Offering asides, recommended links, blogworthy quotations, and more, In Brief is the Northwest Progressive Institute's microblog of world, national, and local politics.

Tuesday, May 15th, 2012

Quotation
I want to renegotiate what was accepted at a certain stage to give it the dimension of growth.
— France’s newly inaugurated President, Francois Hollande, at a news conference in Berlin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Monday, May 14th, 2012

Photo A park (Pascal Campion)

Saturday, May 12th, 2012

Quotation
As an eighteen-year-old, it sounded like a good fit to me, and the school really sold it. I knew a private school would cost a lot of money. But when I graduate, I’m going to owe like $900 a month. No one told me that.
Kelsey Griffith, a graduate of Ohio Northern University, who owes $120,000 in student loans after four years of college.

Friday, May 11th, 2012

Thursday, May 10th, 2012

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

Quotation
Many people see politics as I see sports. There are two teams, and my team is going to beat yours, and nothing else matters. Winning is everything. And that’s a bad mistake. Because as we noted yesterday, while sports is a simulation of war — it’s harmless to project tribalism on the symbols of basketball or baseball — it’s not harmless to do that with politics. We’re not manipulating symbols there. There are real armies and economies at stake. Nuclear weapons. The viability of the planet. The future of our species. If we see this as war, then it is war. How much do you know about war, and do you really want to usher it in so quickly, without thinking.
Dave Winer, on the difference between politics and sports (“One is frivolous and the other is anything but”).
Quotation
If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat president. It’s kind of a pipe dream, it’s a personal fantasy of mine, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women.
Radical right wing media personality Ann Coulter, lamenting the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, which happened decades ago.

Tuesday, May 8th, 2012

Quotation
[The] RIAA’s grand and sweeping attacks on dajaz1.com suggest that RIAA’s powers of demonization far exceed its ability to substantiate its malicious statements with specific and credible facts.
Dajaz1 lawyer Andrew P. Bridges, slamming the Recording Industry Association of America for unfairly maligning his client.