Stephen Colbert promises full coverage of the papal transition while keeping track of the current scandals in the Vatican. [Read more…]
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
Stephen Colbert promises full coverage of the papal transition while keeping track of the current scandals in the Vatican. [Read more…]
The US Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling yesterday in Clapper v. Amnesty International rejected the claims of journalists and human rights groups that the government was secretly putting people under surveillance without getting a warrant. The court ruled against them on the technical grounds that the people suing lacked standing because they could not prove that they were being watched and monitored. Why couldn’t they do that? Because the government keeps the entire program secret, a practice started under president Bush and enthusiastically embraced by the Obama administration. [Read more…]
While strenuous efforts are made to make something grand out of Benedict’s last days as the pope, they are just like pretty much his entire eight years in office, having to deal with one tawdry scandal and controversy after another. [Read more…]
The monthly reports with the numbers of new jobs created and the level of unemployment are watched closely as important signs of the health of a nation’s economy. When large numbers of jobs are created and the unemployment figures go down, that is taken as a sign of a growing economy and less hardship. [Read more…]
I find it hilarious how conservatives seem to hate Sesame Street. There is something about that wholesome show that drives them up the wall and The Daily Show seems to share my amusement at this absurd reaction. [Read more…]
You would think by now that it would be pretty clear that some things are not funny and that no sensible person these days would do them because they are offensive. And yet, some people still do not seem to have got the message. [Read more…]
It is extraordinary the things that some legislators worry about. The Judiciary Committee of the state legislature of North Carolina has approved House Bill 34 that seeks to protect the citizens of that state from being traumatized by seeing the ‘private parts’ of people who may willfully expose them in any public place. This was apparently triggered by a topless rally held in Asheville last year by women protesting that men are allowed to be topless in public while women are not, and demanding equality. [Read more…]
Some of you may have read about the situation that arose in a Detroit hospital where a father requested that no black nurses touch his newborn child and on the surface it appears that the hospital tried to comply with his wishes. To my surprise, the news report says that it is an ‘open secret’ for requests to be made that treatment not be provided by doctors and nurses of a different race and for those requests to be accommodated as much as possible. [Read more…]
Remember one-time Assistant Secretary of State and multiple-times Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes? He is the person responsible for the website Kung Fu Monkey creating the ‘crazification factor’, i.e., for quantifying exactly what percentage of the US population is so nuts that it will buy into any proposition, however extreme. That figure is 27%. [Read more…]
I have been writing about the revolving door between Wall Street and the government. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal has an article that sheds an interesting light on this process and how favorably it is viewed by Wall Street. It concerns primarily Jack Lew, president Obama’s current Chief of Staff and nominee to be Treasury Secretary. [Read more…]