The US involvement in Afghanistan corruption

The US government has become so blatantly shameless in its hypocrisy that people have largely stopped even noticing it, treating such behavior as the new normal. For example, who even bothers to comment anymore when the US warns other countries against ‘interfering’ in Iraq when it had actually invaded that country and maintained tens of thousands of troop there? The mindset is that the US essentially considered the whole world its territory. [Read more…]

The Leveretts on Iran

The US has made a fine art of portraying the leaders of countries that it dislikes and seeks to overthrow or even invade as irrational and aggressive people with whom it is no use talking and that the only thing they understand is force and sanctions and threats. We have seen this time and again, with Iran being the latest target, though Syria has also emerged as a new enemy. [Read more…]

Crashing the party

There is an interesting development in China where economic inequality has also exploded in recent years, making a mockery of the country’s official egalitarian philosophy. Ordinary people, fed up with this hypocrisy and the high-life being lived especially by Communist party officials, have taken to crashing lavish private parties hosted by officials and taking photographs and videos of the expensive food and drink and posting them online, enraging the public. [Read more…]

San Francisco’s Gay Pride organizers disinvite Bradley Manning

It was initially announced that Bradley Manning would be one of the honorary Grand Marshalls at San Francisco’s annual LGBT Pride parade on June 29-30, with Daniel Ellsberg standing in for him since Manning is still in jail. But there were protests and The Guardian has an article that says that the parade leadership summarily reversed course. [Read more…]

We love the constitution except when it’s inconvenient

It looks like I was premature in giving the Justice Department credit for reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights. It appears that they questioned him for a long time before a judge insisted on reading him his rights on Monday. So once again, we are dependent on the judiciary to intervene to make sure the government does not violate the rights of people. (In a separate case, a federal judge is challenging the government’s claim to broad secrecy powers.) [Read more…]

For whom the government works

I gave an example earlier about how the so-called gridlocked Congress can move with lightning speed when it wants to, which is when it affects either them or those close to them. We see another example of this in the way that they tweaked the sequestration rules when elites are affected. When flights started getting delayed, Congress quickly passed legislation that allowed the FAA more flexibility with regard to air traffic controllers. [Read more…]

The problem of religion-based laws in a secular state

Some people are fearful that Sharia law (i.e., laws that are based on Islamic religious beliefs) will be introduced in the US and are taking steps to pre-emptively pass legislation that would prevent this from happening. As one might expect, I am opposed to any laws or legal system that depends upon religion for their justification. We have a secular constitution and the Establishment Clause should effectively bar any government action that seeks to advance or hinder any particular religion or advance or hinder religion in general. [Read more…]