This, I think, is what the rightwing critics find most threatening in Wells' story and Spielberg's film. It vividly illustrates that might and right are not the same thing, that military superiority is not evidence of superior virtue. Read more

In Florida, it's not necessarily a crime to shoot and kill an unarmed teenager. I'm too angry/soul-sick to say much about this yet, so here's a round-up of responses from others, including Jelani Cobb, Mike Signorile, Erik Loomis, Susan Russell, Field Negro, Chauncey DeVega, Doktor Zoom and Kieran Healy. Read more

Con artists rely on the fact that their victims don't want to accept even to themselves — let alone to the police — just how thoroughly they've been hoodwinked. Victims want to cling to their pride. They want to be able to look in the mirror and see a person who wouldn't have fallen for the ruse they just fell for. They refuse to accept that they are victims — even if that means embracing irrational explanations and shifting to a kind of unreality. Read more

Read a story you'll eventually be told you never read. Why Miami is sunk. California has allegedly been coercing female prisoners into getting tubal ligations, so should we outlaw tubal ligations? Arctic Sabbaths and a really bad idea. Why does resentment flow backwards in America? Church puzzled that young people it kicked out don't feel welcome. Read more

If your response to the tenth chapter of Luke is to set out on an archaeological expedition in search of the actual site of the actual Good Samaritan's Inn, then you've completely misunderstood the story. Not only would you have utterly missed the point, but you'd be inflicting other, different meaning on the passage. This is a refined and elaborate form of illiteracy, but it is still illiteracy. Read more

A Delaware college student ate a bag of hallucinogenic mushrooms and drove around in a pair of stolen cars before arriving, confused, on a mountain in northwest Connecticut police said. Read more