They say familiarity breeds contempt and my 15 years in newspapers certainly did that for me. Today's example that got my Irish up was this editorial in the Fresno Bee arguing for Gov. Jerry Brown to sign a raft of draconian gun laws. The passage that was particularly despicable was this one: California led the nation […]
I can't begin to describe the level of stupid in this: Samantha Power, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, hoped that a team of UN investigators — many of whom, presumably, have a longstanding relationship with Iranian leaders -- could write a report that would convince Iran to abandon its ally at the behest […]
I'm not sure I could have come up with a solution to Syria. I'm also pretty sure I couldn't have done a worse job than President Obama. Last year, with his customary self-importance, President Obama laid down his famous red line: If Bashir Assad used chemical weapons, there would be serious repercussions. This stance was […]
I'd apologize for the lack of updates lately, but you get what you pay for. The past couple months have been crazy busy between three jobs—one day job and two online evening jobs—and something had to give. This site was it. I hope to begin posting a little more often now that the busiest time […]
The Supreme Court handed down two decisions earlier today on the gay marriage issue. The first struck down the Defense of Marriage Act as being enacted solely because President Bill Clinton, who signed the legislation into law, hates gay people. The second decision was to sidestep ruling on California's Prop. 8, which stated that marriage […]
For those who come here for politics, sorry, but this one is videogame related. Originally posted at majornelson.com. When I saw Microsoft's announcement of "no rentals, you can lend a game to a friend only once, no private party transfers" I thought surely the only reason they're doing this is because Sony's worked out a […]
Over the past week or so, some of the more devoted (and blinkered) supporters of the IRS have tried to make the case that the agency's targeting of conservative and tea party groups was all a big mistake and anyway, it's the GOP's fault. The latest example of this is the Brookings Institution's Henry J. […]
Last week, appearing before the House Oversight Committee, Lois Lerner told the elected officials that she had done nothing wrong. I believe her. Let me rephrase that. I believe that she believes she's done nothing wrong. Because, it turns out, what she was doing from 2010 through sometime in 2012 and possibly continuing even today […]
Last week the IRS official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations sorta-testified before Congress to the fact that she'd done nothing illegal before invoking her Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination for her non-illegal actions. Today, Obama spokesflack Jay Carney had this to say about the quality of the testimony IRS officials have been providing Congress. […]
The Columbia Journalism Review's tagline is "The future of media is here." If it is, then journalism is in worse shape than it appears—and that takes some doing. In the days following Kirsten Power's "Come to Jesus" column calling out the mainstream media for its failure I pointed out to a shocked Mollie Hemingway of GetReligion.org […]