The Congressional swearing ceremony

When Muslim congressman Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota) was elected in 2006, some people were outraged when he said that he would take his oath of office by swearing on the Koran. Dennis Prager even urged that he should be forbidden from doing so, saying “Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don’t serve in Congress.” Prager then went completely bonkers, saying that allowing Ellison to carry out his intentions would signal the end of America as we know it: “If Keith Ellison is allowed to change that, he will be doing more damage to the unity of America and to the value system that has formed this country than the terrorists of 9-11.” [Read more…]

The GOP’s slavish devotion to the rich

One has to hand it to the Democrats. They have been fairly successful in masking their allegiance to the oligarchy. The GOP is far more open about whose interests they really care about. As the fiscal cliff Kabuki theater played itself out towards the end of the year. I did not follow the details of the maneuvering that led up to the final agreement but was intrigued by the suggestion put forward by speaker John Boehner of something known as ‘Plan B’ as a stop-gap measure. This came and went fairly quickly and so did receive much scrutiny but its details show the priorities of the GOP. [Read more…]

Winter musings

Most people know that the winter solstice December 21 corresponds to the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. But some go further and think that this date also corresponds to the time of latest sunrise and earliest sunset. That is not true. The earliest sunset occurs around December 8 and the latest sunrise around January 4. [Read more…]

Greece resurrects blasphemy laws

We tend to think of blasphemy laws and punishments for violations as currently existing only in backward religion-dominated societies, usually in the Islamic world. But it was not that long ago that such laws were almost universal and many of them are still on the books in modern societies though not enforced. So it is always a surprise when some people now try and invoke these relics of medieval times. [Read more…]

The difference between think tanks and research universities

My post yesterday on the rise of the ideological think tanks and their pernicious influence on high levels of government policy produced some interesting discussion in the comments, with some wondering if I was implying that academics were somehow smarter, wiser, more experienced, even nobler than the people in think tanks, and that discussion prompted this follow-up post. [Read more…]

The perfect human pathogen?

As I reported earlier, a whole lot of people including me, fell ill over the holiday break with what was very likely a norovirus infection. Carl Zimmer has just written a fascinating article on the remarkable family of noroviruses, based on an paper published in a recent issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases by Aron Hall of the Centers for Disease Control. Zimmer writes: [Read more…]

Ideologues posing as impartial experts

Back in 2008 I wrote a 12-part series titled The Propaganda Machine in which I traced the rise of the right-wing echo chamber that we now see in full fruition, with its combination of newspapers and radio and TV painting a steady picture of an alternate reality that has persuaded a significant number of people that things which are factually false are really true. [Read more…]