Once again we are witnessing a debate in the US Senate as to whether the filibuster should be dispensed with. To be quite honest, I cannot get too excited about this kind of rule change, though I can see why abandoning it could have significant consequences. But it is a symptom of a far more serious problem. I think that the US political system has deep problems that extend far beyond arcane senate rules. [Read more…]
[UPDATE: Please see comment #7 by Holly Wesley, daughter of the late Mary Hamilton.]
There are some film scenes that are not only indelibly etched in one’s personal memory but become part of the collective memory of an entire generation. One such scene is this one with Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger from the 1967 film In the Heat of the Night, with Poitier as a police detective from Philadelphia who gets involved, alongside Steiger as the local sheriff, in a murder investigation in a small town in Mississippi and has to deal with the racism he encounters.
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It looks like Edward Snowden has decided to create international pressure against the US government’s attempts to block his travel. Although he has offers of political asylum from three Latin American countries (Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua), the determination of the US government to get its hands on him, and the willingness of its client states in western Europe to assist it in doing so, present major difficulties for him to get there. This article by the McClatchy news service discusses the hurdles in his path. [Read more…]
The Los Angeles Times published a grim tale of someone who got trapped in the Kafkaesque world occupied by those on the infamous ‘no fly list’.
For two weeks, Rehan Motiwala, a 29-year-old medical student from Pomona, sat stranded at the Bangkok airport, sleeping for 10 nights on a roach-infested mattress in a dank, windowless detention room reserved for deportees. [Read more…]
The Guardian reveals how software companies secretly gave access to the NSA to their customers’ information. What is revealed includes things such as:
By necessity I have become somewhat of a connoisseur of how the government manipulates the media and public opinion. One of the things that I have repeatedly emphasized is their technique of, whenever they are caught doing something wrong or criminal or even merely embarrassing, they immediately put out an alternative and more sensational story that is meant to shift the focus the discussion away from what they got caught doing. [Read more…]
The biggest waste of wars lies in the loss of human lives, not to mention the trauma that war inflicts on those who have to live through it. But in addition, wars also waste immense amounts of money that could have been so much better used to improve the lives of the people in those countries made their lives so much better. Instead, wars destroy what infrastructure they have so the people in war-torn countries are harmed in multiple ways. [Read more…]
One of the odd things about the state of politics is that the views of politicians almost always lag behind that of the voters since it takes time to throw out an incumbent who longer represents the views of his or her constituency. But usually the views of voters on major issues change slowly enough over time that this discrepancy is not glaring [Read more…]
It looks like 2014 will see a ballot initiative in Ohio that seeks to repeal the 2004 constitutional amendment that was passed by referendum to ban same-sex marriage in the state. You can learn more about the ballot initiative and how to support it here. The text of the issue to be put to the vote is here. [Read more…]
The chances of comprehensive immigration reform being passed by the US Congress have waxed and more recently waned with splits clearly emerging as various factions within the Republican party have struggled to decide whether it is a good thing or not. [Read more…]