In January 1965,Playboy magazine published a lengthy interview (the longest he had ever given) that Alex Haley had with the civil rights leader soon after he won the Nobel Peace Prize. In it he expressed his views on a wide range of issues and provides a window into the mind of a remarkable man, revealing a self-assurance and lack of ego in his willingness to admit to all manner of tactical mistakes that he had made.
[Read more…]
A new report says that for the first time in 50 years, a majority of public school students come from families who are eligible for free and reduced-price lunches. As Kevin Drum points out, those who quality for free lunch (44%) have family incomes of less than $31,000, while for the 7% who get reduced-price lunches the cut-off is $44,000.
[Read more…]
Today is the day that the US commemorates Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a man whom I admire greatly and have written about before many times so will not repeat those views. But I will likely not be going to see the new film Selma, that deals with the civil rights struggle of which he was such a big part and uses a key event of that struggle to tell the story, even though the film has been praised.
[Read more…]
This clip from The Daily Show ran back in February 2011. I don’t watch CNN so I don’t know if they are still doing these absurd things to try and attract a greater audience or if they have sunk even lower, if that is even possible.
[Read more…]
I live a very sedentary life. Most of my working day and even leisure hours are spent seated, looking at a computer screen. News report after news report say that this can lead to all manner of physical ailments including bad posture, carpal tunnel syndrome, and muscle atrophy. But since so many jobs now involve using a computer almost all the time, what is one to do?
[Read more…]
Once again we have the government announcing that, thanks to the diligent work of their security services, they have foiled a terrorist plot aimed at the heart of the US government and spared us all from a Paris-style attack.
For months, 20-year-old Christopher Lee Cornell had been on the FBI’s radar. Authorities said he left alarming posts on social media, talking about violent jihad.
On Wednesday, agents arrested the Cincinnati man before he could put his alleged plot into action.
[Read more…]
Anti-abortion forces in the US are doing everything they can to make the process of getting one so difficult that while the right to an abortion may exist in theory, in practice it will not be available except (of course) for rich people who can afford to go anywhere and get a doctor to perform one.
[Read more…]
In the waning days of his tenure in office, Attorney General Eric Holder has taken some actions that are praiseworthy. First he has criticized the trigger-happy behavior of many police departments, including the Cleveland one. Then he said that his office will defend the rights of same-sex couples to marry in the upcoming case before the US Supreme Court.
[Read more…]
After keeping observers guessing for a long time as to whether they will take on the issue of same-sex marriage during this term, the US Supreme Court in a notice yesterday finally decided to do so. There were many cases that had been appealed to them and what I found interesting was that they accepted for review the four cases that the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decided. This was the only Appeals Court circuit that back in November upheld bans on same-sex marriage and I strongly criticized its weird reasoning.
[Read more…]
A French satirical news show Le Petit Journal had fun with Fox News and a claim by one of their ‘experts’ that parts of Paris are no-go zones that look like Iraq or Afghanistan and are so dominated by violent and intolerant Muslims and that outsiders cannot enter those neighborhoods without fear or protection.
[Read more…]