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POPSAmerica's regression Pew Poll, today: Public opinion about the use of torture remains divided, though the share saying it can at least sometimes be justified has edged upward over the past year. Currently just over half of Americans say that the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can either often (19%) or sometimes (35%) be justified. This is the first time in over five years of Pew Research polling on this question that a majority has expressed these views. Another 16% say torture can rarely be justified, while 25% say it can never be justified.
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POPSWhere is my mail? I didn’t know this two weeks ago, so when I put my name on the letterbox three days after moving in, the postie then informed me that she had seen mail from the electricity company and the phone company and something else that looked personal. Did she not see the moving boxes stacked inside the door? Had she not seen cars full of boxes being lugged inside just days earlier? Was she not aware that she hadn’t delivered mail to this particular house for more than a year, and that it had a new name anyway (there are no street names or numbers where I live: just house names)? Did she not put two and two together when she saw bills from utility companies arrive that would indicate services being activated for the new people who have just moved in? Did she not? No, she bloody didn’t.
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POPSThe Rachel Maddow Show: U.S. Ties to Ugandan Anti-Gay Bill In a moment, we‘ll speak with Jeff Sharlet who has written extensively about the secret of Evangelical religious organization called The Family. We first started discussing The Family on this show when it emerged as a player in, not two, but three Republican sex scandals - those of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, Nevada Senator John Ensign and the alleged sex scandal involving former Mississippi Congressman Chip Pickering. Jeff Sharlet is now reporting that there aren‘t just ties between American Evangelical Rick Warren and the “kill the gays” bill in Uganda. He reports that, in fact, the president of Uganda and the legislator who introduced the “kill the gays” bill are more than just supported by American Evangelicals. They are both members of The Family.
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POPSGoldman Sachs Is Arming Themselves Against Angry Mobs. Guilty Conscience? While we wait, Goldman has wrapped itself in the flag of Warren Buffett, with whom it will jointly donate $500 million, part of an effort to burnish its image -- and gain new Goldman clients. Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein also reversed himself after having previously called Goldman’s greed “God’s work” and apologized earlier this month for having participated in things that were “clearly wrong.” Has it really come to this? Imagine what emotions must be billowing through the halls of Goldman Sachs to provoke the firm into an apology. Talk that Goldman bankers might have armed themselves in self-defense would sound ludicrous, were it not so apt a metaphor for the way that the most successful people on Wall Street have become a target for public rage.
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POPSSwiss Government Votes To Ban Minarets 4. Dim-witted, lazy, fit only for physical labor -- but you have to threaten them to get off their butts, because they won't work otherwise; 5. Constitutionally weaker than members of the dominant culture; 6. Complete lack of moral self-control; 7. Bent on world domination. These plans always involve secret conspiracies and special skills known only to the clan; 8. Despite their minority status, they are thought to have far more power than their numbers, and an inordinate influence over the running of the country; 9. Heirs to an inhumanly bloody history that cannot be forgiven, and which they have never moved past (they're "bloodthirsty savages" with no redeeming qualities); and which never created anything meaningful in the way of art, music, science, or architecture (writing them out of history);
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POPSTerrible Balance I remember seen a lot of people in crutches on campus around the holidays. Ice can be murder!
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POPSAfghans Detail Detention in ‘Black Jail’ at U.S. Base 
The jail’s operation highlights a tension between President Obama’s goal to improve detention conditions that had drawn condemnation under the Bush administration and his stated desire to give military commanders leeway to operate. While Mr. Obama signed an order to eliminate so-called black sites run by the Central Intelligence Agency in January, it did not also close this jail, which is run by military Special Operations forces. Military officials said as recently as this summer that the Afghanistan jail and another like it at the Balad Air Base in Iraq were being used to interrogate high-value detainees. And officials said recently that there were no plans to close the jails. In August, the administration restricted the time that detainees could be held at the military jails to two weeks, changing previous Pentagon policy. In the past, the military could obtain extensions. The interviewed detainees had been held longer, but before the new policy went into effect. Mr. Hamid
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POPSGlenn Beck rules out Palin/Beck 2012: "What, I'm gonna take a backseat to a chick?" I guess Beck's done it now. Will see who is the most popular of the two, or will they respective movements (mobs?) will shatter from the strain. BTW, to all of those people that accuse Palin's critics of sexism because they point out (the obvious) fact that Palin ain't the sharpest tool in the shed (even for or especially in the Far-Right tool shed) take a look (and listen) this is what a real sexist remark looks/sounds like. Mind you don't need to use the word "chick" to be a sexist, it's the condescension and patronizing tone that really marks a sexist, but you can't dodge the back-blast when you drop the chick-bomb (or the whore bomb either for that matter).
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POPSTough-guy John Bolton, hiding under his bed John Bolton and his comrades love to run around accusing anyone who doesn't want to wage more wars of being an "appeaser" and "surrendering" to Terrorists, but Bolton's cry here is the ultimate, definitive surrender: I'm too scared of the Terrorists to go about my normal life. I'm too petrified even to have my family in the same city as a terrorist trial. We can't adhere to our normal political system because the Terrorists will kill us all.
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POPS Creationism vs. atheism: It's on! Was this stunt shrewd or moronic? From the first it's been hard to tell. The plan, innocuously named "Origin Into Schools," was announced this September in a video featuring Kirk Cameron, a former television child star who co-founded a ministry called Living Waters with Comfort. There's something almost pitiable about the way Cameron crows over the scheme; he truly seems to find it ingenious. He points out that the University of California at Berkeley cannot prevent the action because "their own Web site" dictates that "anyone is free to distribute noncommercial materials in any outdoor area of the campus." "Besides," he gleefully adds, "what are they really going to do? Ban 'The Origin of Species'? That would be big news! Especially when their own bookstore sells it for $29.99!"
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POPSRule-of-law extremism engulfs primitive Eastern Europe Last month, newly elected President Dalia Grybauskaite said she had "indirect suspicions" that the CIA reports might be true, and urged Parliament to investigate more thoroughly. * Continue Reading What sort of a newly elected President would get into office and then start demanding that actions From the Past -- rather than the Future -- be investigated, just because they might be "criminal"? This deeply irresponsible Lithuanian leader apparently doesn't care about inflaming partisan divisions, and worse, appears blind to the dangers of criminalizing policy disputes. Even more outrageously, Lithuania faces one of the steepest recessions in all of Europe; obviously, this is a time, more than ever, that Lithuanians should be Looking to the Future, Not the Past.
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