Month / September 7, 2012
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Why the Wisconsin Sikh Temple Shooting Should Make Us All Afraid
BY RAJA KRISHNA On Friday, July 20th, 2012, a man named James Eagen Holmes walked into a Colorado movie theater and opened fire on a crowd of confused and terrified moviegoers. Seventeen days later, on Sunday, August 5th, 2012, a man named Wade Michael Page walked into a Wisconsin gurdwara—a Sikh place of worship—and opened…
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Jailhouse Rock
Checks and balances, among their other effects, put a disappointing damper on political intrigue. Authoritarian regimes, from Russia’s kleptocratic feudalism to China’s single-party totalitarianism, all try (with varying degrees of success) to protect their power by striking down those most capable of threatening them. The recent and ongoing purge of Bo Xilai from the rarefied…
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Gun Control is Out of Control
The July 20th shooting in Aurora, Colorado left the country stunned. James Holmes, a dropout Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado, entered a movie theater wearing riot gear and armed with with military grade assault weapons and high capacity magazines. He left 12 dead and 59 injured. All of these weapons and equipment were…
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Holier-Than-Thou: Why Aaron Sorkin’s Newsroom Gets it So Very Wrong
Aaron Sorkin thinks he’s better than you. Then again, he always has. But this time, with HBO’s The Newsroom – the renowned wordsmith’s new pipedream drama about the way journalism should be – his unabashed self-assurance knows no bounds. Coming off commercially successful triumphs Moneyball and The Social Network, Sorkin has been gifted a new…
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Romney’s Gamble
Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his Vice-Presidential candidate continues the trend of peculiar GOP VP selections in recent history. In 2000, George W. Bush tapped Dick Cheney to head up his Vice-Presidential Search Committee. After all signs were pointing to Missouri U.S. Senator John Danforth as the pick, Cheney proceeded to throw his…