Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
WASHINGTON — Phil Berg was nervous as he prepared to tell Neil Gorsuch he was gay. AIDS was still in the headlines at the time, the early 1990s, and same-sex marriage was a far-fetched notion. Some of Mr. Berg’s other friends had not reacted well to his news. So he moved with caution, slipping the word “boyfriend”…
END scald=5215111 Pro-choice campaigners rally in defence of abortion rights Getty A pregnant woman’s husband will have the power to stop her from having an abortion, even in cases of spousal rape, under a new law introduced in the US state of Arkansas. Most second trimester abortions will also be banned by Act 45 – the Unborn Child Protection From Dismemberment Abortion Act –…
The State Department wrote a message that recognized Jewish victims, but the White House used its own that didn’t. The State Department drafted its own statement last month marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day that explicitly included a mention of Jewish victims, according to people familiar with the matter, but President Donald Trump’s White House blocked…
AP Photo On Wednesday, Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman in 78 years to be awarded the prestigious Fields Medal, considered the highest honor in mathematics. She was selected for “stunning advances in the theory of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces.” The Fields Medal is awarded every four years by the International Mathematical Union…
Last January Kanye West called Taylor Swift to ask whether she’d mind if he wrote a song in which he referenced having sex with her. After hearing the lyrics, she told him that they “didn’t matter” to her. But she had an idea. “If people ask me about it,” she said, her voice picking up…
60-year-old Jiansheng Chen was shot and killed by neighborhood security guard while sitting in his minivan. You’ve got to be kidding me. Last week in southeast Virginia, a 60-year-old grandfather was apparently playing Pokemon Go when he was shot and killed during a fatal altercation with a neighborhood security guard. Chesapeake man shot, killed by…
White supremacists and other domestic extremists maintain an active presence in U.S. police departments and other law enforcement agencies. A striking reference to that conclusion, notable for its confidence and the policy prescriptions that accompany it, appears in a classified FBI Counterterrorism Policy Guide from April 2015, obtained by The Intercept. The guide, which details the process by which the FBI enters individuals on…
END scald=5204626 The blaze destroyed the mosque in Victoria, Texas Victoria Islamic Center People have raised over $800,000 (£638,000) in the space of a day for a Muslim community in Texas to help rebuild their mosque after the building was destroyed by a fire on Saturday. The blaze was discovered at the Islamic Centre of…
As anyone who has seen Denial, the new film about the 2000 libel trial brought by David Irving against the historian Deborah Lipstadt, will know, Holocaust denial can take many forms. In the face of all the evidence, there are those who say that six million Jews were not murdered by the Nazis; or that…
The pastor of a largely immigrant Catholic church in Queens has a suggestion for his anti-Trump parishioners: Go take a flying leap off the nearest building. “Show your hate for Trump. Do it for social justice. #JumpAgainstTrump,” read a meme posted by the Rev. Philip Pizzo just hours after he celebrated Sunday Mass. The message…