Politics
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Who decides to go to war? And who should?
Vincenza Falletti observes that the fact of their election doesn’t imply presidents’ decisions are de facto democratic. In fact, some of their most consequential and devastating moves are made under cover of cold bureaucracy: The atomic bomb entered history not with public justification, but with the quiet efficiency of routine. Later: Today, we have inherited…
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Hasan Piker on Pod Save America
I stopped listening to Pod Save America a long time ago. Their goal (other than to make a ton of money on ads), is to get Democrats elected—and that’s a goal I no longer share. (I think electing Democrats can sometimes still be a means to the broader aspiration of improving the material conditions of…
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Minneapolis’ obsession with cars makes it impossible to drive them
Keep complaining, but they’re never going to plow your road if you insist on using it as your personal car storage lot.
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In the United States, we pay extra to kill ourselves
Though most of the country appears to have written off the 1 million+ deaths from COVID-19 as inevitable, this new study demonstrates that many of these people died due to the choices of the ruling class in the United States.
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Two Stories of Life After Prison in Minnesota
Coincidentally, today Minnesota’s twin daily newspapers ran stories on life after prison. One had a happy (or at least hopeful) ending; the other, not so much. In the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Andy Mannix covers the “Second Chances 5K”—a race for current and former inmates aimed at emphasizing that many people “still have something to offer society”…
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Slow Motion Bias
Beth Mole covers a new study that shows that “slow motion might actually muddle” our perception of premeditation: To see if artificially lengthened footage can alter perceptions, the researchers showed 489 volunteers a similar five-second video clip of an armed robbery that ended with a robber shooting a sales clerk. Participants watched the clip at…
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Anti-Islamic Pastor Condemns Islamophobia He Helped Create
Pastor Greg Locke wants you to know that, despite his history of promoting religious hatred against Muslims, he’s “not going to be a jerk for Jesus.” In a recent video on Locke’s Facebook page titled “WHAT A MUSLIM MAN JUST TOLD ME HAS ME FURIOUS,” Locke tells his followers a story about a Muslim family…
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Maureen Dowd needs a new hobby.
When Maureen Dowd writes a column about the Clintons, is there anyone in the world who doesn’t already know what she’s going to say? Her latest, “The Clinton Contamination” (another blisteringly clever title from Ms. Dowd), is a diatribe comprised of Dowd’s greatest Clinton hits, with some current events tossed in to convince readers of her…
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The #NoBillNoBreak Sit-In Was Pretty Much Everything I Hate About Democratic Politics
This week, Democratic Congresspeople occupied the floor of the House of Representatives in an attempt to force votes on what they called “commonsense” gun control bills. Nearly 100 Democrats led by Georgia Rep. John Lewis demanded a vote on measures to expand background checks and block gun purchases by some suspected terrorists in the aftermath of…
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The Firearm Filibuster
After the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, Senate Democrats quickly rallied to stage a filibuster yesterday that proceeded for more than 14 hours. The goal of the filibuster: to force votes in the Senate on gun control measures. And by the end of the night, that goal was in sight: Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)…
Timothy Pate 