Ben Carson is burning up a lot of pants

Now that Ben Carson has managed to draw attention to himself with his remarks about the Oregon shooting and the yet-uncorroborated story of having a gun dug into his ribs at a Popeye’s restaurant, people have started looking more closely at the other things he has said. (Too bad that Carson didn’t have the gun pointed at him at a Burger King instead of a Popeye’s because after all, that is the Home of the Whopper.)
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In defense of the indefensible

Consider the following scenario.

A Muslim terrorist has got hold of a massive nuclear weapon that can be triggered by remote control and has placed it in a secret location in the heart of New York City. You are his prisoner in a room where he has his finger on the detonator button. He gleefully tells you that he is going to set off the weapon killing and injuring tens of thousands of people unless you agree to his demands. What demands? He points to a woman cowering in the corner and says that if you rape her, he will not blow up the bomb and will give himself up peacefully.

Wouldn’t rape be justified in such a situation?
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Film review: Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (2015)

Last night I watched the above documentary written and directed by Alex Gibney and largely based on the book Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (2013) by Lawrence Wright that I favorably reviewed here. That review provides a lot of the information that is in the film so I will not repeat it here.
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More details emerge on the US assault on the Kunduz hospital

More details are emerging about the attack by a US gunship on the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan in the early hours of Saturday, October 3, 2015 that resulted in 22 deaths (so far), at least 37 injured, 33 missing, and resulted in the closing of the only major hospital that served a wide area. After talking with the people who worked at the hospital and live in the area, the Los Angeles Times provides a detailed chronology of the events of that night. The Washington Post has another account that complements it, using as its main sources the US and Afghan military.
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Stephen Colbert on the chaos in the Republican party

He had a hilarious bit about the maneuvering to not become the next Speaker of the House of Representatives. I have not been watching his new show but it looks like the set-piece monologue segments like this are exactly like the ones he used to do on his old show and that is a good thing. The one difference is that he no longer has to act like a right wing nutter.
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And then there was one (young gun)

Every time I think that the state of US politics in general, and the Republican party in particular, has reached new depths of dysfunctionality and cannot sink any lower, I get proved wrong. The bizarre struggle to find a new Speaker for the House of Representatives truly marks a major new low. The Speaker’s post was until just recently something that ambitious young congresspeople aspired to as the pinnacle of their careers. It enabled the holder to wield considerable political power, someone who, along with the senate majority leader and the president, pretty much determined the agenda of the country. The Speaker was the second in line for the presidency, after the vice-president, which gives some idea of the importance attached to the position by the drafters of the US Constitution. (UPDATE: This is wrong. As Chiroptera points out in the comments, the complete line of succession is not in the Constitution but is specified by law. Ahcuah points out that some legal scholars say that the Speaker does not qualify to be in the list at all. Thanks to both!)
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