Raistlin

Glenn Beck compared Bill Nye's criticism of creationists with the Catholic Church's treatment of Galileo, concluding that Nye was on the "wrong side of history."



I know Beck long ago reached the level of self-parodying, but at this point I think he's in league with the manufacturers of irony meters, because he keeps making mine explode.

Tags: creationism, evolution, science

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News & Politics

In a 2012 story on a meth bust, the Ionia Sentinel-Standard, based in Michigan, decided to run a picture of the bust site farmhouse from 2 years earlier, when a political candidate had held a fundraiser. This led to accusations of the Sentinel-Standard and its editor, Lori Kilchermann, engaging in "yellow journalism," or distorting irrelevant details of a story for purposes of sensationalism or partisanship. These detractors also publicly encouraged others to cancel their Sentinel-Standard ...

Tags: free speech, slapps

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News & Politics

My public defender’s office handles a lot of interesting cases. One of the most notable to come out of my office in recent years was Maryland v. King, which involved a challenge to a state law that permits the police to obtain a DNA sample of all people arrested for a crime, before any conviction and without the need for any belief that the DNA was relevant to the crime the arrestee was detained for. DNA sampling was thus just another routine booking procedure like fingerprinting, but DNA tests ...

Updated 06-04-2013 at 03:35 AM by Raistlin

Tags: cases, dna testing, fourth amendment

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News & Politics

[I wanted to rant on this issue, but I figured EoEO might be tired of my anti-Obama speeches. Though it is his fault for continuing to give me so much material. ]

To the government, information is the enemy. That is why the US government has demonized Wikileaks, because it threatens to shame governments for their misconduct. So-called issues of “national security” may have merit on certain, specific occasions, but the broad way the label is used makes it clear that that is not the ...

Updated 06-05-2013 at 02:30 AM by Raistlin

Tags: free speech, obama, politics

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News & Politics

Last week, I almost had my first trial. And it was going to be one of the most complicated cases to appear in Maryland District Court (which covers non-jury misdemeanor cases): a challenge to so-called Drug Recognition Experts.

Take this hypothetical scenario: a woman is pulled over for driving over a dividing line (“erratic driving”). The cop talks to her, asks if she’s been drinking. She denies it, but seems a little out of it. He asks if she’ll take a preliminary breath test, ...

Updated 03-18-2013 at 05:18 AM by Raistlin

Tags: law, science

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News & Politics

Yesterday, a federal Court of Appeals decided the fate of a trademark on “cock suckers,” which are rooster-shaped lollipops produced by a woman named Marsha Fox in support of the University of South Carolina Gamecocks. The trademark examiner denied her trademark on the grounds that it was “scandalous,” and the federal court affirmed.

In support of this ruling, the court cited a law originally passed in 1905 that prohibited the issuance of trademarks if it “consists of or compromises ...

Tags: profanity

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News & Politics

I made this a blog post because it's kinda long and I didn't think a lot of people in EoEO would care. I just wanted to rant about an issue that often bugs me.

It’s easy to get caught up in sports team politics, where you root for your side because of certain labels, not for any ideological reasons. This is apparent with the lack of liberal protest for many of Obama’s policies, despite him being by many measures even worse than Bush on civil liberties and other “liberal” issues. ...

Tags: citizen's united, free speech

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News & Politics

I learned so many new things today.

Did you know that the battle of the sexes is intensifying? To women, settling down and getting married is of utmost importance, but men don't want any of that anymore. Men don't want to deal with modern women. And do you know why?

smurfing feminists.

That's right, feminists have ruined everything. They've caused women to stop being women (assuming "woman" is defined as "subservient cook and baby-maker"). ...

Tags: sexism

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News & Politics

Sex makes people happiest, per new study

In other news: rain is wet, Iceglow doesn't understand paragraphs, and Tifa's Boobs has boobs. Shocking, I know.

Tags: sex

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News & Politics , Internet

Your car bursts into flames in the middle of the street about 100 feet from your house. What do you do?

If your answer is "run inside, grab some Kool-Aid, and then throw the Kool-Aid on the flames," you think very similarly to alleged gang hitmen in my area.

Tags: cases

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