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carter meland

minneapolis, Minnesota
Commenter for
1 year 13 weeks

Recent Comments

Posted on 04/17/13 at 11:01 am in response to Gun rights in the 1780s and today

Arguably the Haudenosaunee confederacy, which many cite as an inspiration to the US federal form of gov't, is much older than the American gov't. Not judging, just saying.

Posted on 02/20/13 at 11:43 am in response to Why motorists get so angry at cyclists — a psychologist's theory

While interesting, Tom Stafford is not a psychologist, he is an evolutionary psychologist which is a different bird in so many ways. Evolutionary psychology is an offshoot of sociobiology (which arguably is an offshoot of 19th-century social Darwinism). These fields of study, while popular, have been roundly criticized by leading scientists and thinkers in all sorts of fields and so any ideas they offer should be taken with huge doses of salt.

To read one such criticism, you should...

Posted on 10/12/12 at 12:25 pm in response to Using the Dakota War to talk about racism, stereotypes and violence

Good story giving good overview of this important series of dialogues. I've met Jim Bear and was moved by his dream and his desire to initiate dialogue about the impact events such as the hanging of the 38. He is an able facilitator of dialogue and I highly recommend that readers of MinnPost attend some or all of these events! They will come away with fresh perspectives and, I hope, new understandings of how such events have impacted Native communities.

Posted on 09/18/12 at 04:05 pm in response to What’s wrong with what Romney said: from Thurston Howell to pandering

Ms. Martin wonders why Romney doesn't mention the low-to-nonexistent taxes that many corportations pay and that made me think of another critical oversight that Romney makes in painting this picture. He conflates the 47% of non-taxpayers with being moochers on gov't entitlements AND with being squarely in the Obama camp. As Brooks points out in NYTimes piece (that served as the impetus for Black's piece here): "The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not...

Posted on 08/29/12 at 05:28 pm in response to Chris Christie’s GOP convention speech: 20 truths make a lie

Orwell told the truth, unlike Republicans like Christie and Pawlenty who may have taken inspiration from Orwell's fictional creation Big Brother and his Party's extensive use of Newspeak to make lies seem true.

Posted on 08/20/12 at 01:00 pm in response to Using amendments to tear up the Constitution — or not

Others know more about this than I do, but I want to put out there that modern Constitutional republics (like the US) explicitly seek to protect minority groups from the "tyranny of the majority." In the case of these amendments the GLBT community and non-photo ID holders are minority groups. Paul's piece seems to be suggesting that amendments passing by 50% + one vote enact the kind of tyranny that thinkers like Madison and JS Mill worried about. Even looking at it from a states' rights...

Posted on 05/03/12 at 10:14 am in response to U of M students hope documentary prompts debate over apology to Native Americans

As the teacher whose students put this project together, I've been following this discussion with great interest, as have many of the students. I agree with Mr Tester that more Native community members need to be included (look for that when my students tackle a similar project next year!); though I will say all the history and most of the ideas they discuss came from works by Native writers and filmmakers. So while our project is far from perfect, our guiding idea was to not fall prey to...

Posted on 03/29/12 at 12:20 pm in response to Two provocative questions about health care law and Supreme Court case

Hear, hear! You can't make individuals buy something they don't want, but as citizens of a society we can be compelled to enact and fund social policies that serve the common good. I'm happy to pay for police, fire protection, libraries, food stamp programs that help those who are struggling, and the like.

As there may be some who would argue that the Founders did not provide for a health program, let's remind ourselves of the practice of medicine in that era, as well as remembering...

Posted on 02/22/12 at 11:03 am in response to Secretary of State Mark Ritchie offers Voter ID alternative: electronic poll books

A friend is from Peru and, as he explained it to me, the Peruvians all have a voter ID pamphlet (state-supplied? I'm not sure) and are required by law to vote. Your pamphlet is stamped at the polling place. If you don't vote, you are fined. Perhaps legislative voter ID proposals should think about ways to increase the voting percentage through legislation--and before anyone freaks out and says "voting is a choice, not mandatory", perhaps we could extend all ballots to include a "None of the...

Posted on 02/15/12 at 11:53 am in response to The new MinnPost

As many others have commented, the Comments section is one of the best around, but I really dislike having the comments divided up over multiple pages. Perhaps you could expand the number of comments per page. The dialogue that develops over the course of a number of comments is a major attraction of MinnPost for me, and to click around is clunkier than merely scrolling back up the list.