So what happened at what is being called the Koch primary, where five of the Republican candidates went to an event hosted by the Koch brothers and tried their best to ingratiate themselves by groveling before them in the hope that they would be the beneficiaries of their largesse?
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The ACLU of Indiana has filed a lawsuit on behalf of a seven-year old boy identified only as A.B. who, when asked during recess by a classmate if he attended church, told her that he did not because he did not believe in a god.
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As regular readers know, I am originally from Sri Lanka and so my attention was caught by this report on NPR about a novel way of dealing with the problem of providing internet access to people in remote and hard to reach areas. The island is roughly the size of West Virginia and also mountainous and its long-running civil war that ended only in 2009 left about a third of the country devastated and with limited infrastructure. Although the main cities are highly developed, currently only about 16% of the population is connected to the internet.
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The first Republican debate is on August 6, 2015. Normally, I would never have dreamed of wasting two hours of my life watching an early Republican primary debate. Who wants to see a bunch of wealthy oligarch-serving warmongers try and outdo each other in pandering to their xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, science-denying base, especially since it is being shown on Fox News and I do not have cable TV? But thanks to Donald Trump, I am so intrigued about what might happen that I am going to the trouble of going to a friend’s house to see it. And it is clear that I am not the only one who has been suckered into giving what Fox News expects to be a ratings bonanza. Even their decision to limit it to ten candidates has had the effect of heightening suspense with breathless discussions of who is in and who is out.
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On the latest episode of his show Last Week Tonight John Oliver looks at the history of how the residents of the District of Columbia ended up without many of the basic electoral rights that the rest of the nation enjoys, the way that Congress interferes with and overrides its decisions, and the feeble excuses given for maintaining the status quo.
You must listen to the song sung by the children at the end, beginning at the 15:30 mark. It is hilarious.
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Zimbabwe has expressed an interest in having the dentist Walter Palmer be extradited to that country to face charges for illegally killing Cecil the lion. They have already arrested the owner of the land on which the lion was killed and the leader of the hunt.
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I got the complaint below from a regular reader of my blog about his inability to view the Comedy Central videos that I embed. He has submitted the problem to the tech gurus here by clicking on the ‘Tech Issues’ link at the top left but I thought that tech savvy readers may also be able to help him out. Has anyone had had a similar problem or any advice for what he should do? I should note that he lives in the US, so this is not one of those cases where streaming is being deliberately blocked.
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As the nationwide unrest over the harassment and killing of people, especially poor and black, by police continues, Jack Hitt at Mother Jones notes that many of these violent confrontations began with what appear to be really trivial offenses and that this can be traced back to local governments using the fines generated by minor offenses as a way of plugging budget shortfalls.
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The Daily Show examines the state of the Republican party and how well their efforts to change their image as being the party of rich white men and appeal to women and minorities is going. Hint: Not well.
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The former president has some very harsh but accurate words about the state of the US, following the ruling by the Supreme Court in Citizens United allowing the almost unlimited and unregulated amounts of money into the political system.
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