Labor Day. It’s that one holiday in the US which basically no one knows how to celebrate. Are we supposed to go to work or not? Aside from eat too much food, what else is there for us to do? Maybe raise our glasses in a toast to the unemployment rate? Or have a moment […]
Continue reading →Yesterday, I wrote about Kim Davis, the Rowan County clerk who has refused to issue marriage licenses of any kind since the June Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage. Yesterday, I asked the question of whether Davis was a hero or a hypocrite, since she herself has been married four times. Since I wrote that […]
Continue reading →In Rowan County Kentucky, a county clerk is facing stiff penalties for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Her name is Kim Davis, and she’s become some kind of a hero in conservative circles. I too am in the camp cheering her on. But perhaps not for the same reasons as other conservatives. […]
Continue reading →Civil forfeiture laws look a whole lot like legalized highway robbery. Because that’s basically what they are. And because of the fact that they constitute basically free money for federal and state governments, it’s highly unlikely for civil forfeitures to be overturned in court. But occasionally it happens. Take the recent, mind-numbing case of Straughn […]
Continue reading →Recently, the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP called for the removal of Confederate figures from the face of Stone Mountain in Georgia: The organization issued a statement calling for the removal of all symbols of the Confederacy from the park. “My tax dollars should not be used to commemorate slavery,” [Atlanta NAACP chapter president Richard] […]
Continue reading →In light of our “politically correct” need to expunge away anything that offends us, I thought this harrowing excerpt from George Orwell’s 1984 might be apropos: Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And […]
Continue reading →According to the results of recent undercover tests, TSA airport security measures are hugely ineffective: An internal investigation of the Transportation Security Administration revealed security failures at dozens of the nation’s busiest airports, where undercover investigators were able to smuggle mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints in 95 percent of trials, ABC News has learned. The […]
Continue reading →Oh, the revolving door. How I hate thee. It’s becoming quite common for corporate lobbyists to get seats in key bureaucratic committees overseeing funding for their former employers (see: Comcast and the FCC or Monsanto and the FDA/EPA). The latest entry in that increasingly ballooning file involves the ever-repugnant TSA: Rapiscan Systems lobbied aggressively to win a […]
Continue reading →According to a new report by the Inspector General, the PATRIOT ACT is still useless. That’s right: still. We pretty much already knew it was designed more to make us feel safe than be safe, but years after its initial ratification, it’s becoming more and more difficult to find any reason at all to keep […]
Continue reading →Today is Tax Day, and you’ve probably noted a few different narratives swirling around concerning taxes. One narrative is that the top earners in the US pay a disproportionate amount of taxes. This is known as a progressive tax rate. But other commentators have noted that the progressive tax rate applies for Federal income taxes […]
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