Author: nick
The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) underwent some significant changes after it entered its fourth decade—while remaining true to its core mission. Those changes allowed CSI not only to continue to carry on its important work but revitalized the organization. Ronald A. Lindsay at the first CSICon in 2011 In June 2008, I became the president and CEO of the Center for Inquiry as well as CSI and the Council for Secular Humanism, the trinity of critical thinking, if you will. Unlike the case with the Christian Trinity, however, there was the perception by some that, at least as of…
Earlier this month, Justice Sonia Sotomayor took an extraordinarily personal shot at Justice Brett Kavanaugh – just the latest lack of civility. Source link
Harvard magazine reports on recent comments by retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer on the “shadow docket.” Although Justice Breyer would likely vote with the more liberal justices on many interim orders, he does not seem to share the concerns of Court commentators about how the Court has been handling things. From the story: “Should we be worried about the Court’s reliance on the shadow docket?” West asked Breyer, noting that many audience members had submitted questions about it. No, was Breyer’s short answer. “Every court has what you’re saying is a shadow docket, which we call an emergency docket,”…
In a parallel with the 1954 Little Rock school segregation case, if India’s Supreme Court rules that a religious tradition takes precedence over individual rights it will deepen already unprecedented repression under the Hindu nationalist ruling party, writes Betwa Sharma. Supreme Court of India, New Delhi, 2018. (Pinakpani / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0) By Betwa Sharmain New DelhiSpecial to Consortium News In 1954, the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregating school children based on race was illegal and ordered that schools in the southern state of Arkansas be integrated. But because of local resistance, it wasn’t until 1957…
Photograph Source: Globetrotter19 – CC BY-SA 3.0 They have kept their strategy of cultural and institutional vandalism generously broad in recent campaigns against their adversaries. It therefore came as something of a surprise that much febrile fuss was made about this month’s antics of an IDF soldier photographed attacking a statue of Jesus in southern Lebanon on the edge of Debel with a sledgehammer. Instead of its usual qualifications, haughty denials and coarse justifications, the Israel military accepted the veracity of the image and viewed the act “with great severity and emphasises that the soldier’s conduct is wholly inconsistent with the values expected of…
Watch out, Spirit. The president’s own airline famously failed. But has Trump Media & Technology Group ever paid off? I asked Truth Social AI. Source link
From Gov. Janet Mills’ message Friday “vetoing L.D. 1911, An Act to Automatically Seal Criminal History Record Information/or Certain Crimes”: This bill would direct the Judicial Branch to review decades of criminal docket files—much of this work by hand—to identify those that are to be removed from the public record. The sealing of these records would occur without regard for whether the subjects of the files have requested that they be sealed, whether victims have objected, or whether a compelling public interest exists in the records remaining accessible. There are several significant problems with the legislation. First, as drafted, L.D.…
In one of the scariest moments in modern history, we’re doing our best at ScheerPost to pierce the fog of lies that conceal it but we need some help to pay our writers and staff. Please consider a tax-deductible donation. “The International Criminal Court is prosecuting the former Philippines president [Rodrigo] Duterte for the exact same thing.” Jon Queally for Common Dreams The murder spree being conducted by the US government under the direction of President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth climbed to an estimated 185 people on Sunday after the Pentagon announced another bombing of a boat it claims…
Editor’s note: This is the second installment of a two-part article. The first installment appeared in the January/February 2026 issue. Banachek originally wrote this tribute to James “The Amazing” Randi for The International Brotherhood of Magicians. We are thankful he let us publish it here as well. The Publicity Genius I was always amazed by how Randi generated publicity. He would do multiple phone interviews in the morning, TV and radio shows in the afternoon, and newspaper interviews in between. Once, Mike Edwards and I were staying at Randi’s house. We were sleeping in the living room attached to his…
In the thick of the 1979 New York City winter, Isaac Asimov sat at his typewriter to reflect on what he considered America’s “cult of ignorance.” In the “My Turn” section of Newsweek, where Asimov eventually published the essay, he was credited as a biochemistry professor at Boston University School of Medicine, though the title was honorary by that point; he’d been a full-time writer for years, and with more than 200 books to his name, I imagine the words flowed from his mind like an open faucet. When the essay appeared on January 21, 1980, the world learned what…