We return you now to the stars, Leonard," fellow "Star Trek" cast member George Takei wrote on Facebook.
"You taught us to 'Live long and prosper,' and you indeed did, friend," said Takei, recalling the trademark phrase uttered by Nimoy's character.
Logically, the next thing to do is come past the break and go on with reading pundits...
Mimi Swartz looks at how Houston goes up...
Despite well-intentioned talk by civic leaders about economic diversification, and by the oil companies about their “risk management” strategies, the inevitable highs and lows of the energy business continue to dominate my adopted hometown, ...
Fortunately for Houston, and thanks largely to local know-how, came the combining of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, and the next big boom was on.
Once again, the people who stood to profit most from high oil prices went nuts, but in a more sophisticated, understated way. They bought Teslas instead of Rolls-Royces, and second homes in Nantucket instead of Aspen, maybe because being Yankee-averse was so 1970s.
Houston goes down.
Pretty much one topic of conversation dominates: How long will the bad times last this go-round? The optimists here expect oil prices to rise by the end of the year. That they have already gone up a few percentage points in the last few weeks is maybe because of a) economic growth in Europe; b) more gasoline use as the start of spring approaches; c) the laws of supply and demand; d) production issues in Iraq and Libya; e) all of the above; or f) so much whistling in the dark.
The New York Times on the hot air over healthcare.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in one of the most anticipated cases of the term: King v. Burwell, a marvel of reverse-engineered legal absurdity that, if successful, will tear a huge hole in the Affordable Care Act and eliminate health insurance for millions of lower-income Americans — exactly the opposite of what the law was passed to do.
The central claim of the lawsuit, which was filed on behalf of four Virginians by a small group of conservative activists who have long sought to destroy Obamacare, is that the law does not allow tax-credit subsidies to be made available to anyone living in the 34 states whose health care exchanges are operated by the federal government, which stepped in when those states declined to set up their own.
This is, to put it mildly, baloney.
Actually, I quite like baloney. This is bullshit.
Frank Bruni and the evil, evil media.
Maybe those of us who write about politics and campaigns should adopt a bristly uniform of hair shirts, so that we’re constantly atoning for our sins. ...
Scott Walker thinks we’re laying an elaborate trap for him, and after The Washington Post inquired if he regarded President Obama as Christian, he not only punted but also bellowed about “gotcha” questions, griping: “This is a classic example of why people hate Washington and, increasingly, they dislike the press.”
Dislike? Increasingly? Either he was being charitable or he hasn’t read the polling. The public’s esteem for us has been abysmal for a good long while.
And if we’re honest, we’ve brought much of it on ourselves. We play petty games and barrel down pointless roads.
Well, I'd be prepared to hold journalists to very serious topics as soon as politicians lead the way.
Robert Barnes says the John Roberts dreams of a non-partisan court. No, really.
In King v. Burwell , to be argued Wednesday, plaintiffs say the text of the law must be interpreted in a way that would neuter it, canceling health insurance subsidies for about 7.5 million Americans in at least 34 states. Can Roberts’s portrayal of the Supreme Court as above politics survive another round with the most partisan issue of the decade?
Roberts, of course, has not ceased to be a conservative. Before Obamacare — or since — it’s hard to think of a case in which he has not voted the way conservative activists had hoped when they recommended him to President George W. Bush. The Roberts court has been described as the most pro-business in history. Its liberals complain that consumers are on a losing streak and that the court has imposed new roadblocks for those trying to prove discrimination.
And when the issue is important to the chief justice, or when there seems to be no chance for compromise, he has been decisive. In a suite of cases, for instance, the court has systematically dismantled campaign finance restrictions, calling them hostile to free speech rights — Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission being the most famous of several 5-to-4 votes. Roberts wrote the majority opinion in the most recent, which featured the Republican National Committee as a plaintiff.
Somehow, believing that every ruling should follow your own politics doesn't seem all that non-partisan.
Robert Kagan on Boehner's big stunt.
Do we really need the Israeli prime minister to appear before Congress to explain the dangers and pitfalls of certain prospective deals on Iran’s nuclear weapons programs? Would we not know otherwise? Have the U.S. critics of those prospective deals lost their voice? Are they shy about expressing their concerns? Are they inarticulate or incompetent? Do they lack the wherewithal to get their message out?
Not exactly. Every day a new report or analysis warns of the consequences of various concessions that the Obama administration may or may not be making. Some think tanks in Washington devote themselves almost entirely to the subject of Iran’s nuclear program. Congress has held numerous hearings on the subject. Every week, perhaps every day, high-ranking members of the House and Senate, from both parties, lay out the dangers they see. The Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and others publish countless stories on the talks in which experts weigh in to express their doubts. If all the articles, statements and analyses produced in the United States on this subject could be traded for centrifuges, the Iranian nuclear program would be eliminated in a week.
If the Iranian nuclear program was actually getting closer to making a bomb, instead of simply mucking around and trading on fear for over a decade...
Dana Milbank on poor, poor pitiful Jebb.
It happened just as Jeb Bush was about to explain why he thinks conservatives need to stop being perceived as “anti-everything”: Attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference let it be known that, as part of their anti-everythingness, they are also anti-Bush.
A man wearing a tricorn hat and carrying a large “Don’t Tread On Me” flag stood up to stage a 30-person walkout of the former Florida governor’s speech. As the aspiring presidential candidate continued his Q&A with conservative commentator Sean Hannity, the Founding Father impersonator, William Temple, joined dozens of other demonstrators in the hallway, where chants of “USA!” disrupted the speech.
Tea-partiers really should be more patient. I'm sure Bush III with get his full crazy on long before primary season.
Leonard Pitts on the power of music.
There are sounds it feels like you’ve known forever, sounds that have been in your ear so long, it’s hard to believe they were ever new. One of those sounds is this:
James Jamerson thumps a heartbeat on the bass. Robert White’s guitar corkscrews out in reply. And the immortal David Ruffin sings, in a voice of sweetness shadowed by sorrow, “I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day.”
Hard to believe that sound was ever new, but it was. Released four days before Christmas in 1964, My Girl by the Temptations reached the top of the pop charts in the first week of March — 50 years ago this week. Maybe you remember hearing it during that portentous late winter when Malcolm X had just been killed, and Martin Luther King’s forces were gathering on a bridge in a town called Selma.
If so, you are probably humming it right now, recalling the airtight harmonies and the way the horns and strings danced elegant pirouettes of sound. ...
My Girl is one of those songs everybody knows. It is the most perfect thing ever recorded.
...
Songs like that are fewer and further between now. The phenomenal success of Pharrell Williams’ Happy last summer is the exception that proves the point. Yes, you knew that song, Grandma knew that song, kindergartners knew that song.
For me that song is Don't Dream It's Over. When I first heard it on the radio, I was convinced it was something out of my childhood. I'd heard it a thousand times the first time I heard it. There is freedom within, there is freedom without...