With a recent article, “The List: The World’s Stupidest Fatwas,” Foreign Policy, of all publications, manifests a lack of political correctness that’s not only surprising, but borders on the giddy. In the […]
Can Americans be convinced Islam isn’t the black sheep of religions?
Porn stars must present their papers
By Martin Bosworth Future movie auteurs in the vein of Seymore Butts, take note: In order to produce your next penetrating panoply of puerile pleasure, you need to provide a complete list […]
Unfriendly cellphone contracts shine light on dangers of arbitration
By Martin Bosworth This week’s Business Week has a look at how the wireless industry is being challenged over its notoriously unfriendly contracts, which demand consumers give up their rights to resolution […]
Debunking global heating denier myths updated
Nearly a month ago, I wrote a point-by-point debunking of the top 17 global heating denier myths I had heard. As a result of all the comments I received, I’ve decided to […]
Scroguely Works: Five Moral Pieces
Five Moral Pieces by Umberto Eco, first published 2001, 128 pages, ISBN 978-0156013253 “The modern world looks at war through eyes different from those with which it looked at the problem early […]
Clergy trained to “quell” citizen unrest…St. Paul for, Jefferson against….
Welcome to the camp/I guess you all know why we’re here…. – Peter Townshend KSLA-TV in Shreveport, LA, reports that Homeland Security has enlisted clergy to help quell unrest in case martial […]
One (hu)man, one vote
Imagine you’re a State Department official charged with helping formulate our country’s policy toward a new government in Africa. As you review the files, you note something odd. Their Constitution grants everyone […]
The financial markets are going nuts, and it will take time and some economic pain to make them sane again
The sub-prime mortgage industry crisis has claimed its first victim, American Home Mortgage, and now it’s setting its sights on another mortgage lender, Countrywide. I probably wouldn’t care, except that Countrywide is […]
Does a force field protect defense spending from Democrats?
“Most Democratic candidates for president speak of increasing rather than slashing the military budget,” writes Frida Berrigan in a recent column on Foreign Policy in Focus. “Since President Bush came into office […]
The Jonas Phillips case: an open letter to the mayor of Asheville, NC
The Honorable Terry M. Bellamy Mayor, Asheville NC P.O. Box 7148 Asheville NC, 28802 Dear Mayor Bellamy: As you no doubt realize by now, you have something of a PR nightmare on […]