Katrina vanden Heuvel (editor of the Nation magazine) and Stephen F. Cohen (professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York University and Princeton) published the results of a long interview that they had with Edward Snowden in Russia and it offers interesting glimpses of what his life is like now.
[Read more…]
When it comes to current events, we like to think that we base our opinions about the news on facts. But very often we do not have the facts at hand and may not have the time or the ability to summon them at short notice. Even if we do have a smartphone with us when we are engaged with someone in a discussion, it is very rarely that we actually use it to get the required information to make sure that we are right. We go with what we think we know to be true.
[Read more…]
In an earlier post, I expressed my discomfort with getting a mailing stating how many times I had voted in the past five elections and the average for my neighborhood. But Darren Smith says that in some areas mailings are a getting far more specific, to the point of being vaguely intimidating. He quotes from one such letter:
[Read more…]
Brianne Gorod, an Appellate Counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, says that those who think (like I do) that the US Supreme Court agreeing to take on the federal subsidies issue is a sign that they are going to disallow it and thus seriously wound Obamacare are being too pessimistic (or too optimistic, if you happen to be an opponent of the health care law).
[Read more…]
What should you do when you know that someone wants to kiss you but is finding it hard to get to you? The polite thing to do is to help them out by going up to them and giving them a gentle kiss, as we see in this case.
[Read more…]
The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution tersely says that “Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion”. Over time, this short phrase has had to be fleshed out and this has resulted in a messy stew of decisions resulting in great confusion.
[Read more…]
I read a news item recently about a 90-year old man who was arrested (twice!) in Fort Lauderdale because he violated a city ordinance that prohibited people from feeding homeless people in public. While the city asserts that it is doing so for the good of the homeless, one cannot help but have the suspicion that the real reason is that they don’t want the sight of homeless people to ruin the tourist experience for this popular vacation spot.
[Read more…]
Research results in applied psychology often have a big impact on the general public because those works address questions that people can directly relate to. Who isn’t interested in what we are like and how we relate to others? Sometimes the research results cause great controversy and can even lead to rapid changes in public policy.
[Read more…]
The US Supreme Court on Friday decided to hear the case King v. Burwell of whether the subsidies provided by the health exchanges set up by the federal government under Obamacare are constitutional. This is ominous. Why?
[Read more…]
Congresswoman Barbara Lee of California is one of the most progressive members of Congress. In this interview with Stephen Colbert, she also shows that she is a pretty good sport. It is one of the silliest of such interviews by Colbert that I have seen and he pushes the limits quite a bit but Lee does not flinch and gives as good as she gets.
[Read more…]