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The Precarious Republic: Understanding the Fascist Threat to Modern Democracies

What if it doesn’t take years, or even months, for a democracy to collapse—but only a few short weeks? The idea that a stable republic could fall in ninety days may seem exaggerated, until you look at the historical record. Then it becomes a haunting possibility. Fascism doesn’t always arrive with fanfare or fire. Sometimes, it walks in through the front door, wearing a suit and a smile, welcomed by the very institutions it plans to dismantle.

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The Star-Mangled Banner: Houston, We Have a National Anthem Problem

We have a national crisis with self-indulgent performances of “The Star-Spangled Banner” in the USA. Our national anthem is being mangled by bad taste and poor singers when presented at the beginning of public sporting events.

What used to be a revered practice with hats off and hands held over hearts has now become a gross performance opportunity for a sub-par singer to take our anthem and mangle the melody in order to “show off” just what a wide-range they do not have.

The problem none of these horrible performers realize is that they cannot sing in tune, they fumble out of key, and they are ruining a closely beloved song that should never really be sung live in public because it is too easy to ruin the song with an awful, cat-strangling, performance.

The effort should not be in the song attempt, but rather in the respect we provide the song by allowing it to be heard plainly and properly as intended.

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Killing without Due Process

The government of the United States wants to legally reserve the right kill you — assassinate you, even, and without legal representation — if you are perceived as a threat to national security.  This is new and chilling news, and the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the ACLU, are trying to fight in court for those targeted for killing.

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Facebook is Running Out of Space

I am fascinated by how we know, learn and propagate information into the icy aging of our future.  This week I had a flood of email in my Facebook Inbox — from only my friends in Germany — suggesting the social networking service was running out of server space. 

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Red Scare in Twilight's Last Gleaming

Every so often, we need to stop, decompress from the tension in our present lives and look back at the human traps that were set in order to punish the foreign and the strange — and then we must vow to never let that happen again.  Today, let us look back in fury at the “Red Scare” that throttled everything good about America after World War I.

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