Every couple of days - usually on the weekends - I force myself to go on a media fast. If I can get away with it, I don't watch television, I don't look at my RSS feed reader, and I don't let myself get wrapped up in the newswires. These days it's about the only thing that lets me get a good night's sleep on the weekends and makes my blood pressure managable. I'm pretty much a desk jockey these days so that's about the only exercise I get, but that's beside the point.

Many years ago, during the early time of …

Last last month and early this month, a disturbing amount of WTF appears to have been cropping up around the country. While that shouldn't really surprise anyone as it seems like a common state of mind anymore, I still find it fascinating in the "Wow, that's how they cut someone out of a wrecked car?" way.

First of all, the Supreme Court decided by a vote of 5 to 4 that one's Miranda Rights mean far less than they used to. Dating back to the court case Miranda v. Arizona in 1966, the Miranda rights of American citizens are the …

On Friday, US President Barack Obama transmitted instructions to his secretary of Health and Human Services to draft rules requiring that all hospitals which receive Medicaid or Medicare payments allow patients to designate who may make healthcare-related decisions regardless of sex, gender, or sexual orientation. For many years, same-sex couples have been at a distinct disadvantage here - it was not uncommon for the partner of a patient who had been designated someone's caretaker to be completely disregarded in favor of the patient's family. It is sadly not unheard of for the orders given by the patient's family to be completely …