Desertification: Climate Change and the Encroaching Desert

Climate Change has struck again.   The Deserts are coming.
The United Nations report estimates that 50 million people are at risk of displacement in the next 10 years if desertification is not checked.

Guide to the Perplexed: Darwin, Creationism, Evolution, and the Jews

Fundamentalist Religions and the whacko’s who practice them have long been battling science and the ever increasing data set that comes with it. Hangings, Burning at the stake, and forced renunciations were once the order of the day. From Scopes to the push to include creationism in science classrooms, the battles continue.
 
But, not all [...]

Blood Economics and PaleoAnthropology

John Hawks gives a run down on the economics and other factors inherent in the blood sampling of tribal groups for scientific purposes.
You can see the problem: many traditional communities are disintegrating. That disintegration is in the interest of some, and against the interests of others. Communities disintegrate faster when Western economic models and Scientists [...]

Supreme Court Reverses Guantanamo Bay Ruling

The Supreme Court of the US has slapped that ninny Bush upside his ass and reversed its’ previous ruling against hearing cases brought by prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
In February, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a key provision of a law the Bush administration pushed through Congress last year [...]

Cave Man Party

The US Constitution: Originalism vs. Textualism

A guest blogger on Balkinization:
My essential pragmatism, furthermore, warns me against any theory named “originalism.” The history of constitutional interpretation demonstrates that immoral (or more politely non-aspirational) outcomes repeatedly stand on refusals to let the meanings (or extensions, or applications, etc) of words change over history, rather than the opposite. For example, I [...]

Tony Blair: American Poodle

Has Blair become America’s best friend, our beloved little poodle, all cleaned up and pretty?
Andrew:
Poodling is a much more powerful tool in global power politics than preening like the French or pouting like the Russians.

Impeach Dick Cheney: Is it Time?

Seriously, Dick Cheney has gotten out of hand. Now he says that he is not a member of the Executive branch.  Does even know what country he’s the vice President of?

Circumcision, Genital Mutilation, and When Culture Supersedes Reality

Genital mutilation, otherwise known as Circumcision, is a scourge in this country brought about by superstition and a medieval understanding of human anatomy. It is meant to keep a boy “clean”. Ritually clean. But, it also results in a life of decreased sexual pleasure at best, and can end in death at [...]

Opinion Journalism: Blogs, Bullshit, and the Search for Truth

 
(cross-posted @ FreedomDemocrats.org)
 
There is much question recently about the current changes in journalism in response to outlets like Fox News and the Internet. And the questions are valid. Does the rise of opinion journalism—blogs, O’Reilly, Air America—do a disservice to our democracy? Is the loss of the presumption of objectivity in the [...]