I have very mixed feelings about the core group of writers known as ‘The Beats.’ They were Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg. Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ is one of the milestones (or millstones, depending on point of view) of American literature. Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ is one of the great twentieth century poems, and [...]

On New Year’s Eve, while few were paying attention, President Barack Obama signed into law a bill which authorizes the military to investigate and indefinitely detain any American citizen that the President chooses. It is now the law of the land, passed by both houses of Congress and signed by a Democratic president, that you [...]

The Egyptian military, which is supported by the United States military, has begun a brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters by beating and killing. Recently, they appear to have targeted mainly women, beating them with sticks, stomping on their heads and chests, and dragging them half naked through the streets. This is the Egyptian military. This [...]

The U.S. Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act which codifies into law the power of the U.S. military to arrest and detain Americans indefinitely, without any legal charges and without any oversight whatsoever. In other words, the United States government is handing its military the power to disappear anyone it wants to. The bill [...]

University of California at Davis students staging a sit-in have been attacked by school police with massive doses of pepper spray. The use of weapons against tuition-paying students by the university is grounds for removal of any administration officials with knowledge of these tactics. This is disgusting. Students have a long-standing tradition of free expression [...]

The ‘Protect IP’ bill before Congress would give corporations and the government the power to completely shut down internet sites without any due process just for posting a single copyright infringing link. So for a site like Facebook, if a single user posted a single copyrighted something or other, the government could simply pull the [...]

Rachel Maddow does a wonderful piece on the freedom of speech aspects of Occupy Wall Street. She contrasts the police at University of California’s Berkeley campus shoving students with batons to the 1964 Mario Savio speech in support of free speech for students. The police violence against students last week happened on the very plaza [...]

On the orders of New York mayor Bloomberg, the NYPD staged a brazen and unwarranted attack on the Zuccotti Park protesters of Occupy Wall Street late last night, removing and destroying the entire camp. This assault on Occupy Wall Street appears to be a coordinated nationwide effort with police departments in various cities operating in [...]

In a deeply troubling sign of the mentality of Penn State University’s student body, mobs of students rioted yesterday in protest of the university’s firing of football coach Joe Paterno. He is the coach to whom a child rape was reported by a graduate student who witnessed the crime and allowed it to continue. That [...]

Pennsylvania State University appears to have abandoned its primary duty to protect the children on its campus. The betrayal of its community and its children is shocking. Its football facilities appear to have been used for an ongoing series of child rapes by football coach Joe Paterno’s longtime assistant Jerry Sandusky. Two high-ranking university officials [...]