Since a bystander’s video uncovered the brutal shooting of a fifty-year-old black man by a North Charleston, South Carolina police officer, the graphic video has been played and replayed by broadcast media too many times to count. Every time an expert, analyst, relative or the witness/videographer himself, have been interviewed, we see the same horrific images with sound repeated. When...

Where do you go when the court of last resort turns you down? For the past several years I’ve been researching a couple of aspects of the Office of Independent Counsel headed by Kenneth Starr and succeeded by Robert Ray. I interviewed Jo Ann Harris, the former assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division under then-Attorney General...

On January 5th, I opened The New York Times and read the following: “In mid-December, a posting appeared on the Internet site Pastebin offering six million account records, including passwords and login data for clients of Morgan Stanley. “Two weeks later, a new posting on the information-sharing site offered a teaser of actual records from 1,200 accounts, and provided a...

Yesterday, Illinois Republican Representative Aaron Schock announced that he was resigning his House seat at the end of the Month. Schock said, “I do this with a heavy heart,” (And an even heavier expense account). Not only has Rep. Schock spent $40,000 to make his office look like rooms from the castle at Downton Abbey, but the thirty-three-year-old has been...

In the conclusion to his new book, @War – The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex (2014), journalist Shane Harris writes, “Governments and corporations are making the rules as they go, and their actions have had a more tangible effect than many have realized. It’s incumbent on everyone who touches cyberspace – which is undeniably a collective – to find what...

Last month, Citizenfour was awarded an Oscar for best documentary in 2014. The film concerns intelligence thief Edward Snowden, and the massive amount of documents he leaked to the media regarding a variety of NSA programs. The title comes from the pseudonym adopted by Snowden in an encrypted e-mail sent to director Laura Poitras in which he offered her inside...

With all the fuss surrounding the optical illusion about “that dress,” the Take offers its own spin. In the disillusion pictured, do you see a clown or House Speaker John Boehner? Answer: Actually the clown represents the “self-righteous, delusional” wing of the Republican Party, as described by Republican Peter King. The New York Times reported (Mar. 1), that “King, who...

While Jon Stewart may have announced his retirement from Comedy Central’s Daily Show later this year, he will not go quietly into anyone’s good night. Among those who will not be morning Stewart’s passing is Fox News host Megyn Kelly who recently said, “I don’t think overall he’s been a force for good. Because I think especially in his later...

At the end of many episodes of Jackie Gleason’s classic, “The Honeymooners,” a defeated Ralph would come home, give his put-upon but loyal wife Alice that hang-dog look and she would always ask, “Why Ralph, why?” Dripping with humility, Ralph would always respond, “…because I have a BIIIIG Mouth!” While “The Honeymooners” is a comedy, it’s hard to find much...

Around Oscar time, it has become routine for critics to partner with historians and scrutinize historically-based movies for their accuracy or inaccuracy regarding the facts. A documentary documents a non-fiction event(s) or person(s) usually mixing interviews, archive film, possibly recreations of an event or events, usually with a narrator who details what happened. A fact-based movie is a dramatization of...