stcynic
Posts by this author
The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals recently issued a ruling in Simpson v. Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors involving prayers of invocation offered at the beginning of that board's meetings. Most such cases involve challenges to the constitutionality of holding such prayers, but in this case a…
Cathy Young has an excellent post on Reason's Hit and Run about the fawning obituaries given in the last week for Andrea Dworkin, the anti-sex feminist. She writes:
It's sadly obvious that this supposedly bold and visionary prophet was, in actuality, insane. (Among other things, she described the…
The group blog that I write for as well, In the Agora, has received a big notice in the Indianapolis Star, which I imagine is probably one of the top 20 largest circulation newspapers in the country. They also took note of Radley Balko's The Agitator. Congratulations to Paul and Josh and the rest…
Found via Radley Balko, this story about a new technological solution to the pesky problem of not being able to track every human being at all times:
IBM will begin installing a "Smart Box" system in vehicles in the United Arab Emirates next year, potentially generating millions in traffic fines…
More evidence that Jon Rowe and I were separated at birth: he wrote an essay on the very same fake Jefferson quote, mentioning both Christian Hartsock and Devvy Kidd's use of it, this morning. Someone else had sent me a link to it and I wrote about it too, but without any knowledge that the other…
My friend David sent me a link to the webpage of one Christian Hartsock, suggesting him as a Robert O'Brien Trophy nominee. Turns out the lad is only 18 and still in high school, so I'll be more gentle than usual. I'm not even going to bother to fisk the entire essay found on the front page. But I…
One of the hottest selling books at the moment is Mark Levin's Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America, currently at #8 on the New York Times bestseller list. I've not read this book, but I know the arguments in it. Anyone who has paid attention to conservative rhetoric at the…
Thursday night is the night we host a weekly poker game, and the first one to arrive is usually our buddy Scott. Known Scott for years. He's your basic small businessman, owns a convenience store that does pretty well. He has two homes a couple miles from us, and a couple miles apart, one on the…
Sandefur is defending himself against Owen Courreges of Southern Appeal on the rude question asked to Scalia, and doing quite well I think. He writes:
Courreges concludes, "stop being a jerk about this and admit that the question was inappropriate." I have admitted the question is inappropriate -…
Yes, Tom Delay apologized today in a press conference, not for what he said but for the way he said it:
"I said something in an inartful way, and I shouldn't have said it that way, and I apologize for saying it that way.
But if you want a perfect insight into just how ignorant the man is of the…
I swear there must be some sort of office pool at Religious Right headquarters to see who can come up with the most ridiculous and hyperbolic rhetoric against judges. Here's the latest from Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council:
"The court has become increasingly hostile to…
Thanks to Jon Rowe for the link and kind words about my post on unenumerated rights and legitimate authority. He follows up with some interesting information about the 14th amendment and anti-miscegenation laws, so go read his post as well.
Wow, I somehow missed this story. Justice Scalia was visiting NYU recently to receive an honor from the law school and while he was there he met with law students and had a question and answer session, as he always does. The NYU newspaper tells what happened:
The Q-and-A opened with hostility as…
Anyone remember this guy?
This is the Ultimate Warrior. He was a WWF wrestler back in the late 80s/early 90s who tied colored ribbons around his bulging biceps and shook the ropes really hard, looking for all the world like a hyperactive child throwing a tantrum. Well it turns out that after…
Note: My friend DarkSyde posted an entry on his diary at DailyKos pointing people here for information about Rev. Moon. It's been a few weeks since I last wrote about Moon, so I thought I'd repost the one that started it all, my fisking of the insanely ridiculous full page ad that Moon took out…
This began as a response to a comment by Eric Seymour in a post at In the Agora, but I'm moving it up here because the response became so long and delved into the details of constitutional interpretation so deeply that I thought it deserved to be its own post. It is addressed specifically to him,…
Michael Ferris, president of the Home School Legal Defense Fund, has a crazy proposal to reign in those out of control judges. Here are his three ideas: eliminate binding precedent, create a 2/3 Congressional "veto" over court decisions, and to impeach judges based on a larger set of criteria. You…
As a follow up on the story about Newsweek and In the Agora, Radley Balko of The Agitator has publicly distanced himself from the equation of Agora with Powerline as well. He writes:
But it's not quite accurate. The column notes the Schiavo memo controversy, and says I've called for Powerline and…
Leave it to the uber-moron Joseph Farah, founder of the Worldnutdaily, to up the ante even higher in the race to see who can be the most ridiculous and extreme in their anti-judicial rhetoric. In this article on the Schiavo situation, he makes numerous false statements about the case and then urges…
Tom Ambrose is the commentary editor of the Worldnutdaily. Given the extraordinary number of awful commentary pieces WND publishes, especially the "exclusive commentaries" which are generally so bad that one assumes they are "exclusive" because no one else would publish them, he's not very good at…
Carpundit, in a comment on another post, wrote this and I just wanted to move it up here. It captures perfectly the American political system:
We have grown so tired of political rhetoric that only the loudest of it gets through anymore. We have grown so tolerant of loud debate that any opinion…
In Newsweek's "blog watch" section, due to hit the stands today apparently, one of the group blogs that I write for, In the Agora, is mentioned. We would normally welcome the mention in a major publication, but in this case they did a very poor job of reporting on the facts of the "Schiavo memo"…
The rhetoric coming from some portions of the right concerning the judiciary continues to grow ever more vitriolic and unbalanced. Ruth Marcus has an interesting piece in the Washington Post today that includes some comments that are constitutionally dubious at best and downright delusional at…
The right wing media has been awash in the story of Mae Magouirk, an 81 year old woman who was checked into a hospice by her granddaughter, Beth Gaddy, who claimed she had power of attorney and requested for her not to receive any nourishment or treatment. This followed a recent heart problem which…
Okay, I've unveiled a new look for Dispatches from the Culture Wars. This template is a modified version of one that I downloaded from Style Monkey. I tinkered with the style sheet a bit, but it's essentially one of the 3-column templates found here. Tell me what you think.
The Family Research Council is naturally quite upset by the Connecticut Senate passing a bill to allow civil unions for gay couples in that state. They're also trying very hard to pretend that the public in that state doesn't support the bill. And the Worldnutdaily, naturally, gives them the forum…
Posting was light since Friday because I had a couple of friends in town for a weekend of poker and BBQ. On Saturday, we went to Soaring Eagle casino to play poker and I had what is simply the most bizarre and amazing session of poker in my life. You're not gonna believe some of this. Soaring Eagle…
I just find it funny that there are people dumb enough to fall for this sort of thing:
KIBBUTZ MAANIT, Israel - A Texas oilman is using his Bible as a guide to finding oil in the Holy Land.
John Brown, a born-again Christian and founder of Zion Oil & Gas of Dallas, can quote chapter and verse…
You might notice that I now have a few small google ads in the left sidebar. I'm not looking to make real money with my blog, but I figured with readership growing, why not see if I can at least cover the costs of the space and bandwidth? I'm also looking into an Amazon associate arrangement. Since…
I don't think this prediction is worth claiming the mantle of Nostrodamus or anything, but just a few days ago I predicted that Tom Delay, with his public standing taking a beating from numerous ethics violations, will become increasingly shrill in pandering to the far right. And here we have a…