Since we started the blog, several folks have asked me about the Sepoy Mutiny – the historical event our blog title derives from. The ever-excellent Wikipedia provides the most concise overview I’ve ever seen – Indian Mutiny – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Indian Mutiny (also known as the Sepoy Mutiny) as known to the British or The First War Of Indian Independence as known to the Indians was a period of uprising in northern and central India against British rule in 1857-1858. It is also known as the Sepoy Rebellion, the Great Mutiny, and the Revolt of 1857. It is widely acknowledged to be the first-ever united rebellion against colonial rule in India.

I’m personally not terribly hung up on colonial / post-colonial politics but I do think the name has a cool sound to it & the history is an interesting read…

Let’s meet the Indian delegates to next week’s Republican National Convention shall we? Who are they? Can we learn anything about their motivations and beliefs from some recent articles? Continue reading →

First let me break down the Acronyms. NRO stands for National Review Online. It is the online version of the conservative magazine. What am I doing reading the pages of the “enemy’s” literature? Understand thy opponent. APA stands for Asian Pacific Americans, a term often used as an umbrella group which includes Asian Pacific Islanders. What groups fall under APA? According to skeptical author John Derbyshire:

In the first place, it is instructive to look at what “API” (or the newer, more user-friendly “APA”) actually means. Asia stretches from the Suez Canal to the Bering Strait, and from the Arctic Ocean to the Coral Sea. Whatever “API” signifies, it is certainly not a race in either the biological or the social-construction sense. A Samoan has no more in common with an Iranian than he has with an Irishman; a Pakistani is further removed from a Korean on any given criterion — linguistic, cultural, religious, phenotypic, or genetic — than he is from a Norwegian. “API” is in fact a very odd category, even more absurdly artificial than “Hispanic.” The folk gathered thereunder have only this one common characteristic: They, or their recent forebears, hail from somewhere between Istanbul and Tahiti.

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if you’ve ever wasted an hour or five surfing Friendster, you’ll see that the women who patronize it often list “Sex in the City” under “favorite TV shows”. i could write an entire post about how it is actually “Sex AND the City”, but i’ll refrain. that’s what my own blogs are for. 😉

anyway, there’s a reason why the interweb’s greatest timesuck popped in to my head: sex AND the city? meet the league of women voters.

Jean Seo of san francisco decided that what america needs right now is a site “dedicated to showing why voting makes single women FABULOUS!!!”. carriethevote.com also bills itself as a “ladies guide to demystifying voter registration”.

i say “bravo”– i think we can all be in favour of whatever it takes to get people to the polls. my favourite page of the site deals with the “F” word:

Why are We So Fabulous?

We’re fabulous because we have the power to decide this year’s election. And everybody knows it…

…Unmarried female voters have the potential to become the most incredible agents of change in America. After all, we control 21 percent of America’s voting power.

We didn’t know that we had this strength until recently. It’s like when Luke Skywalker finally realized his own actual power. (Yes, voting let’s the force be with you.)

When we didn’t vote in 2000, we were just saving our secret powers for 2004, right?

If we can get our girlfriends to register and vote, we will have the power to make the world pay attention to us.

by the by…true to the character this URL pays tribute to, a pair of Manolos WILL be given away. if that isn’t reason enough to click, you don’t know shoes. 😉

via feministing

The Times of India has, what I consider, a very poorly written article about Kerry fundraiser Reshma Saujani, who is active in South Asians for Kerry in 2004. She is a friend of mine, and I have a feeling she is not going to be happy with this article.

She’s the iron girl in the Kerry camp. The shrewd strategist, who finds John Kerry, “an incredible leader, easy to talk to,” and Teresa Heinz Kerry “extraordinary, very spirited’. At 28, attorney Reshma M Saujani single-handedly raised $ 1 million at the ‘India Day Parade’ in New York last week for Kerry’s presidential campaign.

This article had several basic facts wrong, including the assertion that she rasied a million dollars at the India Day Parade. Why the article felt the need to point out the following fact, I have no idea:

“…says Reshma, who interned at the White House at the same time as Monica Lewinsky in 1996. ”

In any case, hopefully we will see Reshma run for office within the next several years. Continue reading →

Because I have a friend that works for Human Rights Watch, I have for months been following along as she examines the abuses of the federal material witness statute. What is the material witness statute? Here is a brief explanation from a Christian Science Monitor article about alleged “dirty bomb” plotter Jose Padilla:

…rather than obtaining an arrest warrant by demonstrating to a judge that federal authorities had probable cause to believe Padilla was planning mass murder, they instead relied on an obscure federal law designed to guarantee the presence of a key witness at a criminal proceeding.

By labeling Padilla a “material witness” in an ongoing grand jury investigation of terrorism, US officials were able to whisk him off the streets and into a high-security prison cell with minimal law-enforcement effort.

Since the terror attacks on Sept. 11, the so-called material-witness statute has emerged as a key-and highly controversial-weapon in the legal arsenal being used to wage the Bush administration’s war against terrorism in America’s homeland.

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well if they’re going to deny a KENNEDY, no wonder i always get harassed; apparently, even being political royalty doesn’t spare you from the idiocy of the TSA’s futile attempts to protect us from…uh…senior Senators from the North-East.

Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy, (D-MA) was stopped at right coast airports five times in march because his name appeared on a no-fly list. though his staff called to have the problem corrected, the Senator continued to be stopped until Homeland Security wreck-retary Tom Ridge intervened and apologized.

the washington post has more, and you should read it, please:

Federal air security officials said the initial error that led to scrutiny of the Massachusetts Democrat should not have happened even though they recognize that the no-fly list is imperfect. But privately they acknowledged being embarrassed that it took the senator and his staff more than three weeks to get his name removed.

…Kennedy’s description yesterday of his air-travel troubles — mentioned during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the 9/11 commission’s recommendations — renewed questions about the quality and effectiveness of the no-fly list. The list was established by security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Critics said the senator’s experience served as the latest example of how a system designed to improve security is instead targeting innocent travelers.

The government does not make public the names or the total number of people on the list, which officials say is constantly updated. According to FBI documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under a Freedom of Information Act request, more than 350 Americans have been delayed or denied boarding since the list’s inception. The list has not led to any arrests, officials said.

350 americans delayed, zero arrests. oh yeah, THAT’S telesis. Continue reading →

Steve Scalise has dropped out of the race in Louisiana’s 1st Congressional District. That means that Republican Bobby Jindal’s chances of being elected to Congress are that much greater. From the Washinton Times:

Without Scalise in the race, analysts say, the chances Jindal will be elected outright in the Nov. 2 primary without the need for a runoff are much more likely.

Why did Scalise drop out? Here is a partial explainer.

I, like many in the left, can’t stomach much of Jindal’s politics, but the guy seems to be making all the right moves.

alan keyes just got on my last nerve. The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that two days ago, the carpetbagging hypocrite from the great state of maryland called women who get abortions and the doctors who provide them…”terrorists”. now i don’t care where you stand on this excruciatingly personal issue, you just don’t go there.

when the wrong-reverend jerry falwell blamed sept. 11 on “the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians” just days after the horrifying attacks of 2001, the white house reprimanded him and he apologized a few days later. i’d hope for a similar outcome now, but i’m not holding my breath.

to suggest that there is some similarity between someone in al-qaeda who plots the murder of innocent americans and an american woman who requests an abortion from a doctor who will provide one is disgusting. no matter where one stands on this litmus-test of an issue…i really think that anyone with half a brain would find the would-be senator’s comments deplorable.

The remarks came as Keyes was explaining why three months ago he said that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were a “warning” from God to “wake up” and stop “the evil” of abortion.

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