The Pentagon has announced that the military will now be open to transgendered soldiers and sailors. At first glance, it seems like a healthy development to allow everyone who wants to join the killing forces for the Empire to be able to do so. On the other hand, if you were a trans person, why would you fight to defend a society that has so little regard for you back at home?
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker walked back a remark in which he implied that children must be protected from homosexuals because they prey on children by saying that what he really meant was that children should be protected against the mere discussion of gays, whose existence they would presumably find disturbing.
The city of New York has paid $5.9 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Eric Garner, the unarmed black man who was choked to death by New York police on Staten Island and whose dying words, “I can’t breathe,” became an iconic symbol of police brutality. But no cops have been charged and the city hasn’t formally accepted responsibility. Isn’t it absurd to pay for a death for which you refuse to acknowledge responsibility?
A woman who was bombarded by wrong-number robocalls has received hundreds of thousands of dollars. Could this become a business model?
The Republican Party is trying to rein in Donald Trump after his remarks saying that many Mexican immigrants are rapists and criminals. They don’t want anyone to think the GOP is a racist party, even though history, and the fact that Trump is now running second in the polls, indicate otherwise.
The European Union, led by Germany, refuses to make major concessions to Greece on the grounds that it spends profligately and doesn’t collect enough taxes from scofflaws. Most Americans agree with them, but the same exact criticisms could be made of the United States.
Breathess stories about Muslims fighting extremism by promoting moderation in their home countries have become so commonplace, and so cheesy, that they’re a cliché. It’s especially bad since they look like sellouts merely by being praised by Americans! What if Americans went on Arab television channels for analogous, equal ridiculous, self-promotional opportunities?
The US Supreme Court rules 5-4 against death-row inmates who didn’t want to be executed with a toxin that causes excrutiating pain. The reason given by one justice: they failed to offer a better method of killing them. Which prompts the question: since when are prisoners responsible for figuring out the best way to execute them?
Writing in the dissent to the decision granted gays and lesbians the right to marry, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia urged us to “ask a hippie.” A hippie? IN 2015? Has Scalia been outside since 1974?
The man accused of the mass shooting of nine worshipers in a Charleston, South Carolina church faces an array of charges. Considering that he faces nine death-penalty counts, is there really any point to larding on additional counts, other than making ourselves feel better about ourselves? At a certain point, redundant justice becomes ludicrous.
