In a landmark decision on copyright infringement, a court has decided that Robin Thicke and Pharell Williams did in fact unlawfully borrow crucial elements from the 1977 Marvin Gaye song “Got to Give it Up” for “Blurred Lines”—the top-selling song in 2013. Williams and Thicke are now required to pay the Marvin Gaye estate $7 […]
Continue reading →Mortgage giant Fannie Mae, the too-big-to-fail bailout beneficiary, is apparently at it again—doing everything in its power to sink the economy into another recession: The Federal Housing Finance Agency inspector general said its latest concerns involve Fannie Mae’s “haphazard” decision to fill a critical auditor position with an employee who lacked proper qualifications and suffered from […]
Continue reading →Two additional wrinkles have surfaced in the already widening Hillary Clinton email scandal. First, Hillary Clinton said that there shouldn’t be as much of a concern about her use of a private email server because she never sent classified information. Well, that’s kind of hard to believe, considering she was Secretary of State. So let’s just […]
Continue reading →In a very powerful, eloquent rhetorical piece marking the fiftieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday, President Obama opined about how far we’ve come in this country and how far we have yet to go. In one section of the speech, he attempted to bring all Americans into one unified character through a prolonged description of the […]
Continue reading →Some bloggers and twitts are calling a 47-member Congressional letter to Iran an act of treason. Some Congress members, led by freshman Tom Cotton (R-AR), informed Iran that any deal reached without Congressional approval would not necessarily be honored in the long-term. First, let’s talk about the letter itself. There are a few things that need […]
Continue reading →Sheriffs from Colorado, and a few neighboring states, are suing Colorado in order to overturn Amendment 64, the state amendment that legalized recreational marijuana in the state. The reasons for the lawsuit are quite interesting. Sheriffs allege that upholding Amendment 64 violates the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution, putting local law enforcement at odds […]
Continue reading →Why would Democrats agree to protect the Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, from his opponents in the GOP? That’s a really good question. Perhaps this explains it a little: A number of right-wing Republicans, long wary of Boehner’s commitment to GOP efforts attacking President Obama’s policy priorities, have openly considered a coup in […]
Continue reading →Apparently, the FBI statistics on police homicides, that is, the number of people killed by police, are way, way off: The first-ever attempt by US record-keepers to estimate the number of uncounted “law enforcement homicides” exposed previous official tallies as capturing less than half of the real picture. The new estimate – an average of […]
Continue reading →The top five contractors for the DHS, in terms of the value of defense contracts, spent millions on lobbying and political contributions to receive almost $9 billion worth of DHS contracts: MapLight looked into the contracts awarded by the DHS to the top 5 contractors and these contractors’ political spending. These companies were chosen because […]
Continue reading →Maybe NYPD Police Commissioner Bill Bratton has been toking on a little bit of the devil’s lettuce himself. I don’t know. But he apparently thinks a slight eight week rise in New York homicides is connected somehow to legalized pot: The seemingly innocent drug that’s been legalized around the country. In this city, people are […]
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