Forums: Thriller (Lambchop Album)

(June 15) -- If you aren't the least bit concerned about the health of America's freedoms, you are either a) in a multiyear-long drug induced coma, B) Sean Penn, or C) dead. And you've definitely never heard of Overton's Window. The Overton Window is a political theory developed by the late Joseph Overton, a brilliant public policy strategist and ardent free-marketer. Overton observed that "when public policies in a given area (education, health care) are arranged from freest to least free, only a relatively narrow window of options will be considered politically acceptable." The theory says the window will gradually...

COLOGNE, Germany (AFP) – Huge effigies of US President Barack Obama and bankers made up as zombies from Michael Jackson's famous "Thriller" video starred in Germany's biggest carnival procession here on Monday. More than a million people braved the snow to line the route of the seven-kilometre (four-mile) parade, where revellers traditionally poke fun at current events and enjoy tonnes of sweets hurled from the travelling floats. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's alleged night with a call girl was rewarded with a huge figure showing a beaming premier surrounded by breasts. Obama's controversial Nobel Prize was also the butt of...

In his short story The Black Cat, the Gothic writer Edgar Allan Poe writes about a killer who conceals his victim behind a wall and is found out when the cat he accidentally hid with the body starts howling. Assistant State Attorney Brian Cavanagh referenced the gruesome tale as he laid out the evidence against Charles Gregory Moninger, accused of killing his housemate four years ago and stuffing her corpse in a closet.

CEBU, Philippines (AP) - Behind thick stone walls topped by electrified razor wire, one of cyberspace's most unlikely hits is already warming up as the rest of Cebu stirs from sleep. Pockets of inmates stretch and practice their latest moves. Then the morning workout gets under way in earnest in the exercise yard of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center. In their identical orange prison uniforms, up to 1,500 march and clap in unison as they perform precision dance routines with the Village People's ``In the Navy'' and ``YMCA'' pounding from six well-worn black speakers. And why not? Their...

A month after his musical comeback hit a sour note, pop star Michael Jackson has sued his former accountants for breach of duty, claiming they withdrew huge sums of money from his bank accounts but neglected to pay his bills. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court last Thursday and obtained on Tuesday by Reuters, says the accounting firm Bernstein, Fox, Whitman, Goldman & Sloan withdrew $2.5 million a year from Jackson's accounts but failed to properly pay the bills for which the money was earmarked. Representatives for the Los Angeles-based firm were not immediately available for comment. Jackson,...