Wednesday, August 5, 2009 The Plague of Punitive Populism “Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there.” — Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath In Virginia, police officers raid a baptismal party for two small boys. Without cause or provocation they assault the grandfather who owns the home, tasering him three […]

Monday, December 14, 2009 The Thin Blue Whine, Pt. II: The Crybaby Thugs of Maricopa County (Second Update, December 18) Uniformed thug as “political prisoner”: Maricopa County Deputy Sheriff Adam Stoddard strikes a martyr’s pose for the camera after a few days in “jail.” Stoddard was found in contempt after stealing a document from the […]

Sunday, December 20, 2009 The Thin Blue Whine, Pt. III: Who Mourns the Murdered Mundanes? (Update) The Brotherhood in Blue (and Red) Gathers at the Tacoma Dome during a memorial service for four police officers recently murdered in an ambush in Washington (above, and below, right). More than 20,000 police officers, including 1,000 members of […]

Friday, December 25, 2009 The Truce of God (This essay was originally published in The New American magazine.)In August 1914, Europe’s major powers threw themselves into war with gleeful abandon. Germany, a rising power with vast aspirations, plowed across Belgium, seeking to checkmate France quickly before Russia could mobilize, thereby averting the prospect of a […]

Wednesday, December 30, 2009 The Old “False-Flag Trick”? “Ahem — yeah, well, we’ll take it from here”: Government security personnel take suspected terrorist Umar Farouk Abdelmutallab into custody in Detroit after passengers did all the hard stuff — subduing him when his “lap bomb” failed to detonate and extinguishing the incendiary device. You know, Chief, […]

Wednesday, January 2, 2008 “Turbo”-Charged Idiocy About Torture Roughly thirty years ago, the late Johnny Carson unveiled the masterpiece in his collection of sketch-comedy characters: Floyd R. Turbo, the plaid-wearing people’s pundit. Imagine a genetic experiment that produced a hybrid of Elmer Fudd and George W. Bush (especially the familiar vacant stare) and you’ll get […]

Friday, January 4, 2008 Yoo’s On First: Let The Lustration Begin! Lustration, n. — 1) The act or process of cleaning, purging, or purifying; 2) A rite or liturgy to cleanse people, cities, or armies that have been defiled through crimes or pestilence. The end of the Bush Regime a little more than a year […]

Thursday, January 10, 2008 The Nanny State Goes Nazi “Whenever you hear a man prating about the Constitution, spot him as a traitor.” This instruction was given by President Andrew Johnson during the military occupation of the conquered southern states as a means of winnowing out the real troublemakers for special treatment. Today, being described […]

Tuesday, January 15, 2008 The ADL’s Holocaust Denial What happens when the State has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force: The Anti-Defamation League agrees with the late, unlamented National Socialist regime that this Jewish woman about to be murdered holding her child had no right to take up arms against the government that […]

Thursday, January 17, 2008 An American Pugilist Like countless six-year-old boys before him, and countless who will come after him, Joey Hughes got in trouble for fighting at school. It was nothing serious, just random, unfocused scuffles that messed up clothes and hair but left no permanent marks. Nonetheless, Joey’s mother Audra was furious at […]