Mar 3, 2014 | Arts and Entertainment, History, mic
Published: mic (March 3, 2014) The philosopher George Santayana famously wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Put another way, some moments in American history are just too seminal not to have stored upstairs. Here are 10 trivia questions covering major moments in American history. How well do you know our fabled past? Hint: copy and paste your answers into a...
Feb 28, 2014 | Arts and Entertainment, History, mic, Race and Racism
Published: mic (February 28, 2014) It's the NFL off-season and while players are on vacation and there's no good excuse to get debauched on a Sunday any longer, something else is afoot — NFL rule changes. On Feb. 22, news broke that the NFL's Competition Committee is considering an automatic 15-yard penalty for use of the "n-word" on the field and presumably other racial slurs. This opens up a...
Feb 25, 2014 | Civil Liberties, Gay Rights and Other LGBTQIA Issues, mic, Science and Technology
Published: mic (February 25, 2014) To determine the fate of Michigan's constitutional ban on gay marriage, a federal court in Detroit is holding hearings on whether having same-sex parents is harmful to children. It's a tricky question (for some), but here's the truth. The Heritage Foundation held meetings to discuss "the need for new studies and research to back up claims that same-sex marriage...
Feb 24, 2014 | Foreign Policy, History, mic, Military-Industrial Complex/Security State, Millennials, Other Media, World Affairs
Published: mic (February 24, 2014), Appearance on Channel 69 - WFMZ (February 25, 2014) The news: Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel plans to announce billions of dollars in military spending cuts, reducing our armed forces to troop levels unseen since 1940— before America entered World War II. In addition to reducing the size of our standing army, he will also propose limiting pay raises,...
Feb 21, 2014 | Arts and Entertainment, General Advice, mic, Millennials
Published: mic (February 21, 2014) Jean-Luc Godard once said that the best way to criticize a movie is to make another one. But our generation has put a strange twist on his aphorism: Even when we make new movies, we only seem to do so as a way of seeing old ones again. Don't believe me? Just look at the top box office hits of the past 14 years. With the exception of Avatar, every film was an...
Feb 19, 2014 | Civil Liberties, Democrats, Elections, Elections - Presidential (2016), Foreign Policy, Liberalism, Libertarianism, mic, Millennials, Political Ideologies, Political Parties, Republicans
Published: mic (February 19, 2014) The news. In a recent interview with Politico, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) discussed how the Republican Party could attract minority voters by focusing on a new slate of issues. These included reforming the war on drugs, opposing indefinite detention of detainees at military bases, and shifting the immigration debate away from border security and toward...
Feb 14, 2014 | Class Issues, Conservativism, Elections, Elections - Other, Libertarianism, mic, Plutocracy, Political Ideologies
Published: mic (February 14, 2014) Billionaire Tom Perkins, who once compared the Occupy movement with Nazism, is again at the center of a storm of controversy. His comment? "The Tom Perkins system is: You don't get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes... You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes." There is something instructive in Perkins's ideas, albeit not in the way...
Feb 12, 2014 | Gay Rights and Other LGBTQIA Issues, General Advice, mic
Published: mic (February 12, 2014) A federal judge has struck down Kentucky's law banning gay marriages from other states. This historic decision, which is being rightly celebrated by the pro-LGBT community, sets an important precedent. By establishing that the constitutional guarantee to equal protection under the law applies to gay couples, it exposes the lie in the "states' rights" rhetoric...
Feb 11, 2014 | Conservativism, Democrats, Elections, Elections - Presidential (2016), Liberalism, Media Issues, mic, Political Ideologies, Political Parties, Republicans, Scandals
Published:mic (February 11, 2014) Let's dispense with a necessary disclaimer: I believe Hillary Rodham Clinton is going to be the next President of the United States. The "Hillary Papers" that have been flying around the conservative blogosphere this week are just the latest effort by the right to do anything they can to prevent that from happening....
Feb 2, 2014 | Arts and Entertainment, History, mic, Science and Technology
Published: mic (February 2, 2014) Millennials are suckers for nostalgia, which is why RadioShack's Super Bowl commercial was an advertising masterpiece. The spot opens with a RadioShack employee completing a phone call and informing his co-worker, "The '80s called. They want their store back." Cue a string of cameos to make even the most oversaturated nostalgia junkie experience an overdose....