Why it is important to protect due process rights in times of anger

Now that the hunt seems to be over for the people who carried out the Boston marathon bombings, there is some debate over what rights the captured person has, particularly his Miranda rights. There are those who make the facile argument that the bombing was an ‘act of terror’ and that those accused of such acts are not deserving of due process rights. Apparently the suspect is not going to be read his Miranda rights until after extensive questioning. [Read more…]

Finally, a public acknowledgment of US torture practices

A new bipartisan commission reports on what many of us knew for a long time but some in the media chose to ignore, that the US was systematically and massively practicing torture at the same time that top government officials from president Bush on down were denying that they were doing so and claiming high moral reasons, that it went against our values and so on. [Read more…]

Why the ‘stupid party’ will stay stupid

Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, who is one of the many Republicans with presidential ambitions, made a splash earlier this year by saying that the Republican party had to stop being the ‘stupid party’, saying things that made them look hateful and ridiculous in the eyes of the electorate. He was referring to the statements about rape made by Republican senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock in 2012 that transformed likely wins into defeats. [Read more…]

The phony scare about the debt exposed

Debt cutting frenzy has been rampant across North America and Europe, with ‘everyone’ (i.e., politicians, elite media, and the oligarchs) arguing that if the deficits are not reduced by cutting spending on social services, countries risk ruin. This phony consensus has been driven by pseudo-grassroots campaigns like ‘Fix the Debt’ and the Simpson-Bowles ‘Catfood Commission’, while standing in the shadows and pushing this agenda is billionaire Pete Peterson who has poured half a billion dollars into trying to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other social programs. [Read more…]

Reflections on Boston

I have not written anything about the bombings at the Boston marathon. My experience is that in the immediate aftermath of such events the ratio of uninformed, unfounded, and even dangerous speculation to actual fact is extremely high so why add to it? My impulse is to try and ignore as much of the chatter as possible until we actually know something. [Read more…]

The mess over tax exemptions for churches

I have written before how the tax exemption given to churches creates opportunities for all manner of abuse. The practice of granting churches tax exemptions is long-standing, dating to before American independence but its constitutionality was not tested until 1970 when the US Supreme Court ruled that while it would not be permissible for the state to actually give churches money, granting tax exemptions was a passive form of state support that passed muster because the state had an interest in promoting organizations that improved the general welfare and the Establishment Clause discouraged entangling religion with the state, and having the state tax churches would lead to more entanglement than exempting them from taxation. [Read more…]

Hate crime laws

Acts of violence against individuals are deplorable. But there seems to be something especially despicable about attacking someone purely because of that person’s ethnicity or gender or sexuality. This type of violence seems to be driven by hate for what people are as opposed to violence committed for gain (say as part of a robbery) or that is random and can be blamed on the pathological mental state of the perpetrator. [Read more…]