That Mitchell and Webb Look looks at what happened during the later years of this once unstoppable force in operettas, when the well of creativity threatened to dry up. (The clip is only up to the 3:45 mark and then repeats itself.) [Read more…]
Tunisia has just approved a new constitution, three years after it was the first country to topple an autocratic government and unleash what is now known as the Arab spring. [Read more…]
What can you say about this news report that a vial of Pope John Paul II’s blood has been stolen from a village church? [Read more…]
Nevada is the latest state in which the ban on same-sex marriage may be in legal trouble, and it happened in a rather oblique way. The ban had been challenged in court by eight same–sex couples, four of whom had been denied marriage licenses in Nevada and four of whom had been married in other states and were demanding that Nevada recognize their marriages. The case is Sevcik v. Sandoval and the couples lost in the District Court but appealed to the Ninth Circuit court of Appeals. [Read more…]
In an interview with a German public broadcaster ARD TV, Edward Snowden dismantles yet another defense put out by supporters of president Obama and the NSA that, unlike those evil Chinese, Russian, and other governments who indulge in industrial espionage in order to get American business and trade secrets and thus benefit their own national industries, the US only spies as part of counter-terrorism efforts. [Read more…]
In his dissent in Marsh v. Chambers, justice William Brennan reinforced the Supreme Court’s earlier precedents that while there may be situations in which certain kinds of prayers may pass constitutional muster, it should never be the case that the government actually designs the prayers or acts as a censor to determine what prayers are allowed or not allowed. Even chief justice Warren Burger in his majority opinion said that “it is not for us to embark on a sensitive evaluation or to parse the content of a particular prayer.” [Read more…]
There were two exchanges on TV recently that were interesting to watch. In both, Glenn Greenwald took on alleged liberals who could not hide their disdain for Edward Snowden while at the same time being obliged to concede that the documents he released revealed hitherto secret government activities that we had a right to know about. [Read more…]
Just a reminder for those who are in the Cleveland area that I will be part of a panel that will discuss the Greece v. Galloway case at an event that is free and open to the public. The actual title of the session is (for some obscure reason) Religion and the Constitution in Modern Life. My series of posts on this topic can be seen here. [Read more…]
Irving Finkel, a curator at the British Museum, has translated a 3,700-year old Babylonian cuneiform tablet that gives precise and detailed instructions for constructing an ark and, to everyone’s surprise, the shape of the ark is circular, not the regular boat shape that we have grown up with. This ark was designed to be like a giant round basket, 3,600 square meters in area, or about two-thirds the size of a football (i.e., soccer) pitch. That’s pretty big but still would be pretty crowded with all the animals. [Read more…]
The Republican National Committee at its winter meeting by a voice vote on Friday passed a “Resolution To Renounce The National Security Agency’s Surveillance Program” which said that “the mass collection and retention of personal data is in itself contrary to the right of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution” and that “unwarranted government surveillance is an intrusion on basic human rights that threatens the very foundations of a democratic society and this program represents a gross infringement of the freedom of association and the right to privacy and goes far beyond even the permissive limits set by the Patriot Act.” [Read more…]