Let’s start with this. DENVER – A Mexican restaurant in the Highlands neighborhood declined a Mitt Romney campaign stop. Now the owners of Rosa Linda’s Mexican Café are getting death threats, nasty threatening phone calls, and insulting e-mails criticizing their choice. “I don’t want people to be angry at me,” Rosa Linda Aguirre, the owner of the neighborhood staple, said.
Read morePart two of a series. In part one, I offered an overview of why I think the time has come to partition America – shake hands, go our separate ways, and let two (at least) groups of people follow their own paths according to their very different values. Today I want to briefly tackle the hard part and present some
Read moreMuch has been said and written about Mr. Obama’s distressing record on civil liberties. Many have gone so far as to argue that he’s worse than his predecessor, that he has assumed powers that are strictly forbidden by the Constitution, that he has begun acting more like a king than a president. These critics have a mountain of objective data
Read moreMemorial Day has become our most conflicted holiday. I’m bothered by it, and I know I am not the only one.
Read moreHere’s what I wrote last night: On the other side of the fence, those of us who genuinely care about freedom and fairness are more outraged than ever. Outrage is motivating, and by the way, polls show that at least half of Americans support equality for LGBT citizens. It’s about six months until Election Day – how much mobilizing do you think
Read moreFacebook reminded me of an important lesson this morning. When I was young, I was an idiot. A well-intentioned idiot, to be sure. And in my defense, it must be said that I was probably less of an idiot than most kids my age. But still, I look back on the things I did, the things I believed, the insecurities
Read moreMy doctoral dissertation addressed what I called the “Frankenstein Complex.” So guess why this story bothers me. Today, a scientific journal published a study that some people thought might never be made public at all. The paper describes experiments that suggest just a few genetic changes could potentially make a bird flu virus capable of becoming contagious in humans, and
Read moreA little knowledge is a dangerous thing, they say. How true, how true, especially when it comes to reducing the wisdom of brilliant, complex minds to their pithiest quotes. In a recent thread on what has become of the GOP, one commenter went all-in with Henry David Thoreau’s famous (and greatly abused) edict: that government is best which governs the
Read moreEarlier this morning Chris offered up a post entitled “Why are environmentalists missing a mild-weather opportunity?” It raises a pragmatic point about how the climate “debate” plays out in the public sphere and is well worth a read. Go ahead – I’ll wait. Predictably – and by “predictably,” I mean that last night I e-mailed our climate guru, Brian Angliss,
Read moreI wonder what Rush Limbaugh will be talking about on his show this coming week? Ah, maybe this: In a letter dated March 8, [celebrity lawyer Gloria] Allred, writing on behalf of the Women’s Equal Rights Legal Defense and Education Fund, requested that Palm Beach County State Attorney Michael McAuliffe probe whether the conservative radio personality had violated Section 836.04
Read moreOkay, maybe not yet. But we’re definitely getting there. Check out today’s two-part gotcha. Part 1: Back in 2008 I wrote a piece called “The Smartest Shopping Cart That Ever Lived,” a glimpse into the near-future of GPS meets RFID meets customer relationship management meets intelligent supply chain meets nosy retailer shopping experience. I invoked Minority Report in doing so –
Read moreFollowing up on yesterday’s post about how unfair it is when progressives fight fire with fire… One of the architects of the modern conservative boycott movement back in the day was the now-deceased Rev. Jerry Falwell, founder of the “Moral Majority.” His strategy was simple. Identify those television and radio stations whose programming “promoted” a “liberal agenda” or “secular humanist”
Read moreI don’t know when the very first boycott of a product or company happened, but I suspect the tactic has been around in some form or another for a long time. I do remember the onset of the modern form of the practice, though. Back in the ’70s and ’80s, social conservatives began going after businesses who advertised on shows
Read moreLast October, country music star Hank WIlliams, Jr. made a remark about Obama and Hitler playing golf, touching off a controversy that saw ESPN end its relationship with Williams (who had been singing the Monday Night Football intro song for what seemed like 100 years). Williams reacted predictably: After reading hundreds of e-mails, I have made MY decision,” he wrote.
Read moreCan’t make this stuff up, folks. I mean, you could, but everybody would think you were, well, making stuff up. On tonight’s episode of Modern Family (perhaps TV’s best sitcom), one of the storylines deals with what happens when a young child starts using curse words. One of America’s more prominent gatekeepers of the public morality, the Parents Television council, immediately
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lullaby pit 