Yesterday was the first episode of the new Larry Wilmore show that fills the time slot vacated by Stephen Colbert. It was promising, though a little rough in parts, but so were the The Daily Show and The Colbert Report at the beginning and it takes some time for shows like these to find their rhythm and figure out what works best for them.
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The political world was caught flat-footed by the sudden interest expressed by Mitt Romney in running again for the presidency. The surprise was generated by two things. One is that Romney had already made two attempts and lost, once losing the nomination to John McCain in 2008 and then the presidency in 2012 and it was felt that a two-time loser should gracefully bow out. The other is that Romney and his wife had repeatedly said that they had had enough and that it was time to move on.
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In 2003, comedian Dave Chappelle began a sketch comedy show on Comedy Central that was highly acclaimed because it took head-on all the major hot button issues of the day. But after just two seasons he abruptly quit, saying he was fed up with show business and fame. Here is one of the best known sketches from the show, the story of a KKK leader named Clayton Bigsby, told in the style of a Frontline documentary. (Language advisory)
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In January 1965,Playboy magazine published a lengthy interview (the longest he had ever given) that Alex Haley had with the civil rights leader soon after he won the Nobel Peace Prize. In it he expressed his views on a wide range of issues and provides a window into the mind of a remarkable man, revealing a self-assurance and lack of ego in his willingness to admit to all manner of tactical mistakes that he had made.
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A new report says that for the first time in 50 years, a majority of public school students come from families who are eligible for free and reduced-price lunches. As Kevin Drum points out, those who quality for free lunch (44%) have family incomes of less than $31,000, while for the 7% who get reduced-price lunches the cut-off is $44,000.
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Today is the day that the US commemorates Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a man whom I admire greatly and have written about before many times so will not repeat those views. But I will likely not be going to see the new film Selma, that deals with the civil rights struggle of which he was such a big part and uses a key event of that struggle to tell the story, even though the film has been praised.
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Once again we have the government announcing that, thanks to the diligent work of their security services, they have foiled a terrorist plot aimed at the heart of the US government and spared us all from a Paris-style attack.
For months, 20-year-old Christopher Lee Cornell had been on the FBI’s radar. Authorities said he left alarming posts on social media, talking about violent jihad.
On Wednesday, agents arrested the Cincinnati man before he could put his alleged plot into action.
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Anti-abortion forces in the US are doing everything they can to make the process of getting one so difficult that while the right to an abortion may exist in theory, in practice it will not be available except (of course) for rich people who can afford to go anywhere and get a doctor to perform one.
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In the waning days of his tenure in office, Attorney General Eric Holder has taken some actions that are praiseworthy. First he has criticized the trigger-happy behavior of many police departments, including the Cleveland one. Then he said that his office will defend the rights of same-sex couples to marry in the upcoming case before the US Supreme Court.
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After keeping observers guessing for a long time as to whether they will take on the issue of same-sex marriage during this term, the US Supreme Court in a notice yesterday finally decided to do so. There were many cases that had been appealed to them and what I found interesting was that they accepted for review the four cases that the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decided. This was the only Appeals Court circuit that back in November upheld bans on same-sex marriage and I strongly criticized its weird reasoning.
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