In honor of Independence Day, a little game of "spot the performative contradiction."The First Amendment to the United States Constitution:Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.Courtesy of the Washington Post, the...

Because I worry that Haloscan may implode before blogger does, I feel compelled to preserve SteveG's comment on Patrick's ode to his HDTV for digital posterity:It may be a non-standard interpretation, but there are some scholars who consider "alienation from oneself as a species being" to be a mistranslation of "not getting decent reception on channel sechs oder acht." Of course, Marx was writing back in the times when they had rabbit...

After a long struggle with some undisclosed ailment that was producing an occasional greenish tint to the images displayed on it, our old 27" Magnavox standard-definition TV finally gave up the ghost a couple of weeks ago. It was a long, slow death, so there wasn't much mourning -- just a couple of trips to electronics stores and some 'Net browsing to find a replacement. What we quickly learned is that they just don't make decent-quality...

[Updated 7.4.06] John Robb peaks into his crystal ball to see what might happen if the US moves forward with a strategic bombing campaign against Iran (discussed in the new issue of the New Yorker by Sy Hersh). He relays some interesting possibilities, although I must say that much of what he talks about was echoed by others in the lead up to the Iraq war, and certainly the reverberations from that conflict have not been as severe as...

...a few stories worth your time as you begin your holiday weekend:The Christian Science Monitor has a great article discussing the multiple motives and objectives behind Israel's recent Gaza operations.Great Britain sought the services of the US nuclear deterrent to help protect Hong Kong during the Cold War, recently released documents suggest. What is of interest for me is the recognition that the colony was "strategically irrelevant", but...

A bit of good... well maybe just decent news today burried on page 15 of the Post, behind all the goings on in Gaza and the Supreme Court Ruling on Gitmo.The Bush administration is expected to announce today that it has dismantled the last of the most powerful nuclear missile warheads left over from the Cold War.... The warhead at the center of today's announcement, the W-56, was put into operation in 1963 atop the Minuteman I intercontinental...

Apparently, he is also an expert on Central Asia. That is what I like about Rall, he never lets facts or logic get in the way.Nathan over at the excellent Registan has the story.Filed as: Ted Rall

As most are aware, Baseball commentator Peter Gammons suffered a brain aneurysm at his home in Cape Cod, MA. As of this morning he is out of surgery but still in the ICU. He has been listed in good condition.My colleagues and I here at the Duck are avid baseball fans. Speaking for myself, I can honestly say that Gammons’ Hall of Fame reporting over the last 15 years has made me both a more passionate and informed fan of the game. Always fair...

Russian President Vladamir Putin announced today that he has ordered the Russian Federal Security Service to “find and destroy” those responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Russian diplomats in Iraq (for background on the story, see here).The announcement by Putin was followed by a statement passed in the lower house of the Russian parliament criticizing the “occupying countries” (i.e. the United States), noting that they have lost...

I knew that there was a large problem as soon as I pulled my car out of the driveway. There was entirely too much traffic running through my normally quiet suburban neighborhood -- we're kind of buried back in the middle of a tangle of winding streets, so we don't usually get many people driving through on their way to someplace. But there were a lot of cars out, driving in a slow line that bore all the characteristics of the blind leading the...

...I submit the latest from Ted Rall (click here for larger image) :I will leave aside the weak argumentation about the lack of importance of Afghanistan to the fight against al-Qaeda (however, who the hell cares where Bin Laden was physically on 9/11/01?? Wow, great argument Ted...), but will take issue with his claim at the end that Pakistan had a female President.Here is a list of past Presidents in Pakistan. Maybe I am missing something,...

Over the weekend former defense secretary Richard Perle wrote an op-ed for the WaPo excoriating—no, not the Democrats, but Neoconservatives' other favorite punching bad—the State Department for the current standoff with Iran over its nuclear program.Besides throwing in the now requisite amount of references to resolve, appeasement, etc, etc, Perle makes the unusual claim that we should have “…referred the matter to the U. N. Security Council...