Civil Discourse

Some speech isn’t free

Sheila Liaugminas | 16 July 2010

The Bible says ‘be prepared to make a defense for what you believe.’ Illinois and Chicago politics say ‘be prepared to pay to play.’ Entirely different things, but somehow they seem to come together in this story…

Obama defends government

Sheila Liaugminas | 02 May 2010

That's more of a 'dog bites man' headline than anything approximating news, but it's the headline in this New York Times article on the president’s commencement address at the University of Michigan. What’s the news value of that?

Teed off

Sheila Liaugminas | 24 February 2010

Though it was much-anticipated and rather heavily promoted in the media, I made no note of the Tiger Woods press conference scheduled to televise his first public statement since his scandalous affairs broke last November. But an interesting thing happened.....