The latest ‘terror plot’ foiled by the FBI

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.
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Holder curbs federal role in civil asset forfeitures

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.
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Same-sex marriage showdown coming in the Supreme Court

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.
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The heavenly tourism scam

I had heard of Colton Burpo, a young boy who claimed that he had gone to heaven and returned, and whose book Heaven Is For Real (written with his father) became a best-seller and also a film. In it, he describes meeting his grandfather and the other usual stuff people believe about heaven. His co-author father happens to be an evangelical pastor and the fact that the heaven described coincides with his beliefs did not seem to strike people as suspicious. The other co-author was Sarah Palin’s co-author, which didn’t help much.
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The shifting language of race and ethnicity

Race is a highly sensitive topic and yet so important that we cannot, and should not, avoid talking about it. But what makes discussions about race fraught with pitfalls is that even what to call people of different races is problematic, with terms that were considered appropriate at one time becoming frowned upon later, with those who grew up in one era having to remind themselves that the terms they once used casually are no longer socially acceptable.
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Jimmy Carter on the attempts to cure major diseases

While I have my criticisms of some aspects of Jimmy Carter’s record while he was president, there is no question that he was one of the better ones in recent times and has been doing some good work since returning to private life. The former president spoke with Jon Stewart about the efforts, in which his own center has participated, that have led to the almost complete eradication of the awful disease caused by the guinea worm.
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A curious case of repetition

Writing a daily comic strip has to be one of the hardest things to do in the creative arts. Having to come up with a good and original joke every single day is something I cannot imagine doing, assuming that I can come up with any jokes at all, which I can’t. Cartoonists often fall back on familiar tropes such as people stuck on a desert island or the Garden of Eden or the fortune teller with a crystal ball and the repetition of such tropes is seen as fair game as long as the joke is slightly different. Some cartoonists have their own particular tropes that they fall back upon.
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