I recently wrote about the controversy over the film Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Those who have seen the film may recall a funny but puzzling episode near the very end, involving a uniformed ‘suicide squad’ of soldiers who appear at the scene of Brian’s crucifixion.
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The death of comedian Joan Rivers has resulted in a wave of eulogies for her pioneering role as a woman in stand up comedy and as a talk show host. I have never actually seen any of her shows, but was aware that she was known for her scathing criticisms of people and fashions which she did turn on herself too.
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Dan Froomkin said in an ealier post that “the elite press gets tighter and tighter with those to whom it should be adversarial”. This failing seems to be most pronounced within the community of ‘national security’ reporters who seem to be particularly prone to try and be friends with the people they cover and act as mouthpieces for them. One of the most notorious is Dina Temple-Raston of NPR whose failings I have chronicled many times. In his book Goliath, Max Blumenthal gives case after case of how Israeli reporters report as facts what the Israeli national security establishment tells them and essentially become part of the propaganda system.
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Michael Che of The Daily Show speaks to some of the people who are convinced that the influx of refugee children from Central America is all part of some grand covert plan to destroy America, that they are Trojan horses. At the same time, he finds encouraging signs that a lot of people see the issue not as some kind of existential threat to the US but simply as children fleeing persecution.
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The recent discovery in Patagonia of the fossils of a massive dinosaur of a completely new species was a great surprise. The word ‘massive’ is actually an understatement.
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Dan Froomkin was one of the best reporter/bloggers in the mainstream press before he was fired by the Washington Post in June 2009 for being too hard on the occupant of the White House, first George W. Bush and then later on Barack Obama, threatening the relationship the newspaper carefully cultivates with power, where you are allowed to criticize but only within certain limits.
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Norm Stamper used to be police chief in Seattle when he unleashed police in full riot gear onto demonstrators at the 1999 World Trade Organization. He greatly regretted that action and now has become a critic of paramilitary gear for police and for using harsh tactics when dealing with the general public.
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A three judge panel of the US Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has unanimously struck down same-sex marriage bans in Wisconsin and Indiana. You can read the history of the case here and the opinion here.
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Via Jonathan Turley I learned something that I had not known before, and that is that in India the law requires you to get government approval to change your religion. That bizarre law had its genesis in preventing forcible conversions by giving a third party the opportunity to judge if the person genuinely agreed to the conversion.
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As was expected, the full panel of judges in the DC District Court of Appeals has decided to re-hear the Halbig v. Burwell case where a panel of three judges voted 2-1 that the tax credits provided by the federal government was not allowed under the Affordable Care Act, saying that the language of the act only allowed exchanges set up the states to do so.
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