WikiLeaks may be a small player, really, in the bigger scheme of things. But to some degree it is also a bellwether, a forecast of things to come as information and technology continue to nip at the heels of the state. Perhaps we really are approaching a time when government...

So, I wake up this morning all hung over and whatnot and thus decide to spend the day doing nothing, and then I see that there's a trackback thingy on my most recent blog post here, and it's ol' Robert Stacy McCain having a go at me in his...

Last year, President Obama travelled to Turkey in order to restate America's case to the Muslim world, taking care to emphasize that the United States is "not a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation," but rather a republic "bound by ideals and a set of values."...

Washington Post columnist and Pulitzer prize winner Charles Krauthammer has a new column out today in which he provides readers with his presumably expert take on the matter of Obama's decision to increase U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan by 30,000 soldiers while also having announced a force reduction to...

It's difficult to know where to begin here, or even to be sure that there is any such thing as a beginning in this case; more to the point, this whole affair, this day itself, may very well constitute some teleological attractor towards which all events have been flowing, having...

Tyler, Texas is in many ways the exact opposite of New York, for better or worse or both. The best coffee in Tyler is found at Jack-in-the-Box, as I finally discovered after hours of aimless marching - a practice which is frowned upon here, apparently. Traversing a cross-walk during one...

U.S. News and World Report publisher Mort Zuckerman's latest editorial on Barack Obama's foreign policy is a work of such vast incompetence that I blush to even refute it, and I cut my polemical teeth mocking the intelligent design movement.

As you read the first sentence, remember that Zuckerman is...

In my first book, Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design, and the Easter Bunny, I attempt to provide an overview of the great amounts of fraud, chicanery, and general nonsense that has come to us from the direction of The Discovery Institute (formerly known as the Discovery...

After a half-century of false starts, filming has finally begun on a film version of Ayn Rand's final and most explanatory novel, Atlas Shrugged. The timing of this independent production (prompted though it was merely by a filmmaker's potential loss of rights were filming not to have begun by...

Israeli President Shimon Peres views an incident in which Israeli commandos killed some unknown number of activists in international waters and injured dozens more to constitute a "humane" response to the flotilla's attempts to deliver aid to the civilian population of Gaza.

"Any other army would have immediately used...

It is rare to be reminded that actual change is possible through the established mechanisms by which the various fictions of government have ended up operating, but that is what occasionally happens, and when it does, those of us who have such contempt for governments as to pretentiously declare them...

It's hardly surprising to see Arab-baiting from the direction of the social conservative commentator class, nor did I receive too many simultaneous heart attacks due to learning that Michelle Malkin is not too happy to see an Arab woman who appears to hold Western values ascend to the almighty throne...

Comedy Central is apparently coming out with a new series in which Jesus is presented as a regular guy for comedic effect for the dozenth time that I can recall off the top of my head. Conservative blog kingpin Ed Morrisey notes this as further evidence of the...

Two months ago I began writing a column for Skeptical Inquirer, the admirable old organ of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, which, along with a handful of other institutions such as Michael Shermer's Skeptic magazine, ends up doing much of the heavy lifting necessary to ensure that skeptical thought gets...

The world's sudden and unprecedented interconnectedness - as well as the great amount of novelty produced as a consequence of such a dynamic as this - puts new strain on the public's ability to identify that information which most demands consideration. The possibilities inherent to a radically altered global environment...

Monday's much-anticipated D.C. press conference by the Wikileaks organization revealed a leaked video showing that 12 men who had been identified by the Department of Defense as "anti-Iraqi forces" and shot dead in Baghdad in 2008 were killed by U.S. troops acting out of apparent failure to accurately assess the...

Both the Bible and the Koran contain passages that can and have been used to justify a great number of crimes against humanity over the past 1,500 years. The key difference is that Christians and Jews tend to skip over the most indefensible sections of their holy books whereas Muslims...

Note - First round of updates are from March 24th; new info as of March 26th a.m., including text of Wikileaks statement, found below

The rise of the internet brings the greatest challenge yet to the globe's existing centers of power, and those associated with those centers of power are...

A few months ago I finished work on my second book, which focuses on the failures of the punditry and news media in general, with particular attention paid to the inexplicably influential Thomas Friedman. After having finished the chapter on Friedman (I consider a chapter to be finished...

There are a few sets of circumstances in which one ought to pick the side of the Church of Scientology in such cases as that organization finds itself in a conflict with another party. For instance, if Joseph Stalin were to come back to life and start molesting kulak children...