In following up the recent revelations of sexual abuse and cover up in the Orthodox Jewish community, I came across Shmarya Rosenberg, a blogger at Failed Messiah, who has been shining a bright and unflattering light on what goes on in that world. His website reveals a religious community whose leaders and members seems to be as zealous as the Catholic Church in protecting sexual predators and abusers and rapists. [Read more…]
Last Thursday, a panel of state appellate court judges ruled that proclamations of a Colorado Day of Prayer by successive governors violated the ‘Preference Clause’, the state constitution’s equivalent of the Establishment Clause of the federal constitution. The judges state in their opinion what should be obvious, that not having the government endorse their praying is not tantamount to not allowing them to pray at all. [Read more…]
In a previous post, I mused about the incessant swearing in the premier episode in the new HBO comedy Veep and wondered how normal it was. The comments from people familiar with that world suggested that it was quite common for people in high levels of government to swear all the time. [Read more…]
One of the most pernicious developments in modern journalism is the number of newspaper reports that feature anonymous sources. Anonymity is allowable and understandable for whistleblowers who risk retaliation for exposing wrongdoing or for victims of crimes or are otherwise in danger but now it is routinely given to high officials who are merely seeking to advance an agenda or are fighting internal turf wars and do not want their fingerprints over it. [Read more…]
The piling up of anger at the TSA continues and more people with access to media are being hit. The Atlantic columnist Jeffrey Goldberg describes a crotch issue involving his elderly mother-in-law and Henry Kissinger got the ‘full Monty’ pat down, even though he was in a wheelchair. [Read more…]
The New York Times has a horrible story about sexual abuse of children in the Orthodox Jewish communities. Rather than bringing the perpetrators to justice, the members of the community turn against the accusers. It is depressingly similar to the way that the Catholic church responded to sexual abuse allegations against its leaders. [Read more…]
As expected, both sides on the same sex marriage issue are treading warily and hopefully after president Obama’s statement that he personally supports it. His supporters are hoping that this statement, although minimal in scope and somewhat belated in timing, will still be sufficient to energize those who have been disillusioned by Obama’s failure to deliver on so many other issues and will lead to full-fledged equality soon. [Read more…]
Jon Stewart on The Daily Show had a fascinating interview with the late president’s biographer. Johnson was a complex man, good on civil rights, terrible when it came to Vietnam.
(This clip appeared on May 10, 2012. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)