I”m going to let this video clip stand on its own without much further commentary from me. But I think it’s very important to look back at this piece of history from twenty-seven years ago. It was both powerful and prescient:

(more…)

This post isn’t primarily about Kavanaugh and Ford, although obviously that’s the jumping-off spot. It’s about the larger issues that the controversy reflects, which have to do with the nature of justice.

(more…)

There are a lot of problems with the Kavanaugh accuser’s story, including the fact that it’s possible that she may be deliberately lying for political reasons.

But even if she’s not purposely lying, there are many problems connected with the phenomenon of memory itself, particularly after all these years.

(more…)

Yesterday New Hampshire had a primary, and Eddie Edwards won the GOP nomination for the US House of Representatives from the state’s 1st Congressional District:

Eddie Edwards, who was endorsed by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, defeated six Republican opponents in the 1st Congressional District, which covers the eastern half of the state....

Professor Jacobson recently wrote a post about Obama’s recent rhetoric against President Trump.

In giving his speech, Obama was violating the traditional code of behavior for ex-presidents, which was to keep their mouths shut and refrain from criticizing their successors. But no one on earth should be surprised by the fact that...

Last week, I wrote a post on Brazilian election frontrunner Jair Bolsonaro, sometimes known as the Trump of Brazil. Now comes

Brazil is scheduled to have a general election this October, and this article about the current frontrunner in the Brazilian presidential elections, a man named Jair Bolsonaro, describes him as “far-right” and given to racist and misogynistic utterances:

(more…)

Michael Anton has caused a furor by suggesting that birthright citizenship is not required by the US Constitution, as Fuzzy Slippers has previously discussed on this blog. Anton is quoted as having said this on Tucker Carlson’s show:
(more…)

When I was studying interpersonal communication and how to track an argument or any other verbal exchange, one thing that was very much emphasized was the difference between content and process.

Content is just what it sounds like: the subject matter about which two people (let’s say, a married couple) are talking....

Most people are well aware of the U. S. internment of ethnic Japanese, but it’s apparently a little-known fact that some ethnic Germans residing in the U. S. were detained in camps in this country during both world wars:
(more…)

In another of today’s SCOTUS decisions, the Court ruled in NIFLA v. Becerra that a California law requiring crisis pregnancy centers (pregnancy counseling clinics usually run by pro-life Christians) to post notices that “California has public programs that provide immediate free or low-cost access to comprehensive family planning services (including all...

“”Should Brazil keep its Amazon tribes from taking the lives of their children?” is the subtitle of a recent article in Foreign Policy. It describes traditional but still-existent customs of many Amazon tribes in Brazil that dictate kill...

You may have heard about actor Robert De Niro’s standing O performance at last night’s Tony awards. It was bleeped from the broadcast but is readily available:

(more…)

One of the things that struck me about this article excoriating Alan Dershowitz for his recent defense (not support, but defense) of Trump is that author Elie Mystal doesn’t actually engage in any detail with the substance of Dershowitz’s arguments.

Mystal’s attack on Dershowitz (and Trump, for that matter) is ad hominem....

Only thing is—the Economist thinks the Times hasn’t been hard enough on Israel.

Actually, the article in question from the Economist is about language, in particular, the “weasel voice” of evasion (it’s part of a continuing “Johnson” series about words/grammar in journalism, named after Samuel Johnson).
(more…)

Unlike Watergate, the current crisis in government/spying/politics doesn’t have a memorable name. But for those of us who lived through Watergate, it has a certain resonance with that event as well as major differences, imparting a strange sense of familiarity, dislocation, and increasing alarm.
(more…)

On Thursday Bill Cosby was found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Andrea Constand for acts committed in 2004.

(more…)