The week's best columns, reports, tips, referrals and tirades from columnist Eric Zorn.
The new Tweet of the Week poll is up! My favorite is "I'm sorry but if you call anyone 'mother,' including your own literal mother, your house should be searched for bodies and you should be sent to jail as a precaution," by @isabelzawtu.
Last week's winner was @Tmoney68: "Give a man a fish, and chances are you won't be asked to be in charge of buying a gift 'from all of us' anymore."
Also for your enjoyment and, I hope, amusement, I have posted my choices for the 10 best tweets of April.
All three of my most recent columns were not about state and local politics!
It's only logical — 16-year-olds should have the right to vote
Many 16-year-olds pay taxes. They work. They drive. In most states they can marry. And, most urgently, all of them have a huge stake in the future — at least as large as the senior citizens who so enthusiastically cast ballots.
At one time in our history only white male landowners could vote. The logic of expanding the vote to black people, women and, via the 26th Amendment in 1971, those between 18 and 21 applies with similar force to lowering the age to 16.
Not only would such a change be logical and just, it would also stand to boost long-term civic engagement by creating a new cohort of habitual voters.
 My new auto insurance app has made me a better but more frustrated driver My car insurance company is one of many that now offer discounts to motorists willing and able to demonstrate their safe-driving habits by letting the company track their trips.
The technology has been migrating in recent years to smartphones now that more than two-thirds of us carry them. The discounts insurers are offering will make the privacy trade-offs hard to reject and, inevitably, low-scoring drivers will be penalized with higher rates. That's why these apps must improve.
 Why fire one congressional chaplain when we can fire them all? The recent controversy in Washington over GOP House Speaker's move to fire House chaplain raises the question, why does Congress still have clergymen (they have always been men) on the congressional payroll ? Founder James Madison saw the flaw in the idea when it began in 1789: Let lawmakers "like their constituents, (worship) at their own expense," wrote Madison. " How noble in its exemplary sacrifice to the genius of the Constitution and the divine rights of conscience! Why should the expense of a religious worship for the legislature be paid by the public?" Exactly.
Did I tell you that the Mincing Rascals podcast has been nominated for a Lisagor award? I'm sure I did, as I tend not to shut up about it. The Peter Lisagor Awards for excellence in local journalism, which will be handed out May 11, are so prestigious that some people now refer to the "LEGOT" – the Lisagor, Emmy, Grammy Oscar and Tony career sweep. Not many people, some. Maybe a few. Or less than that.
|
|
