This short scene from Sacha Baron Cohen’s The Dictator is well worth watching.
(Thanks to Fu Dayi)
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
In February, a three-judge panel of the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision upheld the ruling of US District Court judge Vaughn Walker that Proposition 8 (that reversed the policy allowing same sex marriage in California) was unconstitutional. [Read more…]
McLeroy is a dentist who was on the Texas School Board. He was a creationist and was one of the key people pushing their agenda (as well as some other extreme right wing positions) on the schools and its textbooks. He was narrowly prevented from serving a second term. [Read more…]
I have been highlighting the many ways is people who are poor and/or nonwhite tend to be at the receiving end of harsher treatment from the police and other authorities if they run afoul of them for any reason when out in public. Now Matt Taibbi describes how New York City subjects them to harassment by the police even if they are not out in public but are inside their own apartment buildings. It is called the ‘Clean Halls’ program. [Read more…]
John Davis was taking an exit to the city of Cleveland off I-90 when he saw a panhandler in a wheelchair by the side of the road. He tried to give the man two one-dollar bills but they fluttered to the ground. An eagle-eyed police officer saw this and immediately cited Davis for littering, an offence that carried with it a $344 fine. [Read more…]
In a normal political world, congressman Allen West (R-FL) would be considered a crazy person. West is one of the most extreme of the Tea Party favorites, making one absurd claim after another to their great delight, his latest being the charge that 80 members of the Democratic party were also members of the Communist party. [Read more…]
The US First Circuit Court of Appeals has dealt another blow is favor of same sex marriage by uninanimously ruling that the infamous Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional. [Read more…]
One of the things the US administration and Congress is really good at is grandstanding when the media is around to take note. Take for example, the rapidity with which the US government arranged for the visa for the Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng and the moves by congress to fast-track US citizenship for the Pakistani doctor Shakil Afridi who aided the CIA in its search for Osama bin Laden. [Read more…]
Although his trial ended yesterday with a partial acquittal and mistrial, it is clear that John Edwards’ life in politics is over, even though a case can be made that these charges should never have been brought in the first place, and mainly benefited a politically ambitious prosecutor. [Read more…]