There is a 'politics' category on this blog for a simple reason: I am a lifelong student of the subject. This is partly due to circumstance. My father is a professor of political science — meaning, for instance, that back in the 80s, when I was wee, come a Friday night, the household's singular television would spend half an hour tuned to PBS's Washington Week in Review before we could move on to the "good stuff" (like Night Flight). But over time, dammit, political and current-events programming became the "good stuff" as far as I was concerned, and so it was, when I got to college, that studying literature wasn't enough; I had to study literature and political science — thus leading to the unforgettable moment on the phone when dear old dad laughed and noted that I had chosen "not one, but two completely useless majors." Ahem. more...