Just a libertarian-leaning newshound who likes to read FR!

Here are some of my general philosophies:

• I am a proud American.
• I usually follow Occam’s razor, and thus don’t have much patience for conspiracy theories.
• I like to keep things practical. Utopian dreams of revolution producing a new society are a child's game. There will never be a utopia on this earth, only in the afterlife; the political and social reality that we face is the world as it exists right now, not in some idealized future.
• I believe in trying my best to understand our world (and the people in it) as it exists today, and that scientific inquiry is one of the best ways to get at this truth. I like reading about polls, new economic & scientific research, and opinion/blog articles from all sides.
• I am very cynical about the virtue of politicians and TV talking heads (this has gotten me in trouble a couple times on FR). Imagine the kind of person who succeeds in politics and/or entertainment: they're incredibly narcissistic people more interested in furthering their careers (& selling more books) than helping the people they claim to represent. This applies, in varying degrees, to almost everyone on TV and in government, from Olberman to O'Reilly. The public personas of pols & TV talking heads have always seemed a little too rehearsed & phony to me—like watching pro wrestling—and I could never blindingly trust one of them.
• Having more information is always better. Ignorance in the Internet age is inexcusable.
• I will say only one thing about birtherism: that even if the 2008 election had gone the other way, people would still have reason for pushing the "natural-born citizen" issue against the President.
  "McCain, having been born in the (Panama) Canal Zone, if elected would have become the first president who was born outside the current 50 states. This raised a potential legal issue, since the United States Constitution requires the president to be a natural-born citizen of the United States. A bipartisan legal review and a unanimous but non-binding Senate resolution both concluded that he is a natural-born citizen." (references here.)