President Obama’s defenses of the NSA programs are becoming increasingly risible. Cartoonists Tom Tomorrow and Ted Rall get in their licks on this tempting target, while in this clip Stephen Colbert takes his turn at mocking him. [Read more…]
Cenk Uygur plays a recording of a voicemail message left by a member of Congress that shows how Congress gets contributions from lobbyists, by simply pointing out that they have influence on committees that serve the interests of the lobbyists. Members of Congress know that proposing new legislation is a surefire way to get contributions, which is why there are periodic proposals for tax reform that don’t actually result in any reforms. They are a way of churning the pot. [Read more…]
Commenter Reginald Selkirk alerted me to this news report in which ex-pope Benedict says that god told him to resign.
“God told me to do it,” the Zenith agency quoted Benedict as saying to a visitor to the convent in the Vatican gardens where he is living out his retirement in near isolation. [Read more…]
Those who have never been really involved in religion sometimes do not realize how intense discussions can be about what seems (to outsiders) like trivial matters over the meaning of words. A recent example is the controversy over the decision of the Presbyterian church to reject a popular new hymn for inclusion in its official hymnal because the song’s authors objected to a change in the wording. [Read more…]
Jonathan Turley seems to have decided that the law-breaking behavior of the US government has become too extensive to maintain even the façade of being a free society. Here are the ten reasons that he gives for his conclusion and he elaborates on each one in his article. [Read more…]
Those who have lived in majority Buddhist countries know that being a follower of that religion does not make one more peaceful. But people in the west have this image of Buddhists as meditative and contemplative people who do not resort to violence. But the Buddhists in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Thailand seem determined to destroy that image and it looks like they are succeeding, as this NPR report suggests. [Read more…]
Here is a video of an event. What do you think it was for? The answer is below the fold.
We have seen how David Miranda was questioned for nine hours and had his electronic equipment taken from him by British security forces in the transit area of Heathrow airport. This article describes how the NSA actually pays the British secret service to spy on their behalf because the British have weaker regulations of their government officials’ actions. [Read more…]
There are two difficult issues that an atheist in a religious family or community faces: whether and how to tell your parents that you no longer believe and how to answer your young children when they ask you whether god is real. [Read more…]
The CIA has finally acknowledged its role, along with British MI6, in the overthrow of the democratically elected Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadeq in 1953, replacing him with the despised Reza Pahlavi who adopted the grandiose title of the Shah of Iran. That event poisoned relations between the two countries ever since. Iranians deeply resented the foisting of the despotic Shah on them who, with massive US support, ruled until his overthrow in 1979. [Read more…]