I recently overheard someone explaining that intelligence acquired by means of torture was crucial in determining the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, which determination led to bin Laden’s death by US armed forces. This lie must be exposed as...
It is time to start shouting. Representatives and appointees of the Obama administration—particularly David Axelrod and Attorney General Erich H. Holder—are considering abridging one of the most important Supreme Court interpretations of the Fifth Amendment, the right against self-incrimination,...
I really want this thing to work out with President Obama. He’s smart. He’s a constitutaional scholar. His adminstration has taken steps to advance the welfare of US citizens and the welfare of people worldwide. So I don’t get...
Yesterday Dave Checketts, the executive leader of a group bidding for the N.F.L. Rams, announced Rush Limbaugh would be dropped from the group. Writing for The New York Times, Judy Battista reports that once word leaked last week that...
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance...
On Friday, 10 July, Pam and I were in Manhattan, KS, which with bathroom breaks and fuelings is about ninety minutes outside Topeka. Two largish little league baseball teams were also staying where we were lodging, and the breakfast...
If you would please indulge me for a few moments . . ....
Swing Votes....
An astute observer of human motivation and desires, Sigmund Freud noted He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his...
While the Fed works overtime to ensure that shareholders of publicly traded companies don't lose their seasonal homes in Telluride, CO, and the weekend pickmeups in Martha's Vineyard, working class Americans set up shanty towns in Los Angeles, CA, home...
Ohio is the jam car of progressive American politics, and I wish it would just get out of the way....
For the present administration, such an error would in many ways be procedurally (and more importantly, psychoanalytically) consistent....
I'm doing everything I can not to become a frothing pacifist, but it's hard in the face of the unilateral sanctions against Iran which will be announced today by the present administration. I don't have time or energy to distill...
How can my fellow citizens be so unrelentingly stupid? (via)Update: Over the course of the day, I’ve started formulating a much larger and more thoughtful post regarding the subject of religion than I’m prepared, at the moment, to write here....
[. . .] it is not much use pointing out the “internal contradictions” of a social practice, or “deconstructing” it, unless one can come up with an alternative practice—unless one can at least sketch a utopia in which the concept...
There are a thousand things to say about the tragedy that transpired in Blacksburg, Virginia, on 16 April 2007, and many people more eloquent and thoughtful than me are saying them. John Derbyshire, however, is not one of them.1The scenario...
US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is no friend of the people, what with his pathological case of the smirks during questioning about Federal eavesdropping on phone lines and electronic data streams. But we knew that his GOP-backed agenda against civil...
If being a nihilist, is carrying, to the unbearable limit of hegemonic systems, this radical trait of derision and of violence, this challenge that the system is summoned to answer through its own death, then I am a terrorist...
At my undergraduate alma mater, USC, the Student Coalition Against Labor Exploitation (SCALE) staged a knit-in on the steps of the Pertusati University Bookstore. Lori White, associate vice president for Student Affairs, asked the students to relocate to Hahn plaza...
I’m about halfway through Diane McWhorter’s brilliantly written article. I share much of her alarm regarding the docility of us Americans after so arrogant and so successful a series of power grabs by the executive and the unquestioning acceptance—and in...
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