Author: nick
A judge in England sentenced John Hamilton, a former Northumbria police detective constable, to 18 months in prison for sending inappropriate message to a 14-year-old rape victim. Hamilton, who worked in the police department’s child abuse division, was involved in investigating the girl’s case but began sending her messages at all hours and visiting her at school. The judge said while Hamilton’s messages were “not overtly sexual,” they were still unprofessional and crossed clear boundaries, and his relationship was “entirely inappropriate.” The post Brickbat: Insult to Injury appeared first on Reason.com. Source link
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair Before Ronald Reagan became the 40th US president, he sold anything and everything from toasters to refrigerators as the TV host and travelling spokesperson for General Electric. Today, Donald Trump’s salesmanship reveals more about his unvarnished support for Big Oil and a staggering ignorance about the world, even compared to the Gipper. But with the closing of the Strait of Hormuz and resultant loss of millions of barrels of shipped oil per day from the Persian Gulf in the ongoing US-led war against Iran, change is coming. Beleaguered citizens everywhere are looking for alternatives to oil…
My mother always told me that the Catholic Church was greater than the men running it. Source link
In Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions, Professor Todd Rose explains that to belong to a group, people “keep twisting [themselves] into pretzels, trying to conform to what we falsely believe everyone else expects of us.” Seeking acceptance from the group, we conform in language, behavior, beliefs, and practices. As a result, we lose our individuality and aggregate into herds. Within our group we create an alternate reality to fit whichever collective mindset we attach ourselves to, and interpret the world through those lenses—our innate desire to belong overrides reality. Rose says these…
Photo by Simone Dinoia Note: This opinion piece reflects my personal views and not those of any group with which I am affiliated. In George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, Oceania is a totalitarian society where Big Brother demands unquestioning conformity and obedience; where the Thought Police constantly monitor and punish every infraction of the rules; and where the Ministry of Truth proclaims, “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery,” and “Ignorance is Strength.” According to the story’s protagonist, the greatest heresy in Oceania is common sense, and the most essential command is to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. Ultimately, nobody escapes this total surveillance state —…
What does it mean to be “distinctively American?” This term has been thrown around to describe a wide range of things, both good and bad, over the course of our 250-year history. In the years of planning for America’s Semiquincentennial, that was the question on everyone’s mind, in conversations with colleagues on Capitol Hill, recent presidential administrations, and scores of stakeholders in states across the country. Read Full Article ⟶ Source link
(and that’s a good thing for American democracy) The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its allies have long been considered one of the strongest lobbies in Washington, exercising outsized influence, especially on U.S. policies toward Israel and the Middle East. Recently, its purported muscle has come under question, and votes in Congress the last two days show why, or at least that there is a stark partisan divide. For all the hundreds of millions of dollars AIPAC and its allies have given to Democrats, they got exactly fourteen votes from Democrats in the House of Representatives and Senate the…
The recent ceasefire between Israel and Iran may have paused the most intense phase of direct military confrontation, but it has done nothing to resolve the deeper questions about Middle Eastern stability that have emerged since October 7, 2023. Behind the temporary calm lies a profound transformation in Israeli strategic thinking, one that has moved from containment to active regional reorganization. Israel is not a normal democracy that abides by the rule of law or legal restraint. It is very much an expansionist state with bold ambitions and a demonstrated willingness to break international law. The events of the past…
For 35 years, Defense for Children International – Palestine did what no institution with power was willing to do: it witnessed. It deployed field researchers in the occupied West Bank. It collected sworn affidavits, obtained medical records, reviewed CCTV footage, confirmed identities through birth certificates and national identification cards. It produced documentation that met United Nations evidentiary standards. Its findings were not allegations. They were records of what a state does to children when it believes those children do not fully count. DCIP has now been forced to cease operations as a result of relentless intimidation, vilification, persecution and obstruction…
Beware of any politician who gleefully celebrates taxation like normal people would a sacred holiday. Unfortunately, it’s too late for us New Yorkers. Our city foolishly elected Zohran Mamdan… Source link