The New York Times posted this today. The 4th Circuit Court (the federal court) ruled that journalist James Risen can be forced to testify against a source. The case shares many elements with more well-known ones, noticeably Snowden (I had been trying to get a post about him together for weeks now) and Bradley Manning, whose court martial is ( Read more... )

With the Sarah Murgahan situation concluding, I just wanted to pop in and give my personal opinion. Obviously I have a fair amount of bias, just as a warning/disclaimer ( Read more... )

As soon as I read the word “polarized” in Wendell Berry’s essay “Preserving Wildness,” I thought of the current political climate. The election is fast approaching, and although environmental issues aren’t at the top of either candidate’s agenda, they are a consideration for voters. Although written decades ago, some of Berry’s points are still ( Read more... )

cross-posted from my class blog

Death abounds in this section of Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. It opens with a flood that kills crops and animals and even people in other towns downriver, and then goes into a litany of various insect species eating their own kind. Or, offspring just don’t find what they need, be it an anchor hold in the ( Read more... )

This entry, edited as you see below, was included in my 2013 Sophie Kerr Prize portfolio which earned finalist status.According to Peter Pan, those are the things you need in order to fly. I’m starting to think that these might be what we need in the realm of politics. And I’m not even joking ( Read more... )

Even though it isn’t even 2012 yet, the media is in full election mode. Each broadcast is devoted to getting to know the candidates, or reporting new poll numbers, or dissecting how Candidate X’s move helped his campaign and why. In this frenzy of election (or, arguably, pre-election) fervor, sometimes individual issues get lost in the shuffle ( Read more... )

Hello ( Read more... )

Why do you watch the news? I can practically guarantee something related to information gathering will be on your list of reasons. Especially when it comes to politics, people don’t know as much as they could, and so they rely on other sources to give them that information. Because many members of the press are familiar with the workings of ( Read more... )

Was America founded as a Christian nation?

At first glance, this seems like a straightforward question. Yes, or no. But even a minute's contemplation leads to a fairly major problem: when it says founded, is it referring to the colonists who first set foot here, or the statesmen who set forth our Constitution a hundred years later? Also, how does ( Read more... )

#OccupyWallStreet has been a hot topic on Twitter for quite some time. The movement, involving a group of protesters actually “occupying” the financial district in New York City to protest what they see as abuses by the corporate elites, has been going on since September 17, but only recently are reports being widely circulated ( Read more... )