Blogroll

Weekend Edition: 1-30

Bulletin Board

I’m not surprised because it’s happened before. The National Book Critics Circle announced the finalists for its annual awards last Saturday. As a member, I get to vote and, again, not a single book I voted for is on the list. Moreover, I haven’t read any of them. Once again, can you spell […]

Friday Follies 2.1

Defamation suit over a Tweet dismissed because much of Twitter is “pointless babble.” Personally, I think courts could take judicial notice of that.

Jurors in a murder trial in Winnipeg, Manitoba, were sent home early “after the star witness . . . couldn’t stop vomiting while under cross-examination.” (Via.)

Gotta agree with this: “I didn’t […]

R.I.P. Howard Zinn, 1922-2010

Activist and historian Howard Zinn, best known for his A People’s History of the United States, has died at age 87.

As leftist activists go, Zinn may have generated as much hatred as Noam Chomsky. Yet his People’s History is an essential and important work. Zinn looks at the history of the U.S. from the […]

Throwing the dictionary out of school

Too often supposed moral outrage deprives both individuals and government bodies of common sense. The latest case in point? First, a California school district removed a dictionary from all all school shelves after a parent complained about a student finding a definition of “oral sex” in it. Now, the Menifee Union School District is forming […]

Exposing the myth of so-called activist judges

There’s been tons of commentary on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, in which the Supreme Court said the government can’t restrict corporations from spending money to support or oppose individual candidates in elections. Yet there’s been meager discussion on one issue the decision raises — judicial activism.

For years we’ve heard the GOP rallying […]