Obama’s war on whistleblowers continues apace

One of the major areas where Barack Obama has shamelessly and inexcusably reversed himself from what he campaigned on in 2008 is with regard to whistleblower protections. Candidate Obama praised those who blew the whistle on the Bush administration’s use of telecommunications companies to illegally spy on Americans, saying “We only know these crimes took place because insiders blew the whistle at great personal risk … Government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal.” This was part of his promise to have one of the most transparent administrations ever. [Read more…]

Boy Scout denied Eagle Scout rank because he is gay

Ryan Andresen had dreamed of becoming an Eagle Scout from the age of six and had steadily worked towards it, creating as a project in high school a ‘tolerance wall’ of 288 unique tiles is an effort to create awareness of the need to combat bullying. He was devastated when his troop leader said that he could not be made an Eagle Scout because he had come out as gay. [Read more…]

What the Hagel nomination says about US political discourse

Harvard’s Stephen M. Walt, someone who belongs to the ‘realist’ school of US foreign policy analysis, writes that the nomination of Chuck Hagel for the post of Defense Secretary does not point to a significant shift in the direction of president Obama’s foreign policy but does represent a widening in the range of such discussions. [Read more…]

We use almost all our brains

One sometimes hears that humans use only about 10% of our brains. Some have suggested that this means that if only we could learn how to harness our brains fully, we could be geniuses. Others have used it to argue, somewhat desperately, that this limited utilization is the reason for god’s ineffability, because in the unused portions lies the ability to understand how god works and what his plan for us is. [Read more…]

Using liberal causes for conservative ends

Yesterday, I highlighted an important article by Glenn Greenwald about how Chuck Hagel’s 1998 opposition to a gay nominee for US ambassador is one of the tools being used to try and torpedo his nomination for Defense Secretary, even though such views were much more common at that time and were similar to those held by people, like Barack Obama, who are now viewed as liberal icons. Furthermore, Hagel has rightly since apologized for those remarks to the person about whom they were made and other commentators have pointed out that his views on gay issues have progressed considerably since that time, as has been the case for so many of us. [Read more…]

Film review: My Man Godfrey

I saw the 1936 black-and-white comedy My Man Godfrey over the weekend and really liked it. I hadn’t expected to because it seemed to be about the high life of a very rich but eccentric family indulging in endless rounds of vapid partying in the post-1929 crash period. I watched it out of solidarity with my visiting daughter who has developed a taste for classic films and discovered that the film was not only funny, it had a pretty good social message too. [Read more…]