It’s firmly in the Christian ethos to identify as being persecuted. Jesus stood up to the establishment and was tortured and murdered for it. To be a Christian is to worship a martyr.
It’s no secret the GOP hates Attorney General Eric Holder. If you want to start a fight with your Fox News-o-phile uncle, just say, “The attorney general will not cast aspersions on my asparagus!” as Rep. Louie Gohmert famously did during a House Judiciary hearing on the Boston Bombings in 2013.
This year marks the 20-year anniversary of Hillary Clinton’s speech at the Fourth World Conference on Women titled, “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights.” It was 1995 when then – First Lady Clinton went to Beijing and challenged the world to see women’s issues as not separate from the rest of humanity.
A report that Fox News juggernaut Bill O’Reilly has been fluffing his war zone encounters was met with a collective chortle. Mainly because as a media-consuming public, we are not surprised to hear O’Reilly makes stuff up.
At the birth of every conspiracy theory is the question, “Who profits?” In the dark reaches of anonymous Internet forums, the answer is always Big Government, Big Pharma, Big Farm – a and occasionally Satan, aliens, the Illuminati, the Knights Templar, or the Pentavirate — some omnipotent all-powerful force that enviously pulls off vast nefarious synchronization perfectly.
A cyber attack altered your holiday movie choices last year. Sony Pictures was the victim of a massive security breach. Personal emails were revealed, films pirated and employee data leaked. The corporation immediately kowtowed to the terrorists, rumored to be North Korean-sponsored, killing the theatrical release of the third in a trilogy of Seth Rogan and James Franco bromance movies called, The Interview.
Last Saturday, I found myself sharing a New York City subway train with protesters from the Millions March and drunken revelers from SantaCon. Both events drew comparable-sized crowds, hovering around 25,000 participants each. Both ended up on the tiny island of Manhattan on the same day. And this coincidence is a perfect metaphor for Christmas this year.
Torture is illegal. Period. End of debate. There is no legal, moral or probable justification for torture. It’s against the Bill of Rights; it’s against the Geneva Convention; it’s against United Nations Convention Against Torture (ratified by the U.S. in 1994); it’s against every state statute from every modern constitutional democracy and every decent and encouraging proposal coming from humanity in the last century.
According to thinkers like also-ran presidential candidate Rick Santorum, America is a Christian nation.
The officer shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri last August has rallied Americans to their camps: The pro-Officer Darren Wilson vs. pro-unarmed black teenager.
In 2005, Hurricane Ivan was a Category 5 storm headed for New Orleans. “Mayor Ray Nagin declared a state of emergency and strongly recommended that residents evacuate immediately,” reported CNN.com at the time. Roughly half—600,000—residents left; the majority stayed. The storm passed. New Orleans was unscathed.
Conspiracy theories are easy to make up. They all follow the same formula: An omnipotent force wills it, everybody is in on it, it takes place perfectly and no one else will tell you this.
“Politicize” is a jab meaning the other side is trying to capitalize on a news topic. “The Republicans have tried to politicize the border crisis,” says Nancy Pelosi. Reince Priebus says Democrats are trying to politicize Benghazi.
