Musings of a Patriot

Tag: NPR

  • The Irony of Supressing Votes

    I find it rather funny that we have such a fuss being raised about laws requiring voters to show ID at the polls that a case has to be heard by the Supreme Court on the issue. What strikes me is that: if we had more voters voting, whatever fraud the voter ID laws are…

  • Glancing at Immigration

    I picked up my car from the shop and happened to catch part of RadioWest. Doug was talking to a writer about immigration and the contradictions in our human nature, wanting to help people in need and trying to secure our borders. I didn’t catch the whole show so I don’t know if that perspective…

  • Non-Binding Resolutions

    While listening to NPR today I heard a senator talking about many agreements we have made with the Iraqi government where the Iraqi’s failed to do what they promised. He attributed that failure to the fact that "the agreements [had] no teeth." That got me thinking. We don’t have to look outside our country to…

  • Regional Transportation Plans

    Yesterday on Radio West the show was discussing the 2030 Transportation Plan. The 2030 transportation plan is focused on the Salt Lake Valley, but it includes the Mountain View Corridor and the Mountainland Association of Governments has a plan with a similar scope. I listened to the program with interest as many callers expressed concerns…

  • The Best of Times and the Worst of Times

    I enjoyed reading Scott’s It’s Worse, but It’s Also Better and then I was surprised to hear on NPR a piece on how our society is Going Ghetto. It’s easy to get caught up in the idea that our culture is going downhill fast which is why it was so refreshing to read Scott’s take…

  • The Beltway

    I heard a story on Talk of the Nation today about the firing of federal prosecutors (Blog of the Nation post). The thing that caught my attention was that they were going to discuss how different the coverage on this story was "outside the beltway." If anyone is unfamiliar with the term – "inside the…

  • Choose Your Words Carefully

    As I was driving around today between the hospital and various other places I noticed a number of news articles about the verdict in the Saddam Hussein trial. Their titles got me thinking about the power of words. One paper titled their article “Dictator gets Death.” Another talked about the “deposed Iraqi leader.” A story…

  • Moving On

    I’m getting tired of dwelling on being unsatisfied with my life. I’m going to make an effort to move on to other topics. Either they will be happier topics related to my life or else I will write about things that are outside of my life, like the fact that I found an interview discussing…

  • What is “America”?

    I have been listening to the debate about how we define torture and what we allow in the treatment of prisoners in the war on terror. I have heard at least one listener call in to an NPR program on the subject a few days ago and say that how we treat prisoners is a…

  • Semantics

    I have been wanting to write about this for a while but never got around to it – while listening to The World on NPR, which is produced in part by the BBC, I have noticed British reporters refer to the democrats as “the opposition party.” Many democratic governments around the world are structured differently…