South African-born comedian Trevor Noah has been announced as the new host of The Daily Show when Jon Stewart leaves later this year. I was surprised by this move since he is a newcomer to the show having just joined in November of last year. It is also interesting that Noah is, after John Oliver of Last Week Tonight, the second foreign-born host of a political show.
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There are many reasons to hate the death penalty. But one of the main ones is because poor defendants are often sent to death row by prosecutors who simply don’t care if they are guilty of the crime or not but simply want to get a conviction. The latest example of this is that of Anthony Ray Hinton who was sentenced to death and spent 28 years in jail in solitary confinement for a crime he did not commit. He has just been released at age 58 after vigorous efforts on his behalf. But he could well have ended up dead, one more innocent person killed because our society’s obsession with vengeance is matched by a shocking lack of concern about fairness and justice.
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It looks like the P5+1 nations (US, Russia, China, France, UK, and Germany) have arrived at a framework for a deal with Iran on partially reducing the sanctions regime against that nation in return for concessions on its nuclear program, and both sides are claiming satisfaction with the deal. Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks explains what the preliminary deal struck between Iran and the western powers involves, and says that Iran had made some extraordinary concessions.
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Jonathan Turley describes two more cases in which the police acted aggressively against people for no other reason that they did not immediately acquiesce to their demands, something that I have written about before too.
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Bob Jones University is an extremely fundamentalist Christian institution that not only denounces homosexuality but also even prohibited inter-racial dating and marriage. When that policy was challenged by the IRS that denied its tax-exempt status because of its discriminatory policies, the university took its case against the IRS all the way to the US Supreme Court, where they lost.
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The Bloodhound SSC (which stands for SuperSonic Car) aims to break the speed record for land (and air), reaching speeds in excess of 1000 mph. The current record is 763.035mph, just above the sound barrier, set in 1997. The attempt is slated for later this year.
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With the recent news that president Obama has lifted the freeze on sending weapons to Egypt and authorized the selling of $1.3 billion worth of military hardware, we see that the US relationship with that nation has come full circle.
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There has been an odd sequel following comedian Chris Rock’s statement that he gets pulled over by the police all the time. Each time that happens, while stopped and waiting for the police to come up to him, he takes a photo and posts it on Instagram with a comment that ends with the sign-off “Wish me luck”.
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All families have secrets. Sometimes these secrets are known widely within the family but not shared with outsiders. In other cases, these secrets are kept from close members of the family even, or particularly, those directly affected by them. But eventually the truth usually emerges and the process can be painful for those involved.
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