Joe.My.God explains: Baltimore police have made two arrests in the brutal attack on a transgender woman at a McDonald’s, where staffers filmed the assault with their cell phones, then urged the assailants to flee before police arrived. The only person that appears to come to the victim’s aid is an elderly female customer, although the restaurant’s [...]
This account of how nuclear power works and what the current danger was remarkably clarifying for me: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Dr. Maddow would truly make a superb physics professor (you know, if she actually had as good a grasp of all physics as she has of [...]
Edward Tarte says everything that shouldn’t need to be said on the topic, but sadly does: The word poison is a bit unnecessarily strong, but the rest is spot on. Your Thoughts?
Grove City College, my alma mater from which I graduated with a BA in Philosophy and a minor in Religion in 2000, is an Evangelical Christian college which ranks among America’s most religiously and politically conservative colleges. Princeton Review ranks Grove City among the “Best Northeastern Colleges” and among the 373 best colleges in the [...]
Sendai Anonymous has the scoop on how the enemy of our enemy may not be our friend. Your Thoughts?
Sickening: The Catholic Church in Rome made the extraordinary admission yesterday that it is aware priests from at least 23 countries have been sexually abusing nuns. The Catholic Church in Rome made the extraordinary admission yesterday that it is aware priests from at least 23 countries have been sexually abusing nuns. Most of the abuse [...]
In an e-mail to me, Caroline proposes thought provoking reasons for non-believers to encourage (or at least to not actively discourage) religious beliefs: It would also be nice if people would carry out actions in good conscience of just being decent human beings rather than in fear of reprisal in the afterlife, but as there [...]
Razib Kahn has a most disturbing chart: Kahn explains the above: On the x-axis you see the proportion who accept that adulterers should be stoned. On the y-axis you see the responses to amputation and apostasy. The red points are the proportion who agree with the death penalty for apostates, and the navy points those [...]
A satirization of Sarah Palin and what she represents: Of course, as it turned out there were no direct connections between Sarah Palin and Jared Lee Loughner. Nonetheless this is entirely valid criticism of the completely reckless conflation of guns with politics, self-righteous apocalyptic theocratic jingoistic religion, loose talk about revolution, and hyperbolic associations of [...]
Anderson Cooper interviews Montana State Representative Bob Wagner who refuses to admit that he knows either that President Obama was born in America or even that being born in America makes someone a citizen: Stupefyingly, Representative Wagner is representative of more than 50% of likely Republican primary voters: Birthers make a majority among those voters [...]
Is it always excessive force to taser someone who is not posing a serious physical risk to others? Your Thoughts?
Watching this video, I’m starting to fear those who have seemingly no belief in either the intrinsic value or potential effectiveness of democracy as much as I fear Islamism: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Your Thoughts?
Will Wilkinson gives an eloquent defense of the joy in Egypt today: I admit that I am more than a little tempted to rain on the parade and note that Mr Mubarak’s departure guarantees nothing and that it is not unreasonable to fear a turn for the worse. There’s a tiny, stability-loving Burke on my [...]
An upsetting and infuriating inference from Nicholas Kristof: Today President Mubarak seems to have decided to crack down on the democracy movement, using not police or army troops but rather mobs of hoodlums and thugs. I’ve been spending hours on Tahrir today, and it is absurd to think of this as simply “clashes” between two [...]
via The Daily Dish (whose Egypt coverage all-day, everyday is must read) and whatstherumpus.) Your Thoughts?
Nathan Brown is a political science professor at George Washington University and director of the school’s Institute for Middle East Studies. He gives an overview of the Muslim Brotherhood’s evolution from their found through to today, explains how their renunciation of violent means came to pass decades ago, why al-Qaeda sees them as sell outs, [...]
A helpful guide, with special emphases on how not to be insufferably condescending. Your Thoughts?
I received secondhand this reply to my post on Clinton’s response to the situation in Egypt: 1. I’d like his explicit definition or explication of “long term concerns for stability in the region.” 2. If we really want the United States not to be dictating to foreign countries what they should do then we should [...]
I have already made my case that Secretary Clinton is saying the right things. In the interest of giving equal time to alternative viewpoints, here is a wholly uncharitable and scathing video which “translates” recent remarks to show that she allegedly “really means” the wrong things: Your Thoughts?
As always when I venture out of my areas of specialization, let me preface all following remarks with the obvious reminder—I am by no means a foreign policy expert or a Middle East expert. So take the following on the merits of my arguments and bring forth any facts you think I may need to [...]
There is a wealth of stuff out there worth boning up on. This story explains that Giffords is not the only of Palin’s crosshaired candidates to receive vandalism or death threats. Here is a timeline of two and a half years of disturbing, political, gun related statements and behavior coming from the right wing. Bryce [...]
The first video is a phone call, the others are videos: Your Thoughts?
Sheriff Clarence Dupnik speaks out against violent rhetoric and ideologies: Your Thoughts?
So, as you have probably heard, there is a new edition of Huckelberry Finn which has replaced all instances of the N-word in the book with the word “slave” to make the book palatable to a number of schools which have avoided using Mark Twain’s classic because of its use of the N-word. Now, here [...]
Terrifying and infuriating news: Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head by a gunman at a public event in Tucson on Saturday. There are conflicting reports about whether she was killed. The Pima County, Ariz., sheriff’s office told member station KJZZ the 40-year-old Democrat was killed. At least nine other people, including members of [...]