Cory Doctorow thinks that the questions that are on the current citizenship test for the United Kingdom are too fine-grained in their multiple choice responses. [Read more…]

Ken Silverstein has a good article in the June 2012 issue of Harper’s Magazine (p. 58-59, behind a paywall) looking closely at the resume of one Matthew Levitt, one of the many so-called ‘terrorism experts’ who on closer examination do not seem to have the kind of expertise they claim to have. Their main function seems to be to hype the terrorist threat beyond all recognition and it is easy for them to do so because everyone, except the general public, benefits: They get paid to give their opinion as ‘expert witnesses’ in the government’s prosecution of terrorism cases, the media get to write sensationalistic stories, and the government achieves its goal of keeping the population terrified and docile.

In the past decade, the federal government has brought to trial hundreds of alleged terrorists. Some of these cases have been deadly serious and others decidedly dubious, but regardless of the indictment’s plausibility, prosecutors often rely on an “expert witness” to frame and buttress their charges. In their constellation of star witnesses, few have shone brighter than Matthew Levitt, Ph.D., who has testified or submitted written opinions in at least thirteen terrorism-related trials.
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Terrorism experts often have professional, ideological, and financial incentives to side with the government. For his turns as an expert witness, Levitt typically bills the government $200 an hour. Not coincidentally, his role also dovetails neatly with the policy objectives of his employer, the Washington Institute, which was founded by the powerful pro-Israel lobby AIPAC. These gigs are, of course, self-reinforcing, each one serving to further legitimate Levitt as an expert. Less well served by this arrangement are defendants, whose cases can be won or lost on the basis of witness testimony that is all the more convincing when the government withholds so much of the hard evidence from the jury.

And so it goes.

I thought that our political leaders had become so jaded that they just did not care about anything anymore. If they were not angry about presidential assassination programs, starting wars without their approval, prosecution of whistle blowers, torture, suspension of habeas corpus, and corporate and financial larceny on a grand scale, to name just a few things, then what possibly could they get mad about? But then along comes an issue that unites and rouses them to great heights of bipartisan indignation. [Read more…]

Every presidential election something occurs that dominates the news over an extended period that has nothing to do with any substantive issue that affects any of us directly but consumes so much media attention that people seem to talk of little else. This year that issue is turning out to be Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital and his objection to releasing his tax returns except for 2010, and for 2011 when they are completed. (It beats me why someone who must be paying an army of accountants to do his returns still needs an extension to file.) [Read more…]

Much has been written about Mitt Romney being booed by the audience when he spoke to them at their annual convention about repealing ‘Obamacare’. It was immediately obvious to me from his use of this label instead of the correct Affordable Care Act that he was deliberately provoking them to get this reaction. He has likely written off the black vote and now uses them as a prop to court white voters who see the black community as representing those who favor more government involvement in society. [Read more…]