Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Ex-Baltimore Ravens and gay rights activist Brendon Ayanbadejo has been stoking media interest in recent weeks with his efforts to have four closeted NFL players come out at the same time. Well, one NBA player, Jason Collins, just stole their thunder by becoming the first male professional athlete (in one of the four major sports) to… Read more.
A French lawyer called me a legal “ignare” for asserting that the paparazzi and tabloid responsible for the topless photos of Kate Middleton, which went viral last year, should be prosecuted. I don’t speak French, but I knew what he meant. And he was not the only one who questioned my legal judgment. For the… Read more.
Wilfred S. Coakley Jr. was a remarkable man with extraordinary accomplishments in boxing, finance, insurance, writing, and law. Yet, he regarded them all as, well, ordinary. “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Former US President Teddy Roosevelt popularized this proverb. Coakley personified it. But he was a skilled boxer and the first Bahamian president of the… Read more.
I have argued for years that it is in Serbia’s enlightened national interest to give up all sovereign claim to any part of Kosovo; not least because Serbs had (and still have) neither the political influence nor the military power to enforce such a claim. The international political and military forces aligned against the Serbs are such… Read more.
Much is made in the international media of the way North Korea ignites military tensions with Groundhog Day-like precision. It does this, of course, by threatening to nuke not just wary neighbors like South Korea and Japan, but even the United States. By contrast, relatively little is made of the way Japan ignites similar tensions… Read more.
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) was founded in 1985 to promote the image of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in the media. On Saturday night, former President Bill Clinton was the guest of honor at its 24th Annual Media Awards in Los Angeles. He probably felt prouder receiving his GLAAD… Read more.
We got him. This was what we heard as NBC aired communications on police scanners last night; it’s how we knew the manhunt was over. Like most people I sat riveted in front of my TV last night as an army of law-enforcement officials closed-in on the terrorist who got away. They were alerted by a… Read more.
No doubt you know by now that those responsible for terrorizing the Boston Marathon on Monday are two brothers, aged 19 and 26, who hail from the former Soviet republic of Chechnya. Incidentally, it’s an ironic indication (and indictment) of how wrong CNN was to describe its speculative suspect as a “dark-skinned male” that the… Read more.
Here is the friendly advice I gave Pervez Musharraf when it was clear his days as the benign dictator of Pakistan were numbered: It would behoove Musharraf to follow the trail so many of his predecessors have blazed into exile. And, frankly, given the numerous assassination attempts on his life, it would be understandable if… Read more.
Hopes could not have been higher for passage of the Senate’s gun-control bill last week after Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Republican Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania struck a compromise on background checks. After all, Manchin and Toomey are de facto poster boys for the NRA – the gun-lobbying group most members of congress… Read more.
