I absolutely agree with his Guardian piece, as I did with his Salon piece of a year and a half ago, that "speak no ill of the dead" does not apply to public figures. Those who speak well of them are no less politically motivated.

The Guardian essay is in response to the silencing of criticism about the just-deceased Margaret Thatcher (see relevant ( Read more... )

A DAY ahead of the papal conclave, faces at the scandal-struck Vatican were even redder than usual after it emerged that the Holy See had purchased a €23 million share of a Rome apartment block that houses Europe’s biggest gay sauna...The sauna’s website promotes one of its special “bear nights”, with a video in which a rotund, hairy man ( Read more... )

New York Daily News reporter Dan Friedman was doing his job by checking out rumors that Chuck Hagel, Obama's nomination for secretary of defense, was taking speaking fees from dubious organizations.On Feb. 6, I called a Republican aide on Capitol Hill with a question: Did Hagel’s Senate critics know of controversial groups that he had addressed ( Read more... )

Kate from the lesbian site Autostraddle:Being raised as a woman often feels like a state of subtraction: continually unhinging your parts, and then handing them over to be examined and judged; giving away your most tender pieces to a society that doesn’t love them back, to people you’ve been raised to take care of, take the blame for, keep hanging ( Read more... )

Most of the things I've found on Tumblr, I have found thanks to
( Read more... )

A private company hired by the UK government to help unemployed disabled people find jobs was, amongst themselves, referring to their clients as "LTBs." That is, "lying, thieving bastards."

In response, people in Britain with disabilities have begun to recount the abusive things they've heard under the Twitter hashtag #heardwhilstdisabled. ( Read more... )

Most of the manuscripts in Timbuktu are safe, thanks in no small part to librarians. The Islamists "damaged or stole only a limited number" of them before fleeing; none of them destroyed an entire library or collection.The manuscripts cover subjects from science, astrology and medicine to history, theology, grammar and geography. They date back to ( Read more... )

This is a provocative piece, even for Salon. The headline is wankbait, but the article, sadly, is correct about the environmental impact of the common housecat. It did evolve to be an efficient little killer. The trouble is, most prey species did not evolve along with it to accommodate its predations without going extinct.Look, I’m as sentimental ( Read more... )

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/28/a-response-to-david-mamet-on-gun-control.html

Palin/Chacarron makes more sense than Mamet.

HAHAHAHAHA: "[A] group of women decided to do [Mamet's play] American Buffalo ( Read more... )

A modest roundup.

Jill Filipovic:To anyone who has taken even a cursory look at reproductive rights activism, it's obvious that decreasing the abortion rate isn't nearly as much a concern for the pro-life movement as controlling women is. ... Despite knowing the key to a lower abortion rate, the so-called "pro-life" movement refuses to use it. ( Read more... )