I do not think that the arguments against gay marriage are all grounded in bigotry, and I find some of the arguments persuasive.

via www.nationalreview.com

Here's… Read full post »

The Pastor from First Baptist Church Dallas appeared on MSNBC today to try and justify prohibiting the mosque at Ground Zero. He does not do a very good job.

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None of his analogies work.… Read full post »

A proposed statement of tolerance in Baton Rouge proves why the city has a long way to go until it is a tolerant place.

The sponsors of a proposed One Baton… Read full post »

What is the Leftist or liberal view of economic equality?  I was reading a blog post by a conservative philosopher today where I came across the following description of Leftists.

Fetishizers of equality, leftists would rather have everyone poor and equal rather than tolerate inequalities tha

… Read full post »

Over at InsideHigherEd.com they have a nice video of a professor offering some critical remarks about how Higher Ed is being transformed.  Check it out.

Examined Life is filmaker Astra Taylor's second documentary about philosophy.  While the first, Žižek!, focused on a single thinker Examined Life is comprised of interviews with Cornel West, Avital Ronell, Peter Singer, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Martha Nussbaum,… Read full post »

In an effort to get some of the idiocy including the school curriculum's the right-wing contantly claims they just want school's to "teach the controversy" over matters of political controversy.  (Whether there is a scholarly controversy seems to be of little importance to them.)  Classes o… Read full post »

I know - first hand - that it's not PC for men to offer criticisms of feminism, but the recent discussion The Daily Show's woman problem cries out for commentary.  A week or so ago the Jezebel blog published a post contended that there's a sexism problem at The Daily Show.… Read full post »

The idea of higher education is that it aims to create an educated public and not just trained workers ready to fill whatever jobs are needed in the marketplace.  It is, of course, necessary to have an educated public in order to maintain a democracy.  Citizens need some… Read full post »

I've been reading the SCOTUS decision on Ricci v. DeStefano.  I'm not all the way through it, but it looks like the court basically said that unequal outcomes are necessary to show bias, but not sufficient to show bias.  You do not have to convince any educators of that, duh.  Conserva… Read full post »

With the crackdowns on communication and media outlets during the events in Iran, internet communication and social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook have played a central role in the organizing of political action in Iran allowing users that are thousands of miles away with no personal conn… Read full post »

From The Huffington Post:

Probably the best (but still problematic) argument for the permissibility of torture is the ticking time bomb argument.  Amongst all the red herrings, Liz Cheney tossed out the time bomb argument to defend the Bush Administration and her dear old dad on MSNBC.  There's none of this one-perc… Read full post »

It's just too easy to make dumb blonde jokes about Miss California, but let's do it anyway since she repeatedly demonstrating her own stupidity.  Just check out her reasoning in the press conference held today. First, she defends her belief about traditional marriage with a fallacious appeal to… Read full post »

Fox Nation is a country of wingnuts. Just check out the comments on, well, just about any thread over there are you're bound to run into a real gem before long.  This one from "Linda" on the tea party thread especially caught my eye, given recent shootings.

 … Read full post »

By now most of us have probably seen Jon Stewart's interview with Jim Cramer, but if you have not seen it yet you should watch it now.  I was up early this morning and saw Jim Cramer on Morning Joe.  Cramer seemed to be trying to rebrand himself as a "sane"… Read full post »

We need to put the notion that public voices like those of Rush Limbaugh, Jim Cramer, Stephen Colbert, and John Stewart are just entertainers to bed, once and for all, I think.  When Stewart went on CNN's Crossfire he responded to criticism by appeal to the fact he is just an… Read full post »

I've had an iPhone for a while now and I really like it.  But, do you know what would be totally awesome?  If somebody would develop an iPhone application for Salon.com and especially for posting to Open Salon.  Plus, if some ingenious computer app developer came up with one it would… Read full post »

If there's one thing that demonstrates a need for a national dialogue on race in American society and politics it is our national dialogue on race.  For example, check out the exchange between Pat Buchanan and Prof. Dyson on Hardball.

Awkward, indeed.  Here in Louisiana, som… Read full post »

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During the campaign one of the talking points against Obama was that he's a socialist.  Here's a socialist economic professor, Richard Wolff, giving his views on our current economic crisis, which he considers a crisis of capitalism.

Now, here's Obama's speech on the economic cris… Read full post »

From a my right-wing dad that is opposed to the state interfering in the free market and socialized medicine: "Schools should teach 'love of country' and 'patriotism'" because "parents do not do it anymore."  I agreed that it was a parent's job to teach such things to their children, but objecte… Read full post »

Uh, I do not know what to say about this one.  But, you should watch it.