Daniel Larison writing in The American Conservative looks at Hillary Clinton’s views on military action and her penchant for the use of military force.
[Read more…]
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
Linguist Stephen Pinker has compiled a list of 58 words and phrases that he claims are commonly misused, frequently because those words are very close in spelling to other words and people confuse them. As someone who writes a lot, I was naturally curious as to how many of those errors I was committing.
[Read more…]
With all the focus on Kim Davis and her crusade to stop same-sex marriage in her county, we should not overlook the fact that similar strategies are being used by other regions in the US.
In North Carolina, 32 of the state’s 672 magistrates have excused themselves from marrying couples altogether, once a duty of the office, to avoid marrying same-sex couples. Magistrates opted out as early as June, when a new religious objection law was passed. The law allows magistrates to refuse to perform a marriage, but once they do so they are then barred for performing any other marriage for six months.
[Read more…]
A lesbian couple applied for a marriage license today at the Rowan County clerk’s office in Morehead, Kentucky, the first same-sex couple to do so since clerk Kim Davis returned to work. CNN covered what happened before and when they went into the office.
In an earlier post, I wrote about the fact that although there is an essential similarity between a ‘foul tip’ in baseball and a ‘caught behind the wicket’ in cricket, they have very different consequences, with the batter being immediately given out in cricket.
[Read more…]
I have been going on and on about how the term ‘politically correct’ has been abused both pre-emptively (by people who then go on to say mean things about members of marginalized groups) and defensively (to deflect attention from the fact that they have said something offensive). I was wracking my brain trying to think of a succinct way to capture what people really mean when they haul out political correctness but succinctness is not the strong suit for a wordy person like me.
[Read more…]
One has to be wary of seeing trends based on a few data points but there does seem to be a glimmering of hope that people around the world are fed up with the severe austerity policies that have been strongly pushed by a coalition of the transnational oligarchy, conservative politicians, and neoliberal organizations like the IMF and World Bank in the wake of the financial collapse of 2008. These austerity policies that have cut benefits and services while reducing taxes on the rich have created austerity for only the middle classes and the poor, while hugely enriching the already wealthy and the elites of the financial sector.
[Read more…]
Rowan County clerk Kim Davis has returned to work today and said that while she personally will not authorize the licenses, she will not block her deputies from issuing them, something that US district court judge David Bunning had sternly warned her from doing.
[Read more…]
I wrote about how when Republicans are accused of saying derogatory things about any group of people or proposing discriminatory ideas that adversely affect women or any minorities, they are quick to haul out the defense that they are being criticized because of ‘political correctness’.
[Read more…]
When I was in New Zealand recently, I watched a lot of World Cup cricket with my sons-in-law who were unfamiliar with the game. What impressed them was that the fielders in cricket, unlike in baseball, did not wear any gloves (except for the wicket keeper) and yet managed to stop and catch the ball with their bare hands, even though a cricket ball is roughly the same size and hardness as a baseball.
[Read more…]