Category Archives: Politics/Law/Government

And now this: Colorado authorities are already tracking social media

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s post about UK Prime Minster David Cameron’s thoughts on shutting down social media in times of unrest, we hear this from Erik Sass at MediaPost: Colorado’s Department of Public Safety is employing analysts at the Colorado Information Analysis Center to monitor sites like Twitter and Facebook with an eye to gleaning information about potentially disruptive

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ANALYSIS: UK Prime Minister calls for social media clampdown; could the US be next?

Analystas are rushing in from all sides to examine the causes of the UK riots. Are they about politics and economics? Or is it merely an opportunity for thugs to steal stuff? All we know for sure is that it’s anarchy in the UK and that Saturday’s opening day match between Spurs and Everton has been postponed. One sobering development,

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What America needs now is Tricky Dick Nixon (no, I’m not joking)

Let me give you a definition of the word ‘liberal.’…Franklin D. Roosevelt once said…It is a wonderful definition, and I agree with him. ‘A liberal is a man who wants to build bridges over the chasms that separate humanity from a better life.’ – Richard Milhous Nixon Richard Nixon was our last liberal president. – Noam Chomsky In June of

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Van Jones vs. the cult of personality (plus a little Saturday Video Roundup)

This morning I got an e-mail from a colleague who’s working with the American Dream Movement. Said friend is all-in with the goals and values of the project, but is stepping cautiously where Van Jones, the movement’s leader, is concerned. It’s nothing against Jones personally, I don’t think – my friend seems to admire him a great deal and thinks

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A quick shout-out: thinking and writing about our frustration with Obama

Here at S&R we try and generate as much original content as possible and, unlike a lot of blogs, we don’t dedicate much energy to linking other stories around the ‘sphere. Aside from Mike’s Nota Bene series, anyway. But earlier today three other outlets linked to my “Will you vote for Obama (again)?” piece, and since these places are trying

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Of Wikipedia, revisionism, serial killers, The Duke and Michelle Bachmann: the past is the present, the future is the present, and the present is fucked

In case you missed it, America’s newest official candidate for the presidency, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, kicked off her campaign in her hometown of Waterloo, IA yesterday by confusing John Wayne with John Wayne Gacy. Honest mistake. Anybody could have made it. I mean, it’s still odd. I know first-hand how attuned Iowans can be to their own local histories.

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DJ Enhanced Interrogation Techniques: 30-Day Song Challenge, the Sequel, day 27 – a song you think would be an effective instrument of torture

It seems that America now officially believes in torture as a primary tool of investigation. And back in 2008, I did a little story on how, believe it or not, we are using music as an implement of torture. So I suppose today’s challenge has a dark side, huh? Mercifully for those suspected terrorists in captivity, DJ EIT (Enhanced Interrogation

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