I have written before of president Obama’s skillful use of words to convince people that he represents their interests even when he doesn’t. I saw this statement by president Obama today on the controversy over the recent leaks that provides another excellent example. [Read more…]
Stephen Colbert captures the problem for the Republican party with the recent revelations of government violations of people’s privacy. They would normally enjoy anything that embarrasses the Obama administration but since they also love the national security state and indeed expanded and exploited its powers shamelessly during the Bush administration, they are caught in a bind. [Read more…]
Jonathan Turley has been rightly ranting for some time about judges who come up with novel sentences meant to humiliate the convicted. This risks making the judiciary a laughing stock. Recently he heighted this disgraceful display by a judge in the Cleveland Municipal Court system. [Read more…]
As promised, Glenn Greenwald has received more leaks from whistleblowers. The latest is that president Obama has issued a directive ordering his agencies to draw up a list of targets for cyberattacks all over the globe. You can see the leaked presidential directive here. [Read more…]
He says that in the case of the Bradley Manning trial the government as usual has been successful in getting the media to chase squirrels and obsess over the wrong questions. The government has long figured that out that this tactic works well and uses it quite skillfully. [Read more…]
One catch for most people in dealing with the two major stories of the government’s sweeping capturing of telephone records and internet activity is trying to understand its significance. If you are like me and not particularly tech-savvy, the question we cannot really answer is what were they actually doing and how bad it was. We have seen many supporters of the national security state trying to pooh-pooh the revelations as no big deal and some may be persuaded by those arguments. [Read more…]
Stephen Colbert bids a sad farewell to Michele Bachmann.
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(This clip aired on June 4, 2013. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)
A new Pew survey confirms what observers have long intuited, that most people (72%) now see the legalization of same sex marriage a inevitable, up from 59% in 2004. What is significant is that 59% of opponents see it as inevitable too. Even though they seem resigned to it, it is still a divisive issue with just 51% favoring same-sex marriage and older, religious, Republicans, blacks, and those with less education showing the most opposition. [Read more…]
One of the reasons for my view that religion is a bad thing that I would like to see disappear is because it encourages people to believe in magical thinking and thus makes them easy prey to all manner of charlatans who take advantage of their gullibility. [Read more…]
Why can’t Jews and Muslims get along politically in the Middle East when the two religions clearly have so much in common when it comes to trampling on the rights of women? [Read more…]