Unqualified Offerings

The most interesting thing to me about the long denouement of the life of Christopher Hitchens has to do with how he never became a full-bore neocon. Hitchens hated himself some “Islamofascism,” but he never stopped, at least that I saw, writing sympathetically about the Palestinians, and critically about Israeli policy. That’s a very un-neocon [...]

By Thoreau
Although the Robin Hood story comes in many versions, at least one version takes place shortly before the reign of King John, the same King who was forced to accept that Supreme Executive Power comes with limits.  (The requirement of a mandate from the masses came later.)  I choose to believe that the 99%ers [...]

By Thoreau
Greenwald reminds us that those who rationalize the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them. When Leon Panetta says that the cost of the Iraq War was “worth it”, he’s saying that a six digit civilian body count is acceptable to the United States.  And yet we dare to tell ourselves that [...]

By Thoreau
1) Via Radley Balko, one black New Yorker’s recounting of how he has been stopped and searched by cops, at gunpoint, at least 4 times in his adult life (he’s apparently 23 years old right now) even though he’s never been involved in gangs, drugs, or crime of any sort.  There’s nothing remarkable about [...]

By Thoreau
There was no need to announce the death of Kim Jong Il.  The government of North Korea could have done a Weekend at Bernie’s thing.  To enhance the illusion that he’s still alive, they could have embalmed him, attached marionette strings for Trey Parker and Matt Stone to pull, and had Cartman do the [...]