Spoiling things for others

Although I have never banned anyone, I have had the occasion to delete one comment. This was in response to the post about spoiling film endings. In the discussion, commenters referred to various films that had surprise endings and discussed them without giving them away. Then someone came along and posted a comment that listed all the endings to every film that had been discussed. I deleted it so quickly that I suspect that most readers never saw it. [Read more…]

How money came to so dominate politics in the US

Last evening I went to talk given by Robert McChesney, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. He is a prolific author on the media and politics and he was speaking about the ideas in his new book (co-authored with John Nicholls) titled Dollarocracy: How the Money-and-Media Election Complex is Destroying America in which he argues that the idea of ‘one person, one vote’ has now become ‘one dollar, one vote’. [Read more…]

Pete Seeger, 1919-2014

Pete Seeger died today. He was an American treasure, a powerful voice for justice and peace all throughout his long and colorful life, whose musical and political influence extended well beyond the borders of the USA. I had heard of Seeger and knew his songs growing up in Sri Lanka. This entry in Wikipedia captures the strength and consistency of the principles that drove him and his refusal to back down when asked to compromise those principles, even if it meant going to jail. [Read more…]

Nevada’s same-sex marriage ban may be in trouble

Nevada is the latest state in which the ban on same-sex marriage may be in legal trouble, and it happened in a rather oblique way. The ban had been challenged in court by eight same–sex couples, four of whom had been denied marriage licenses in Nevada and four of whom had been married in other states and were demanding that Nevada recognize their marriages. The case is Sevcik v. Sandoval and the couples lost in the District Court but appealed to the Ninth Circuit court of Appeals. [Read more…]

NSA involved in industrial sabotage

In an interview with a German public broadcaster ARD TV, Edward Snowden dismantles yet another defense put out by supporters of president Obama and the NSA that, unlike those evil Chinese, Russian, and other governments who indulge in industrial espionage in order to get American business and trade secrets and thus benefit their own national industries, the US only spies as part of counter-terrorism efforts. [Read more…]

Prayer at government functions-8: Why government prayer is never purely ceremonial

In his dissent in Marsh v. Chambers, justice William Brennan reinforced the Supreme Court’s earlier precedents that while there may be situations in which certain kinds of prayers may pass constitutional muster, it should never be the case that the government actually designs the prayers or acts as a censor to determine what prayers are allowed or not allowed. Even chief justice Warren Burger in his majority opinion said that “it is not for us to embark on a sensitive evaluation or to parse the content of a particular prayer.” [Read more…]