Mitt Romney, The Caped Tax Evader!

The rich are different from you and me, as F. Scott Fitzgerald famously observed. For one thing, they grow up learning to be secretive about how they make their money and how much they make.

The very rich also have many devices for hiding their wealth and avoiding paying taxes that are unavailable to ordinary people. Most of the time, these are kept secret from the rest of us so we have little idea of what is going on. The few times the veil of secrecy is lifted is when they are taken to court by people who were once close to them and know the secrets but have had a falling out, such as in business disputes or messy divorces. [Read more…]

Correction: South Korea is NOT becoming another Texas

On June 8, I blogged about news reports that said that under pressure from South Korean creationists, their ministry of education had eliminated evolution from their science textbooks. This was, of course, rather bad since it suggested that creationists had established a beachhead in another country. I expressed surprise that a country that was surging in terms of science and technology was taking such a retrograde step. [Read more…]

A young conservative grows up

Jonathan Krohn was a conservative sensation when, in 2009 at the tender age of 13, he published a book Defining Conservatism and also spoke at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). It was all rather harmless, though it was a little odd to see old politicians scrambling to associate themselves with a child’s view of politics and pronounce him the face of the next generation of conservatism. [Read more…]

Time to put banksters in jail

The scandal involving Barclays bank and its finagling of the LIBOR rate has been huge news in the UK but not much here. For those interested, Matt Taibbi has been posting frequent updates explaining what is going on. The latest revelation indicates collusion between Barclays and the British government to lie about interest rates. This should not be surprising. What is surprising is that it is coming out in public. [Read more…]

Jury nullification allowed in New Hampshire

Juries are almost always told that it is their job to judge the facts of the case before them and it is only up to the judge to interpret the law. But that is wrong. Juries can judge both the facts and the law and have the right to acquit someone of a crime if they feel that the law under which the person was convicted is an unjust one, even if the facts of the case clearly show that the person is guilty. Such a result is known as ‘jury nullification’. [Read more…]

On the pursuit of happiness

On this independence day holiday, I am repeating a post on what to me is one of the most intriguing phrases in the US Declaration of Independence. It is contained in the famous sentence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

I have always found the inclusion of “the pursuit of happiness” as an inalienable right to be appealing. One does not expect to see such a quaint sentiment in a revolutionary political document, and its presence sheds an interesting and positive light on the minds and aspirations of the people who drafted it. [Read more…]