Continuations

There is a good thing about today’s inauguration. Despite having the lowest approval rating of an incoming president in a long time, it appears that we will have a peaceful transfer of power. That is what democracy is designed to do. Now we will also need the other parts of democracy to work, namely the institutions that have been put in place to help safeguard from abuses of power by the executive branch of government. This will be a difficult challenge with the current distribution of power...

Note: I am only posting now, but I wrote this brief post in the early German morning hours before President Obama gave his inauguration speech. Having listened to parts of the speech now and having read the transcript I feel slightly more positive than the post itself might suggest. This week’s blog posts will likely be rather short as I am traveling in Europe (in Munich for DLD today, then off to London, Eindhoven and Geneva). I feel encouraged about Obama’s second term based on the administ...