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So have you heard? Any day, there will be these mini-drones, little unmanned planes, following you around. And no, you won’t have to be a member of the Taliban. Just an American who is suspected of something or other. When you aren’t panicked about this new, inevitable expansion of the police state, you can at […]
A common theme runs through a variety of news stories: there isn’t enough money around, and so working people must take a hit. But is that really the only solution? First, let’s look at the stories. There’s growing talk of letting state governments declare bankruptcy so they can get out of paying pension benefits to […]
This week, NBC News ran an important report about improprieties at a particularly well-connected bank. According to NBC, JP Morgan Chase has been forced by a lawsuit to admit that it has been overcharging thousands of military families for their mortgages—and had improperly foreclosed on more than a dozen such families. Now, news that a […]
Bravo to the The New York Times for publishing Adam Hochschild’s January 17 op-ed, An Assassination’s Long Shadow. The piece marked the 50th anniversary of an event long forgotten in the United States: the U.S.-sponsored removal and murder of a democratically elected leader in Africa. Three days after the murder, our own democratically elected leader—one […]
A couple of gun items—both not new but relevant—that seem worth noting. In one, Bloomberg reported several days after the Tucson shootings how sales of Glock semi-automatic pistols doubled in Arizona right after the tragic events. In the other, the Dallas Morning News reported on how reporters in Texas are getting gun permits as way […]
Here’s an intriguing interview with the founder of the first “Leaks” site, Cryptome. (Click “Read the Rest” To See Video) A few excerpts: “Beware of the Internet, which is a large-scale spying machine” “Secrecy is the enemy of democracy; it’s way overdone.” “Sites like ours…are left in place to watch who comes there….The reason we […]
Did you hear this? Howard Kurtz, the longtime dean of mainstream journalists who critique other journalists’ standards and practices, made a huge booboo—then waited about forever before acknowledging it. It’s a doozy: he wrote up an interview with the new House investigations chief, Rep. Darrell Issa—but didn’t realize he was actually speaking with an Issa […]
The other day, USA Today ran an article reporting that 2010 had tied 2005 as the warmest year since record-keeping began in 1880. That’s disturbing data, or course. But what really caught my eye was who they chose to question the significance of the news: a climatologist with….the Cato Institute. That’s a policy outfit heavily funded by the very companies whose emissions heat up the earth’s atmosphere.
The local ABC affiliate tv station in Tucson is KGUN. It is referred to as “K-GUN.” A man named H.U. Garrett chose those call letters when he bought the station in 1957. Wikipedia says this man sought to reflect his interest in Western lore, and in collecting guns. Now that, half a century later, the […]
We’re going to occasionally list the types of reporting we would do, the sort of thinking we would apply, and the questions we would ask—were we already fully funded and able to mount our own investigative dig into more stories. Here are some initial issues worth pursuing regarding the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords—and potentially relevant […]
Given Palin’s denunciations of efforts to restrict guns in America, and her website graphic (see blog post below) featuring crosshairs over members of congress, is it fair for news organizations to run a picture like this? Please weigh in with a comment-and please keep a civilized tone.
A reader posted a comment on the item below—which features the graphic from Sarah Palin’s PAC, and “targets” various congressmembers, including Gabrielle Giffords. The reader writes, I come here for the truth, not ham handed partisan nonsense. If I wanted knee jerk corporate leftist dreck I know where to find it. Didn’t your years on […]