willing to be aggressive and give up a lot in order to get RG3 in the draft. [CBS Sports]
By Artur Davis, on Thu Mar 1, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET  William Galston has been writing with authority about communitarian politics since I was an adolescent, and his recent essay in New Republic may be the best thing written yet on the strengths and defects of Barack Obama’s rhetorical embrace of “community”. It’s a window, for reasons intentional and unintentional, into why modern liberals have struggled so much with building a broad case for their most cherished reforms.
As Galston observes, communitarian language has deep roots in American civic tradition, from the pilgrim John Winthrop’s “shining city on a hill”, a biblical phrase that he reshaped into a clarion call for shared sacrifice and mutuality; to Teddy Roosevelt’s New Nationalism and its paen to heroic civic vigor; to Mario Cuomo’s 1984 Democratic keynote address, which elegantly describes “the family of America, recognizing that at the heart of the matter we are bound to one another.” The same strains have surfaced prominently in Obama’s best recent efforts—including the Osawatomie, Kansas “inequality” speech in December, and the State of the Union.
Read the rest of…
Artur Davis: Can Obama Sell the Idea of Community?
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