In a comment on my review of Skyfall, Daniel Schealler introduced me to the ‘Honest Trailers’ series, where people create their own trailers poking fun at the film. Of course, it is funnier if you have seen the film and I particularly liked this one. [Read more…]
Jon Oliver has had a spectacularly good three-part series comparing gun control efforts in Australia and the US, putting the lie to the claims in the US that gun control does not work to curb gun-related violence and that implementing it is hard and takes a long time. [Read more…]
It looks like I was premature in giving the Justice Department credit for reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights. It appears that they questioned him for a long time before a judge insisted on reading him his rights on Monday. So once again, we are dependent on the judiciary to intervene to make sure the government does not violate the rights of people. (In a separate case, a federal judge is challenging the government’s claim to broad secrecy powers.) [Read more…]
The Daily Show has yet more fun at the expense of CNN for its coverage of the Boston bombings, showing how they seemed to have thrown editorial judgment out the window in their effort to portray a sense of immediacy and urgency, even when they had no idea what was going on and were simply making wild guesses based on the flimsiest of evidence. [Read more…]
Before law enforcement officials released photographs of the two suspects in the Boston bombing, some media outlets went overboard in their attempt to finger ‘dark-skinned’ people as culprits for the Boston bombing. [Read more…]
The debate over gun control is a complicated one. A case can be made that people should have the right to own guns of their own. But there is no question that opponents of any form of gun control invest in the Second Amendment an almost mystical quality that suggests that any regulation of any kind is a horrendous violation, and this is taking them over the cliff leading to a kind of extremism that can backfire. [Read more…]
I was always curious as to how people are selected to be in the police line up of suspects. Apart from the person of interest, who are the other people? Police officers in plain clothes was my guess. But this clip from a new comedy series The Lineup on YouTube suggests that I may be wrong. (Via Bluegal) [Read more…]
Rand Paul clearly has ambitions of running for the presidency, if not in 2016 then later. He got a lot of press for going to Howard University to talk about GOP outreach to the African-American community. It was not a big success, unless he was trying to get a negative reaction from the students there in order to improve his standing with the GOP base, which sees all minorities as moochers. [Read more…]
Margaret Thatcher was a very polarizing figure during her time in public life. Some loved her policies, others hated them, with me falling in the latter category. Following her death, there has been the predictable reaction from some quarters that those who disliked her actions should not say anything bad about her out of respect for her family. Of course, when the dead person is an enemy (such as bin Laden or Saddam Hussein and his sons) their delicate sense of propriety seems to disappear and we had in the US gleeful gloating at the highest levels (see here and here). [Read more…]