There's been a great deal of debate over Serena Williams' loss in the U.S. Open this weekend to Naomi Osaka, with some arguing that the penalties leveled on her by umpire Carlos Ramos were merited, and others arguing they were the result of his racial blindness. While I stand on ...read more

In the worst example of synergy since that Duck Dynasty/Looking crossover episode, bikers in Phoenix, Arizona have arranged a protest for Friday night that will feature hundreds of armed bikers holding a Mohammad cartoon contest outside a mosque. According to the Facebook page ...read more

On Tuesday, anti-Muslim activist and First Amendment crusader Pamela Geller unveiled the latest followup to the Muhammad Cartoon Contest in Garland, Texas that resulted in ISIS claiming credit for the two gunmen who bravely conquered American bullets with their faces. In an ...read more

One story filling the slow news hole of Memorial Day weekend this year is the saga of hack-fraud (sorry, Chuck, it's in the Banter Style Guide) Chuck C. Johnson's suspension from Twitter, and subsequent elevation to First Amendment Martyr via Twitter hashtag. It all started ...read more

The shootings in Garland, Texas this weekend have revived the debate over the tension between legitimate criticism of radical Islam and bigotry, as two gunmen were killed trying to carry out an attack on an event dedicated to cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that was sponsored ...read more

A teacher in Seattle is under fire for showing her class cartoons of Muhammad that were published in Charlie Hebdo, whose Paris office was attacked last month. In that slaughter, 12 people were murdered by two jihadists who yelled, "Allahu Akbar" and "The prophet has been ...read more

If you've been following the news at all lately you know that the city of Paris has absolutely no problems whatsoever and is in a perfect position to entertain audacious but ultimately pointless flights of fancy. Sure, the French capital is still reeling from a devastating ...read more

In the first few weeks of 2015, we have been reminded of just how far back in time religious extremists would like to set back the progress that humankind has made. Even in celebrating unity against the terrorists who attacked French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo, an ...read more

At the risk of sounding pedantic, conservatives really do need to shut up about the mass shooting in France. Still a hot topic in the news, conservative commentators have been coming out in droves to a) demand a war on all Muslims, b) blame Obama, c) argue for more guns ...read more

It's entertaining to observe the lengths to which American conservatives will overreach in order to make a nothing issue into a major scandal. Such is the case following the unity march in Paris, attended by 3.7 million people and world leaders from 40 nations. As we covered ...read more

On Friday, the news was rightly dominated by the dual standoffs between French police and terrorists involved in the murders of 13 people earlier in the week, standoffs which ended in violent death for three of the suspects, while one remains at large. Two of the suspects, ...read more

Last week, I wrote about the tragic case of 29 year old Veronica Rutledge who was shot dead by her toddler in a Walmart in Idaho. I blamed the mother's stupidity for keeping a loaded weapon around a two year old and argued that had America had sensible gun laws (ie it would be ...read more

(Photo: Michel Euler/Associated Press) In 2010, a letter was sent from Osama bin Laden to an associate in Yemen that sought to remind him of al Qaeda's mission. "We need to extend and develop our operations in America and not keep it limited to blowing up airplanes,” he wrote. ...read more

In the end, the terrorists responsible for the massacre in which a dozen people died at the offices of Charlie Hebdo got their final wish: martyrdom. French-born brothers Cherif Kouachi, 32, and Said Kouachi, 34, met their demise about 20 miles northeast of Paris in ...read more

One of the best cartoons to come out in response to the attack on Charlie Hebdo was the one you see above: a pencil that is broken and then sharpened to form two more pencils that are ready to keep drawing as opposed to staying broken. It's symbolic of the resolve of every ...read more

The terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine headquarters that killed 12 people has completely dominated the news since Wednesday morning, understandably so. Aside from the cold newsroom calculus about what leads, the apparent motivation for the attack was a uniquely offensive ...read more

(Image: Dave Brown/The Independent) When I began writing online in the Spring of 2006, I knew exactly what I wanted to say. I had spent the better portion of my life gleefully pissing down the leg of polite society and mouthing off to anyone I considered an authority figure, ...read more

Once again, the publication of anti-Islamic cartoons has yielded senseless violence perpetrated by extremists who haven't accepted the fact that their personal religious code cannot be foisted upon those who do not share it. Or can it be foisted? If the behavior of the ...read more