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If You’ve Got Nothing to Hide, You’ve Got Nothing to Fear, JFK Assassination Edition

by | Aug 4, 2017 |

As America marked the 50th anniversary of US president John F. Kennedy’s assassination four years ago, a clear majority of Americans (according to polls by Gallup and AP/GfK) still believed that the whole truth of what happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963 remains unknown: That Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone and that the killing was in fact the result of a conspiracy. One good reason for that belief, or at least for skepticism as to the truth of the official narrative, is continued government secrecy. To this very day, thousands of government files — mostly produced by the Federal...

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US Foreign Military Bases Aren’t “Defense”

by | Aug 4, 2017 | ,

“U.S. foreign military bases are the principal instruments of imperial global domination and environmental damage through wars of aggression and occupation.” That’s the unifying claim of the Coalition Against US Foreign Military Bases (noforeignbases.org), and it’s true as far as it goes.  But as a signer of the Coalition’s endorsement form, I think it’s worth taking the argument a bit further. The maintenance of nearly 1,000 US military bases on foreign soil isn’t just a nightmare for peaceniks. It’s also an objective threat to US national security. A reasonable definition of “national...

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US Foreign Military Bases Aren't "Defense"

by | Aug 4, 2017 | ,

“U.S. foreign military bases are the principal instruments of imperial global domination and environmental damage through wars of aggression and occupation.” That’s the unifying claim of the Coalition Against US Foreign Military Bases (noforeignbases.org), and it’s true as far as it goes.  But as a signer of the Coalition’s endorsement form, I think it’s worth taking the argument a bit further. The maintenance of nearly 1,000 US military bases on foreign soil isn’t just a nightmare for peaceniks. It’s also an objective threat to US national security. A reasonable definition of “national...

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Healthcare: A House Divided Cannot Stand

by | Jul 24, 2017 | ,

The latest healthcare initiative from the Trump administration and the Republican Party’s leaders in Congress seems set to sink just like the last version. Mitch McConnell can’t seem to round up the votes to push it through the Senate, if anything the House is more likely to tear apart than pass the Senate version, and the White House isn’t getting anywhere with its attempt to mobilize the nation’s governors behind attempts to modify the Affordable Care Act, aka “ObamaCare.” Good. Even the most ambitious proposal up for serious consideration —  repealing ObamaCare and reverting to pre-2010...

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Circumcision: One Woman's Piercing Commentary

by | Jul 15, 2017 |

When Enedina Vance posted a photo of her smiling baby with a pierced cheek on Facebook, she expected — and wanted — a reaction. She probably didn’t expect the reaction to be so vehement. She received death threats. Some commenters claimed to have called government “child protective services” to come take the child away from an “abusive” mother. When Vance revealed that the photo was fake (no, she hadn’t really had her child’s dimple pierced) and intended as social commentary, the hate level seemingly went up rather than down. Her target topic: Circumcision. If her goal was to fire up debate...

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Circumcision: One Woman’s Piercing Commentary

by | Jul 15, 2017 |

When Enedina Vance posted a photo of her smiling baby with a pierced cheek on Facebook, she expected — and wanted — a reaction. She probably didn’t expect the reaction to be so vehement. She received death threats. Some commenters claimed to have called government “child protective services” to come take the child away from an “abusive” mother. When Vance revealed that the photo was fake (no, she hadn’t really had her child’s dimple pierced) and intended as social commentary, the hate level seemingly went up rather than down. Her target topic: Circumcision. If her goal was to fire up debate...

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Our Paranoid Society is too Hard on Kids — and on Parents

by | Jul 14, 2017 |

In the latest sign that America has gone stark-raving nuts at the expense of its parents and children, the Rochester, New York Democrat & Chronicle reports that a “mother faces child endangerment charges for letting her 10-year-old hang out in a Lego Store while she shopped elsewhere” in the same mall. Not a week goes by without a report of parents getting arrested, or having their children seized by social workers, for the “crime” of letting them walk to or from school or a local playground. Despite the fact that violent crime — including crimes against children — has been on a downward...

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Death Panels: Sarah Palin Was Right, Sort Of

by | Jul 14, 2017 | ,

In 2009, former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin raised the kind of ruckus she’s known for with her comment on the then-notional Affordable Care Act, aka “ObamaCare.” In a Facebook note, she wrote: “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide … whether they are worthy of health care.” Palin’s aim was rather off (she was grousing about an ACA provision allowing Medicare to reimburse patients for voluntary “end of life care” consultations),...

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