The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

Since the federal government shut down at midnight on Saturday, January 20th, the Republican and Democratic parties have taken turns pointing fingers at one another for blame. Republicans have tried referring to the situation as Schumer Shutdown, in reference to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, claiming he and the Democratic Party have taken the government hostage over DACA. Many Democrats have come forth with the attack, "The GOP controls all three parts of government! How can they blame the minority?" While I could sit here and nitpick the two parties' rationales and get fancy by casting a specific percentage of blame to both, I'm not going to do that. This isn't the Schumer Shutdown and isn't even the McConnell Shutdown; it's the Trump Shutdown. Period. Donald Trump doesn't know what in the hell he's doing. He's like a 5-year-old who was just handed the keys to a Mercedes, has surrounded himself with blind men, is being provided direc...

I was born in Nebraska and lived there for 26 of my first 27 years. Throughout my time there, I saw that my political views were at odds with a large majority of the state. Even though I voted there every opportunity I had, there were some years where I thought to myself, "Is there even a point? I know there's probably a better chance of me winning the lottery than of the candidates and proposals I vote for of getting passed," but out of principle, did so anyway. So from an election perspective, I gladly left the state in 2008 in favor of the battleground state Ohio. No matter how contrasting Nebraska's politics have been to mine through the years, though, I have been rather impressed with some of their legislative moves over this past year. In 2014, then Governor Dave Heineman decided to not join the Republican governor voter suppression parade and signed a bill to make voting easier for the state's residents. Following the tragic death of Omaha police office...

On Friday, Iowa Representative Steve King (Republican) voted to end the program known as DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), which "exempts many undocumented immigrants who arrived as children from deportation for a renewable two-year period and allows them to work in the United States," as reported by Paige Lavender of The Huffington Post . King, along with Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, were then confronted by "DREAMers" Erika Andiola and Cesar Vargas in Iowa. Upon being confronted, Paul quickly left, before Andiola told King that she's a DREAMer, who was born in Mexico, but raised in the U.S., and graduated from Arizona State University. She then told the Iowa Representative, "I know you want to get rid of DACA, so I want to give you the opportunity 'cause you really want to get rid of it, just rip mine. Go ahead and do that," as she handed him her identification card. She added, "I just don't understand why you've bee...