The Senate recently failed to extend unemployment benefits--the Republicans blocked it and they went on break instead. Here's what Paul Krugman has to say about that:

There was a time when everyone took it for granted that unemployment insurance, which normally terminates after 26 weeks, would be extended in times of persistent joblessness. It was ( Read more... )

Is Mohammed in a bear suit hilarious? I don't know, but I'm disappointed in Comedy Central for caving to jihadi demands and censoring it.

What do you think? Is it important for the West to stand up for free speech, even if it means angering Muslims? Is it important to respect others' religious sensibilities, even if it means occasionally censoring ( Read more... )

Fascinating article on human selection on dog breeds, which is a topic that we've all thought about. Check this out:

A good example of what happens to dogs when people are taken out of the picture lies in Russia's capital city. Feral dogs have been running around Moscow for at least 150 years. These aren't just lost pets that band together - these ( Read more... )

Random dude at Der Spiegel says: It Makes No Sense to Ban the Burqa. And I agree with him:

One of the fundamental tenets of Western modernity is that the world would be a better place if countries were more like Belgium and less like Afghanistan. Men and women should be equal, no one should be excluded or feel excluded, religion should be a largely ( Read more... )

Recognizing that without me, it can only ever be Aweso, I want to hear what all you fine people have to say about this:

A parent from a poor country, writes professor Lino Graglia of the University of Texas law school, "can hardly do more for a child than make him or her an American citizen, entitled to all the advantages of the American welfare ( Read more... )

Steve Chapman is a generally conservative commentator, but he doesn't find much to like with arguments against gays openly serving in the military--largely because all of the concerns and predictions have turned out to be unfounded in other countries.

It's not completely implausible that in a military environment, open homosexuality might wreak ( Read more... )

My Grandma was telling me a story about the time that a representative from the Musician's Union showed up to a free show that her band, Lefty and the Boys, was performing for a local charity or some such. He threatened to blackball them and said they'd never be allowed to play with any union members, and that they were taking the money out of the ( Read more... )

Oh, how I wish this post was about mast-spars and boobs. But no. It's about the economy.

Robert Samuelson here has a sober article asserting that the excessive risk-taking that led to the recent troubles seemed reasonable at the time because of the historically unprecedented boom that preceded it. The government, the theory goes, was so good at ( Read more... )

I just got a visit from a kid selling magazines. He's short, skinny, black and has some sort of deformity on his chest, like the pectoral version of a hunchback. I knew immediately that he was one of those kids selling magazines for shady outfits, so I listened to him speak his piece (inviting him in briefly--it's cold outside and he didn't have a ( Read more... )

Among the other interesting  facts from this Robert Samuelson article:

The United States may be the birthplace of feminism, but that's not obvious from global figures. In 2009, women were 16.8 percent of the U.S. House of Representatives. In other national legislatures, women did better. For Canada, the comparable figure was 22.1 percent; for the ( Read more... )