A great comment from Obdicut, which I found in the jungle of my last post’s comment thread: Michael, I’m sorry posting this has led to the stalkers having one of their uber-bizarre meltdowns in the thread. It’s a well-reasoned piece. I too, as an atheist who is against extremist religion of all forms, including Islam, [...]

Building off of Stephen’s post on Jon Stewart revisiting his past transgressions, I thought it would be worth exploring how my own previous writing and those of others across the political spectrum provided an opening for the pure ugliness of Newt Gingrich, Pam Geller, Michelle Bachmann and the like in the wake of the “Ground [...]

This story isn’t really that significant, but it’s a case in point of copyright absurdity: Madonna is being sued for using the name “Material Girl,” a reference to her hit 80s song, in her juniors clothing line designed with her daughter Lourdes. Clothing maker LA Triumph says it’s been using the name to market clothes [...]

A friend of mine who I worked with at a hip-hop magazine years ago was a big influence on me turning toward libertarianism. He said this on the mosque fiasco: The next person who tells me Ground Zero is ‘hallowed’ or ‘sacred’ ground, is getting punched in the balls. If it really were special, it [...]

I did a critique as well as a defense of the ACLU for TLP not too long ago, but another aspect of the ACLU’s approach to defending civil liberties seemed worthy of analysis. Here goes. On my Facebook feed this evening, I found this snibbet: Every student deserves the opportunity to attend school and learn [...]

When I first heard Pat Buchanan talking about Palestine and Israel as a politically naive teenager, I thought he was a conservative who broke from the path because he thought the Palestinians had been mistreated. Things are obviously a lot more complicated than that. Given Pat Buchanan’s proclamation that America is “a country built by [...]

We live in weird times. There is still plenty to criticize radical Islamists about, and we really should be wary of efforts to bring political Islam special favors and acceptability in the United States and elsewhere. These rational arguments, however, are doomed to be misunderstood thanks to the efforts of Newt Gingrich, Bill Kristol and [...]

If Christopher Hitchens, as he pronounces pretty clearly in an interview for The Atlantic, is about to die on us, we’re really in for a descent in American knowledge of the Founding Fathers. Gone will be this sort of free thinking: And, in replacement of free thinking, will be Glenn Beck’s own brand of distortive [...]

It takes considerable skill to be able to write from both ends of a political issue, and I’m happy to say that that is the task I am going about with the ACLU. For my defense of the ACLU, click here. The ACLU frequently backs itself up as being in favor of the Constitution. If [...]

It takes considerable skill to be able to write from both ends of a political issue, and I’m happy to say that that is the task I am going about with the ACLU. For my critique of the ACLU, click here. The Left and Right political labels are pretty useless at a certain point, but for [...]

I wanted to link over to a recent article I wrote at the blog Voice of the Migrant, where I talk about the distinguishable products and services that America’s Hispanic immigrants bring to our society: In a New Yorker article from 2006, James Surowiecki explores how sugar producers in the United States lobbying for “special favors” has [...]

The Westboro Baptist Church seems to be deadset on creating a gospel based on an ideology of high school populism, picketing all those who would have been outcasts during their teenage years. First it was “God Hates Fags” at the funerals of fallen military men and women and now it is the more comical and [...]

There are serious concerns about radical Islam and political Islam as a movement. It’s something we should be seriously conscious of. I’ve written about this extensively here at TLP. Given that, there is a very, very fine line between critiquing the retrograde nature of radical Islam and outright xenophobia. I honestly find it hard to [...]

At this point in time, there is reason to be optimistic about marijuana legalization. Andrew Napalitano was able to get Sarah Palin to back the “lowest criminal priority” position on his show, while Oakland, California seems to be positioning itself into a future marijuana growth mecca with a local ordinance allowing industrial marijuana production in the [...]

In this great video, Bill Maher savages radical Islamic terrorists:

If it wasn’t already evident that Hugo Chavez is a complete madman, the exhuming of the long dead revolutionary Simon Bolivar should prove that to you: (Reuters) – Venezuela exhumed the remains of 19th century independence hero Simon Bolivar on Friday and will test them to see if he was poisoned by enemies in Colombia. [...]

With economic times the way they are and a demographically changing society, I feel the ethnic tension flowing and the faucet turning, with boiling water threatening to pour on us all. This seems to be an eternal curse of perpetually tribal humanity, and secular humanists seem to be the only ones to not fall on [...]

Celebrity gaffes can seem fairly meaningless. Celebrity behavior is normal human behavior: from pistol whipping (Eminem) to drug addiction (Robert Downey Jr.) to weird familial marriage (Woody Allen), the sort of human transgressions that would be at most private gossip among civilians becomes the world’s top news. Given that, I think there is an underlying [...]

In the fantastic Tom Hanks film Charlie Wilson’s War, Hanks’ character is seen frequently bringing up the deteriorating post-Soviet situation in Afghanistan to his fellow congressmen. Having been active in funding the American involvement in combatting the Soviets during their invasion of the Southwest Asian country, Wilson found it very irresponsible to quickly abandon the [...]

I’m on the mailing list of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the humanist and author of Infidel. In the latest newsletter from her AHA Foundation I got this message: “Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the former Muslim human-rights activist who lives under armed guard for fear of her life, is author of the powerful new book “Nomad.” As secular [...]