Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
While Jeb Bush was governor of Florida, the state approved a law forcing single mothers seeking to place their children for adoption to publish their sexual histories in a newspaper in an attempt to contact the children’s fathers — even if the mothers were rape victims or minors. The measure, passed in 2001 and soon…
The Justice Department has issued a federal grand jury subpoena to Reason, a prominent libertarian publication, to unmask the identity of commenters who made alleged threats against a federal judge. In the June 2 subpoena, first published by the blog Popehat on Monday, the Justice Department orders Reason to provide a federal grand jury with…
Is Bernie Sanders going to take away Hillary Clinton’s tiara and crown himself King of America, with votes? MAYBE! It turns out that, unlike the 19 Republicans running (one per Duggar child, as the Bible instructs), Sanders is real serious about his candidacy, and people are really liking what he has to say. Some of his…
President Obama is apparently quite annoyed by the fact that his own party is basically pushing against his “big trade deals” (that are not really about trade). Senator Elizabeth Warren has been pretty aggressive in trashing the TPP agreement, highlighting the fact that the agreement is still secret (other than the bits leaked by Wikileaks)….
The Obama administration’s desire for “fast track” trade authority is not limited to passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). In fact, that may be the least important of three deals currently under negotiation by the U.S. Trade Representative. The Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) would bind the two biggest economies in the world, the United States and…
Remember when we told you the story of the indictment of former Speaker of the House Denny Hastert, for allegedly paying hush money to cover up his sexual abuse of a former student known only as “Individual A,” was only going to get worse? It’s worse. In an interview with ABC News, Jolene Reinboldt says…
On Thursday, Hillary Clinton called for automatic registration of American citizens to vote when they turn 18, “unless they actively choose to opt out.” In a speech in Houston, Texas, Clinton said there is “a sweeping effort to disempower and disenfranchise people of color, poor people, and young people.” She called out several…
On Saturday, Vice President Joe Biden’s son Beau died of brain cancer. On Wednesday, Ted Cruz decided the vice president, who has not even buried his son yet, had been given enough time to grieve the loss of yet another child — Biden’s one-year-old daughter and first wife died in a car accident in 1972 — because…
This 2012 photo shows a camp for people displaced by the 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (Ramon Espinosa/AP) Here’s a headline you don’t see every day: “How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti and Built Six Homes“ That’s just over $83.3 million a house, according to my iPhone calculations. Or around the same…
In 2012, Twitter made the decision to allow Sunlight to curate the deleted tweets from lawmakers and those seeking elected office. Last night all that changed. When we launched Politwoops three years ago, our goal was to create accountability and a public record for the messages elected officials and candidates for president, vice president, Congress…