Coming on the heels of the story about the TSA’s aggressive handling of a four-year old child, we now have an even worse case of an aggressive pat-down given to a seven-year old girl with cerebral palsy who uses crutches, resulting in the family missing their flight. Add to this the charges of stealing, and the TSA is well on its way to becoming the most hated agency of the government. [Read more…]
Or so this photo seems to suggest.
TIME magazine publishes an annual list of the 100 most influential people. At a dinner given for this year’s mentions, Stephen Colbert gave a speech that included the following comments aimed at the Catholic church and Cardinal Thomas Dolan who is a smug example of Catholic homophobia and sexism. (Unfortunately I have not been able to find a video of the speech.) [Read more…]
Victor Stenger has had a long career in experimental high-energy physics. He has become a prolific writer on the intersection of science and religion and I have referred to him frequently in past blog posts, especially to material in his 2007 book God: The Failed Hypothesis. Stenger is an unabashed ‘new atheist’ who thinks that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible and does not shy away from saying so bluntly. The title of his latest book (and its subtitle The Incompatibility of Science and Religion) leaves the reader with no doubt as to where he stands. The book was released this month and I have just had the pleasure of reading it. It essentially updates and expands on the arguments of that earlier one. [Read more…]
The ‘personhood’ legislation that is currently working its way through the legislature in Oklahoma grants embryos full rights as people from the moment of conception. It is another front in the Republican war on women. [Read more…]
Sometimes I think that the TSA is going out of its way to make people think they have gone totally berserk.
Jonathan Turley describes the case of the Brooklyn District Attorney who has made a special exemption for Orthodox Jews by not releasing the names of those members of their communities who have been accused of being sex offenders. [Read more…]
Charles Davis recounts how as a newly minted reporter starting his first job in 2007, he learned first hand how the system works when he reported on what should have been an important story only to have his editors quash it because they feared that if they published it they would lose access to the powerful politician who had spoken to him on the record. [Read more…]
This is the name of a new documentary by Debbie Lum who wanted to examine the phenomenon of “yellow fever”, the extreme attraction some American men have for Asian women that sometimes borders on fetishism. While starting out with every intention of being just a dispassionate observer of one man’s search for an Asian bride, she ended up as an awkward participant. [Read more…]
A black couple bought a foreclosed house and were doing something to it prior to moving in when they were attacked by neighbors at gunpoint who thought they were burglars. To add insult to injury, because they did not have the purchase documents on them, the law enforcement officers whom the neighbors called did not believe they were the owners and arrested the couple and took them to jail where they were forced to spend the night. [Read more…]