Why is it so hard to learn that no means no?

The comedy program Inside Amy Schumer used a parody of the popular TV show Friday Night Lights to highlight the problem of small towns where football is king, high school football players are treated like gods, women who are raped become the target of abuse when they report it, and that the very culture of football inculcates attitudes that justify the use of force to get what you want.
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The national scandal of using police as revenue generators

The town of Parma, MO that I wrote about yesterday that had a population of just 740 and yet six police officers is not the only small Missouri with such a weird ratio. Beverly Hills, MO (not to be confused with its better known California counterpart) has easily bettered that, having 13 police officers for its population of just 600, or one officer for every city block.
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Backlash against bottled water

The selling of bottle water in the developed world has to be the biggest con job ever pulled on the public. Getting people to shell out an exorbitant amount of money for something that flows freely out of faucets has to be the most successful heist ever pulled by the advertising industry, persuading the gullible that a freely available commodity becomes a symbol of status if you pay for it.
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Another Missouri town in the news

Missouri has been a lot in the news recently and not in a good way. In addition to the terrible situation in Ferguson, now comes another story from the small town of Parma where for the first time a black person was elected to the office of mayor. Tyrus Byrd, who was born and raised in the town and has also served as city clerk in the past, was elected mayor displacing the incumbent who had held office for 37 years.
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The US’s debtors’ prisons and their abuses

What has emerged about the state of policing in the town of Ferguson, MO in the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown has been ugly, revealing a city in which the police and legal system has been treating the residents, especially poor people and people of color, appallingly. Now a class action lawsuit has been filed in the US District Court in the Eastern District of Missouri by people who charge that they have been abused by the city, and the descriptions by the individuals in the suit make for appalling reading.
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Oh great, another Bundyesque standoff in the works?

The great danger with the way that cattle rancher Cliven Bundy has managed to avoid paying grazing fees for his use of federal land by having a militia threaten to shoot at any federal agents that enter his property is that it would encourage others to imitate his example. These people are just itching to force a confrontation with the government while the latter wants to avoid a repeat of the disastrous Ruby Ridge and Waco tragedies.
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The consequences of the Greece v. Galloway prayer case

The US Supreme Court, in a very confused ruling, decided in the case Greece v Galloway that ceremonial opening prayers were acceptable at the beginning of government sessions provided the prayers were not sectarian in their delivery or in the selection of prayer givers. Even some of the so-called liberal members of the court like Elena Kagan, while dissenting from the verdict approving the Greece prayers, said that “such a forum need not become a religion-free zone.”
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This is what American exceptionalism really means

Lee Fang of The Intercept is attending the gaggle of Republican presidential hopefuls currently attending a party gathering in New Hampshire and strutting their stuff, hoping to win the affection of voters in the state the holds the first primary election, even though it will not be held until January 2016. He rounded up some of their reactions to the suggestion put forth by freshman senator Tom Cotton (R-Israel) that it would be easy to get rid of Iran’s nuclear weapons in a bombing campaign that lasted just “several days”.
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