Talking First Amendment Cues

Since a lot of people seem to forget this (oh so constitutional) point whenever someone - most recently Milo Yiannopoulous - loses a business deal as a result of saying something terrible, let's take it from the top. Freedom is the freedom to say horribly offensive things and have private-sector entities take you to task in a variety of perfectly legal ways while the government takes no interest whatsoever.

Some Parting Thoughts on the Future of Our Republic

Now that we live in Donald Trump's America - Trumpistan, you like - it's worth taking a moment to consider how much of our public conversation pivots on the question of just which groups we're allowed to disparage based purely on the misdeeds of a small minority. For example, demonizing just the 1% of "the 1%" who improperly use the system to enrich themselves (even though so much is already stacked in the wealthy's favor) is typically shouted down as "class warfare". However, any suggestion that government run social welfare programs do more good than harm despite a tiny amount of actual fraud will regularly be called "un-American". Seriously, we're getting to the point where the only people we're allowed to dismiss based on their occupation and/or economic status are the poor, government employees and prostitutes. To be honest, even that last group get a lot of credit for their skills at draining the balls of "happily married" politicians who like to spout off (so to speak) about "family values" and "self-sufficiency). If we can't get past this nonsense as a nation, maybe it is time to do a hard day reboot after all. Hiroshima, mon amour?

It's All Fun and Games Until Your Way of Life Implodes

I love the Internet and not just because you couldn't have a blog - short for "weblog" - if it wasn't for the World Wide Web. That said, it hasn't all been positive, and we owe it to ourselves to have an honest accounting of the Internet's impact on America.

-The first casualty was the music business.

-The second casualty was empathy.

-The third casualty is apparently democracy.