Why Torture Is So American!

Every American school child knows or should know about the Salem witch trials, and part of that chapter of American history involves torture.  Perhaps we should not torture our own citizens that overtly, but events as they transpired a few hundred years ago certainly represent American ingenuity so that an early form of water torture,…

Want to Understand the Tea Party? Look to How They See Themselves

This map comes from the U.S.Census Bureau (and thanks, Rodger Cunningham, for alerting me to it). It is based on self-reporting on the 2000 census. What is fascinating to me is the number of people who identified themselves simply as “American.” Their location covers almost all of Appalachia and, I suspect, if you took out “African…