According to this article by Newsweek, 3,301 U.S. active-duty soldiers deserted the Army in 2006. Jeffry House is a defense lawyer representing many of these soldiers. Newsweek asked House why so many soldiers were deserting. According to House, The common idea is that the war in Iraq is going nowhere,…
Jonathan Chait of Common Dreams raises a good question: why do Republicans disagree with climate scientists more at a time when climate scientists are accruing new terrifying evidence that human activities are truly responsible for warming the atmosphere?
Last year, the National Journal asked a group of Republican senators and House members: “Do you think it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made problems?” Of the respondents, 23% said yes, 77% said no . . . So, the magazine asked the question again last month. The results? Only 13% of Republicans agreed that global warming has been proved.
As the evidence for global warming gets stronger, Republicans are actually getting more skeptical. . . . How did it get this way? The easy answer is that Republicans are just tools of the energy industry. It’s certainly true that many of them are. . . But the financial relationship doesn’t quite explain the entirety of GOP skepticism on global warming. For one thing, the energy industry has dramatically softened its opposition to global warming over the last year, even as Republicans have stiffened theirs.
The truth is more complicated — and more depressing: A small number of hard-core ideologues (some, but not all, industry shills) have led the thinking for the whole conservative movement . . .Conservatives defer to a tiny handful of renegade scientists who reject the overwhelming professional consensus.
In other words, the thinking process of most Republicans is worse than …
This morning I tried to visit a site called OLGA (on-line guitar archive), a place where I had often gone in past years to check out chord progressions for pop/rock tunes. Many guitarists had worked out tunes as best they could, then posted them at this site. Over the years,…
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. Anatole France The point is that even theoretically just laws can lead to de facto injustice. But how much more injustice can result from laws…
This documentary by Penn and Teller characterizes the "War on Drugs" as "The new prohibition." The documentary is a no-holds-barred presentation that includes some coarse language. Here is Part II and here is Part III. The statistics are compelling. Alcohol causes 50,000 deaths per year. Tobacco causes 440,000 deaths per…