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Real ID: Federal Mandate, National Card, or Something Worse?

The Real ID is now the law of the land, but it is not the law most Americans think it is, and the story of how it arrived at your local DMV is a twenty-year saga of congressional sleight-of-hand, serial postponement, and a quiet transformation of the American driver’s license into something it was never designed to be. The question everyone should be asking is not whether they need one. The question is what the Real ID actually represents in the architecture of American civic life, and whether the reassurances offered by the Department of Homeland Security hold up under any meaningful scrutiny.

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Neighbors: Insight into Extended Family Life in Portugal

One of the unexpected delights of our move to this house has been getting to know our neighbors – they live over the field to the right of the house – they are the parents of our landlord and the lady of the house supplies our bread – and our pizza dough, and tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, apples, lettuce, onions, garlic, mushrooms and anything else we have use for.

To say they are farmers is to underrate their innate ability to work with the land and belittles the considerable skills and talents they possess throughout the whole family.

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The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams Review

I am not, generally speaking, a big fan of country music. For some reason when I think of country music today I think of songs with names like “Drop Kick Me Jesus (Through The Goal Posts of Life)” — I know that song was recorded in 1976 but it seems to be a sign of what was to come. When it comes to the music of Hank Williams, on the other hand, I make an exception. He wrote masterful lyrics and sang beautifully. I don’t properly own any classic Hank Williams albums but I have enjoyed listening to recordings of him on Spotify and watching videos of him online.

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Neil Young Divines a Treasure Review

Neil Young is one of our greatest living musicians who writes so beautifully about the American experience.  He’s always cagey and fun and eloquent and challenging.  Neil’s new album is out this week, and it is called “A Treasure” and the music lives up to the album naming.

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Joe Bonamassa is Back in the Dust Bowl

Joe Bonamassa is back, baby!  We were so thoroughly disappointed in his last album — Black Country Communion — because that effort was so un-Joe-like in execution and expectation and style and tone, but today, Joe sets everything right again with the just-dropped release of: Dust Bowl.

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