Category Archives: Politics

By now you’ve probably all heard about the controversy surrounding Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. And whatever else might eventually result, the one thing that has unquestionably come out of this law is a rather incredible amount of bad reporting. Just to pick the first ten examples I found, here are stories about his law from Associated Press, Reuters, CS Monitor, Washington Post, ABC News, CNN, Fox News, CBS, Los Angeles Times, and NY Times. If you take the time to read all of these articles (and you have my sympathy if you do), you should have little trouble spotting something that every one of these stories has in common: not one of them quotes, or has a link to, the actual text of the law.

We’re not talking about a monstrosity like the Affordable Care Act, which nobody can read without an enormous commitment of time and loss of sanity. The RFRA is about a page long and quite easy to understand. Nor was it hard for me to find. Yet the overwhelming majority of stories I’ve seen from the professional news media present only opinions about the law, without including the facts – the text itself.

Is this omission the result of massive incompetence on the part of the professional news media? From what I’ve seen in my fifty years of life, I’d rate that as a very strong possibility. But I also have to wonder, how many of those reporters are hoping their readers will simply accept the opinions of others, rather than reading the law for themselves and making up their own minds?

…you shouldn’t have anything to hide. That’s the argument, right? But then I read what James Clapper told the Washington Post yesterday. It sure sounds like he thinks he’s got a lot to hide. As do Congressman Mike Rogers (R MI) and Senator Diane Feinstein (D CA).

That is, the Justice Department’s scheme to allow thousands of guns to go to Mexican drug cartels without any surveillance, allegedly so that they could identify the “big fish.” Only now it turns out that the “big fish” were working for the FBI. According to the story reported in the Arizona Republic, the cartel associates being targeted by BATFE were FBI informants.

In view of this new information, I have to revise my previous assessment. These people make the Underpants Gnomes look like Nobel Prize candidates.

John W. Whitehead argues in an opinion piece published today at the Rutherford Institute’s web site that it is. I don’t know if the numbers he cites are correct, but whether or not the accusation of racial inequality is valid, it’s hard to deny that the War on (some) Drugs has been an utter failure.

The L.A. Times is reporting that the collection of bullies, thugs, and perverts called the TSA is expanding their operations to train and bus stations, ferry slips, NASCAR races, and even trucks on the highway. Of course they won’t stop any more terrorists than they have so far, but that’s not the point. They like pushing people around, and this gives them the chance to do more of it.

I’m certainly not opposed to governments in general, but this particular agency badly needs to be abolished. They have accomplished nothing of value, the behavior of their agents has been utterly disgusting, and they have shown again and again that as an institution they have absolutely no respect for the rights they are supposed to be protecting. It saddens me deeply that the American people have allowed the TSA to continue in existence as long as they have.

It’s being reported by nearly everybody that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has died. What will happen to his former subjects is unknown, but North Korea under Kim was one of the most brutally oppressive regimes of the modern world,  it’s hard to imagine that things could possibly get much worse.