Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
When Harvard law professor and campaign finance reform activist Lawrence Lessig announced he’d explore a Democratic presidential bid this month, many observers had one question: Why isn’t he just supporting Bernie Sanders? After all, the Vermont senator has long been an outspoken critic of the influence of corporations and the superrich, has repeatedly called for…
Donald Trump in August. Credit: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg AD UNIT 1 /AD UNIT 1 CNN is asking 40 times its normal rate for commercial time in the next Republican debate. The cable news network is charging as much as $200,000 for a 30-second spot in the prime-time brawl taking place on Sept. 16, according to a…
Kanye West accepts the Video Vanguard Award at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles, California, August 30, 2015. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni On Sunday night, Kanye West got a five-year jump on the next presidential election. “I have decided in 2020 to run for president,” he said, after accepting a lifetime achievement prize at the…
(David Richard/AP) The story behind the funniest e-mail Hillary Clinton has ever sent By Roberto A. Ferdman September 1 at 12:25 AM While combing through the most recent Hillary Clinton e-mail dump, a certain, seemingly non-political, but potentially highly controversial message stands out. The e-mail was sent to both Jake Sullivan, one of her top advisers,…
Photo Credit Illustration by Jennifer Daniel. Cat: EEI_Tony/iStock. Wig: greg801/iStock. We begin, as many discussions about politics today should, with an analogy to pro wrestling. Consider the ‘‘foreign object’’ routine: One combatant produces a concealed item, usually from under his tights — a pointed stick or some hand-size tool of menace — and proceeds to…
MTV held their inaugural Video Music Awards ceremony in 1984, and since then their VMA stage has transformed into a venue for scripted drama and fake controversy. But Kanye West has always gone off-script, and tonight he delivered a pretty Real speech while accepting his Vanguard Award—during his 13 or so minutes he took down…
It’s the morning of Friday, January 20, 2017, and it’s Inauguration Day. Donald John Trump Sr. has his hand on a Bible, and America looks on, agape, as he swears to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” How we got to this point isn’t important. The question now is, what the…
John Howard, who served as prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, is no one’s idea of a lefty. He was one of George W. Bush’s closest allies, enthusiastically backing the Iraq intervention, and took a hard line domestically against increased immigration and union organizing (pdf). But one of Howard’s other lasting legacies is Australia’s gun…
A federal appeals court has overturned a lower court’s injunction against the National Security Agency’s program to collect records on billions of telephone calls to, from and within the United States in an effort to seek out terrorist plots. The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit splintered on the…
If there is anyone able to understand the vast and ever-changing cultural diversity of this sprawling nation of ours, it is elderly white Reaganite Peggy Noonan, who once met a Mexican. Now, mi amigos, she has met a Dominican as well. In the past, America has turned to Peggy to learn how Latinas talk, and…