Author Archive | Dale Carpenter

[3d UPDATE: South Park Executive Producer Anne Garefino confirmed to me that the clip is a forgery, but an uncensored episode does exist. See the details here.] [2d UPDATE: I have had a call into South Park Studios for a while to try to get them to confirm or deny the authenticity of the clip. […]

I just had an amusing off-the-record conversation with someone at Comedy Central. They have released a simple public statement on their decision to deny South Park the right to show a depiction of Mohammed in their Wednesday episode, Cartoon Wars–Part II: “In light of recent world events, we feel we made the right decision.” There […]

Did Comedy Central censor tonight’s episode of South Park? The answer would appear to be YES. [THURSDAY NIGHT UPDATE: In an interview Thursday evening, South Park Executive Producer Anne Garefino explained to me that Comedy Central censored the episode out of fear (not tolerance) and gives details here on how the battle whether to air […]

It’s Professor Bainbridge v. Kevin Drum on a hike in the minumum wage. Both are eloquent enough to speak for themselves, but Bainbridge makes more of a positive argument, while Drum is just making a passing dismissive crack. Drum favors raising the minimum wage at least “a buck or two.” Bainbridge favors indexing it: First, […]

South Park continues its examination of the Muhammed cartoons with “Cartoon Wars–Part II.” You can watch a trailer for the new episode in the middle of the page here. Last week’s episode (Part I) re-airs at 9:30pm ET (8:30pm CT) tonight (Wednesday). The new episode (Part II) follows at 10 pm ET and midnight ET, […]

Michael Totten has been spinning a wonderful tale of taking his friend Sean to Kurdish Iraq on a lark. I waited to link until the third installment when they finally set foot in Iraq, though there are more posts to come. The first installment is here, the second here, and the third here. From the […]

Instapundit and Bidinotto point us to this story, with Glenn asking whether Oprah has been reading Ayn Rand. Oprah Winfrey is a rich woman – and she’s got no problem with that. Speaking in Baltimore on Monday at a fundraiser for Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School, Winfrey told the audience, “I have lots of things, […]

The New York Times has an odd, but fascinating story about DNA services that purport to determine whether one’s ancestors were of such heritages as Native American, North African, British Isles, or (apparently) European Jewish: Alan Moldawer’s adopted twins, Matt and Andrew, had always thought of themselves as white. But when it came time for […]

In early March, Catholic Charities of Boston (CCB) announced that it would stop providing adoption services in Massachusetts rather than comply with a state law that it not discriminate against prospective parents on the basis of sexual orientation. In response, Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney proposed a bill that would exempt religiously affiliated adoption agencies like […]

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post writes: John McCain was expecting journalists to start slapping him around, and he hasn’t been disappointed. As he gears up for a likely presidential campaign, the Arizona senator knows that reporters and columnists — whom he jokingly described last year as “my base” — have to prove their independence […]

VC bloggers Todd Zywicki, Dale Carpenter, and I are among the two dozen panelists at a conference on “Censorship and Institutional Review Boards” being held at Northwestern Law on Friday, April 7. The Northwestern Law Review is hosting the conference at the law school in downtown Chicago. Both Todd and I are on the last […]

A common argument against the recognition of same-sex marriages is that it will head us down a slippery slope to polygamy. I think this argument is wrong as a matter of principle and as a matter of politics, for reasons I’ve explained here before. But whatever you think of gay marriage, one distinction between recognizing […]

The highest court in Massachusetts has rejected the argument of out-of-state same-sex couples that they should be allowed to marry in Massachusetts even though their home states don’t recognize such marriages. Problem with their argument is, a 1913 Massachusetts statute forbids such marriages. I haven’t reveiwed the decision yet, so I can’t say whether this […]

Some 16 or so states have been considering whether to ban adoptions by gay men and women. So far, only Florida categorically bans adoptions by homosexuals — in a statute passed in 1977 during Anita Bryant’s campaign against homosexuals. Meanwhile, some 119,000 kids await adoption in the U.S. A report just released by the Evan […]

In an odd story at HuffPost (tip to Instapundit), Larisa Alexandrovna says that two weeks of work on a story she wrote for an online news service was ripped off by the Associated Press. The story involved changes in security clearance standards that might affect gays, lesbians, and bi-sexuals. She complained to the AP: We […]