The entry of Bernie Sanders into the Democratic party primary race has had some on the left speculating that his role is not to try and win the nomination nor to even try and shift the debate towards more progressive policies but to essentially keep progressives within the Democratic party fold and prevent them from not voting or going to a third party.
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We have heard dire warnings from people in the US, even Republican presidential candidates like Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, that they will defy any attempt to put same-sex marriage on a par with opposite-sex marriage. These warnings have come in anticipation that the US Supreme Court might rule this month that bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional.
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While scanning the bookshelf in my house looking for a particular volume, I happened to come across a copy of one of the most well-known Agatha Christie novels Ten Little Indians that is a detective story without a detective, consisting of a somewhat contrived plot in which ten people are invited to an isolated island by a mysterious host and then get killed off one by one in a manner that reflects the children’s poem from which the book’s title is taken.
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Donald Rumsfeld is the latest person edging away from criminal responsibility for the Iraq disaster but rather than shifting the blame to the rest of the Bush-Cheney regime for what was doomed from the start to be a quagmire, he, like other media commentators, is now trying to blame president Obama for the mess that he inherited and has led to the current state of affairs.
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How would you respond if a co-worker asked you such a question? This was a question that was asked of a person who watches Pat Robertson’s 700 Club show and she decided to ask the big guy (Robertson, not god) what the response should have been.
Of course, no one is likely to ask an atheist like me such a question but if I had been asked it during the time I was a lay minister in the church, I would have been stumped. After all, the problem of theodicy has challenged the most famous religious apologists down the ages and their answers, when stripped of all the theological verbiage, essentially boils down to “Beats me. Who the hell knows? Just believe that it makes sense somehow.”
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In the absence of a clear statement by the US Supreme Court, a patchwork of decisions about same-sex marriage have been created all over the country, creating a great deal of confusion. Such marriages are currently legal in 36 states and the District of Columbia. Some states have legalized them by legislative acts, some by referenda, but most have been as a result of courts declaring that bans on such marriages were unconstitutional.
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Anthony Elonis seems like a thoroughly unpleasant person. The former amusement park worker wrote Facebook posts threatening to kill his estranged wife who had left him and taken their two children, harming his co-workers, shooting children in a kindergarten class, blowing up police officers with explosives, killing an FBI agent, and so on.
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God picks a 31-year old insurance clerk Ike Simmons to give an exclusive interview. But there are some restrictions.
IKE INTERVIEWS GOD from Eli Shapiro on Vimeo.
Dan Froomkin writes:
Sometimes people ask me: Why do smart, elite journalists quote people who they know are lying, or being moronically stupid, but not call what they say lies and stupidities? Why do they engage in split-the-difference false equivalence in political coverage that leaves readers terribly uninformed about what’s really going on?
This is what you get when Breaking Bad meets SpongeBob SquarePants.