Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
Falsely accusing the Tea Party of murder
Liberal commentators’ rush to blame the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords on heated political rhetoric exposes their censoriousness and intolerance. Read my spiked article in full here.
Shield bill is a threat to free speech
In an op-ed in today’s New York Times, University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone sounds a warning over the threat to free speech posed by the so-called Shield bill. The bill has been introduced in response to the Wikileaks disclosures, and would amend to Espionage Act of 1917 to make it a crime for any […]
2010’s Heroes and Zeroes
Today’s spiked reviews the year 2010 with a series of articles. In the lead article, “A year of intellectual rebels and misanthropic moaners,” spiked readers and writers name their heroes and zeroes of the year. Here are mine: HERO: Diane Ravitch, whose bestselling book The Death and Life of the Great American School System made her the most […]
The tax deal: short-term victory for Obama
The big news in American politics recently has been the surprising tax deal President Obama made with the Republicans in Congress. Tax cuts introduced in 2001 and 2003 during the George W. Bush presidency were positioned at that time as “temporary”, and were due to expire at the end of this year. They were a […]
Palin: a creation of the liberal-left
I have argued for some time that the prominence of Sarah Palin reflects mainly liberals’ fascination with her (see here) . Liberals have obsessively followed this ex-governor, ex-VP candidate, and consequently built her up into something more than she is. In turn, liberals’ hatred for her has made her sympathetic, and cohered support among people who believe that, […]
Jon Stewart: stop the Wikileaks “drama”
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c The Informant! www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor The Daily Show on Facebook I usually don’t agree with Jon Stewart, but he makes some fair points about the latest Wikileaks’ data dump. When Wikileaks founder Julian Assange describes himself as a “combative person” who likes “crushing […]
Are Wikileaks and its media mouthpieces being played?
I was not impressed with the earlier Wikileaks revelations (as I wrote about in spiked here), and the latest batch haven’t led me to change my mind. As before, this is a big dump. This time it mostly consists of mundane proceedings, embarrassing personal remarks and confirmations about things we already knew. As Frank Furedi argues in today’s spiked, the news organizations with first access – the […]
More on airport screening
As I noted last week, I believe the airport security routine is excessive and ultimately irrational. And so, of course, I oppose the latest stepping-up in intrusiveness – the new imagining scanners, and the mandatory pat-downs for those who choose to avoid the scanner. But before getting too carried away with the protests against the latest airport […]
GM’s IPO: not a return to former glory
General Motors went public again last week, raising $23 billion in its initial public offering (IPO) – the country’s largest ever. The US government’s ownership stake was halved as a result. The successful offering appeared to vindicate the Obama administration’s decision to bail out the struggling automaker in early 2009. For many of those who support free markets […]
“Don’t touch my junk”
Will John Tyner become the latest American folk (mass media) hero for uttering those words? As you will learn from this video, Tyner refused to be scanned by one of the new, full-body Advanced Imaging Technology machines at San Diego airport. He then resisted a TSA agent’s attempt to swipe his hand over his body, including […]