Scholars and Rogues

IRS/Tea Party controversy: progressive groups “targeted,” too, and corporate media once again refuses to tell Americans the whole truth

Samuel Smith — Tue, 21 May 2013 17:46:32 +0000

Late Saturday we posted a Scrogues Converse Roundtable looking at the IRS/Tea Party controversy. The debate got started when our colleague Dr. Sid Bonesparkle suggested that perhaps the IRS wasn’t out of line in taking a good hard look at organizations dedicated to undermining the tax system trying to organize using 501 status, which is […]

“Useful Enemies”: U.S. admitted not just Nazis after WWII, but their sadistic collaborators

Russ Wellen — Tue, 21 May 2013 11:24:04 +0000

Why did the United States feel the need to admit Baltic and Eastern Europeans who at times exceeded the Nazis in brutality? Lost count of the sordid episodes in America’s past? In Useful Enemies: John Demjanjuk and America’s Open-Door Policy for Nazi War Criminals (Delphinium Books, 2013), Richard Rashke chronicles one that few of us […]

The time a source has to respond to request for comment? Virtually none.

Dr. Denny — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:25:07 +0000

The deadline is now. Thirty years ago, I faced a deadline once a day. For any reporter today, the deadline is … well, now. The technological leap into the Internet era that changed the notion of deadlines has consequences, as I wrote three years ago: Speed kills. Accuracy dies when hordes of people, each with […]

Profiling the Tea Party: In defense of the IRS. Sorta. Or not.

Samuel Smith — Sun, 19 May 2013 05:00:17 +0000

You’ve probably noted the controversy surrounding the Internal Revenue Service’s apparent “profiling” of groups aligned with the Tea Party. A discussion on the issue broke out here at S&R this week, with our colleague Sid Bonesparkle suggesting on our internal e-mail forum that perhaps such action, even if it only involved a couple of “rogue” […]

Saturday Video Roundup: “Imagine the Band,” by John Lennon and Wings

Samuel Smith — Sat, 18 May 2013 20:33:22 +0000

If you play it backward you can hear Paul singing “eat your vegetables.”

The Rest is Noise (6)—Descent into the Maelstrom

wufnik — Fri, 17 May 2013 23:33:18 +0000

It’s been leading up to this, the past several months, as we have tracked the descent of the twentieth century into its mid-century madness through the course of its music. Alex Ross’s book is quite clever in this—but it seeks to illuminate the music of the century through its intellectual and social history. The focus […]

I hate handguns, but I have still considered owning one

Brian Angliss — Fri, 17 May 2013 21:15:06 +0000

I'd never own a handgun to protect myself from the government. Protesting myself my armed fellow Americans who are terrified of the government, on the other hand....

Redneck jokes are racist

Otherwise — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:09:50 +0000

I am not one of those people that believes in reverse discrimination, and that old white males are struggling for equality in a pitiless world run by women and people of color. (Affirmative action is a bad idea, but a necessary one to counteract a worse one, segregation and institutionalized povertization of the black underclass.) So […]

Largest study of peer-reviewed literature to date finds overwhelming climate disruption consensus (UPDATED)

Brian Angliss — Wed, 15 May 2013 23:02:13 +0000

A new study of 11,944 peer-reviewed papers over the course of 21 years finds that 97% of all papers with a stated position on climate disruption, and 98.4% of their authors, agree that human activity is driving climate disruption.

Boehner: Oh, so now you’re angry?

Alex Palombo — Wed, 15 May 2013 19:34:53 +0000

I can’t deal with the IRS news coverage right now. In case you haven’t turned on a television, booted up your computer, glanced at a newspaper or listened to a radio in the past few days, the news is all a twitter (and so is Twitter) about the IRS – it just came out that […]