Bernie Sanders is holding a get-together tonight (July 16), but he’s still waiting for a few RSVPs.
Sanders, the relentless independent and leftist senator from Vermont, and a former presidential candidate who is expected to run again in the 20...
politics
Republican lawmakers advocate for arming toddlers in debut of Sacha Baron Cohen’s new show
Sacha Baron Cohen’s new show Who is America? debuted on Sunday by embarrassing several Republican lawmakers.
Cohen portrayed Col. Erran Morad, a former Israeli commando offering a provocative claim: He can prevent school shootings by putting “deadly weapons into the hands of America’s schoolchildren.” After impressing a couple of guns rights advocates with his program providing gun training for children “from the age (of) 16 down to the age (of) ...
How Lori Lightfoot plans to ride the Ocasio-Cortez wave without endorsing her policies
It was a Tuesday in late June when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez turned the world upside down. The New York machine shuttered to an unexpected halt. A 28-year-old socialist had taken on the King of Queens in the state’s 14th congressional district and won.
Some 800 miles west, in Chicago, mayoral candidate Lori Lightfoot was hoping to replicate that victory. A little more than seven months out from the city’s election, Lightfoot and her campaign have tried to paint her as the...
How Kavanaugh will use religion to turn back the clock
It’s a polite fiction that religion isn’t a factor in the American legal system. But religion plays an outsize role, both in judicial decisions and in the decisions of presidents in nominating a judge. President Donald Trump’s latest pick for the Supreme Court, Judge Brett Kavanaugh — a Catholic, whose appointment preserves the Catholic majority on the Supreme Court — will shift the high court dramatically to the right, most noticeably when it comes to religion.
Accordin...
Who is Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s pick to replace Anthony Kennedy?
If you could grow a judge in a vat, and design every moment of their life to appeal perfectly to the Republican establishment, the man who would emerge fully-formed from that vat would be Brett Kavanaugh. A two-time Yale graduate, Kavanaugh clerked for the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, worked for Bill Clinton inquisitor Ken Starr, and served as one of President George W. Bush’s top White House aides.
Kavanaugh was a frequent opponent of President Barack Obama’s Envir...
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitter clapbacks show the kids are alright
President Donald Trump has credited Twitter for putting him in the Oval Office, but politicians’ attempts to connect with mostly younger constituents on social media are often cringeworthy (Chuck Grassley is the rare exception):
@Sn00ki u r right, I would never tax your tanning bed! Pres Obama's tax/spend policy is quite The Situation. but I do rec wearing sunscreen!
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) June 9, 2010
Trump administration deals another potential blow to Obamacare
The administration announced they will freeze risk adjustment payments.
Trump signals an end to Obamacare payment program, threatening sharply higher health premiums
The Trump administration is expected to end a critical Affordable Care Act (ACA) insurance payment program that discourages insurers from cherry picking healthier enrollees by compensating them for sicker ones.
The move, should it happen, would rattle insurance companies at the very moment when they’re deciding whether to continue selling ACA plans and setting premiums for 2019.
According to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the story:
The suspension ...
Maine governor ignores major medical organizations, vetoes bill to ban conversation therapy
A growing number of states are moving to ban conversion therapy — dubious, often shame-based methods to persuade kids to change their sexual orientation or gender identity — but Maine’s governor isn’t interested in joining the trend.
Gov. Paul LePage (R) on Friday became the first governor in the nation to veto such a ban, after the Maine legislature approved it last month.
In his veto message, LePage argued the legislation was overly broad and could p...
Clarence Thomas is the most important legal thinker in America
Justice Clarence Thomas is the most important legal thinker of his generation, and the most significant judicial appointment of the last forty years.
No justice did more to reshape the way thousands of the nation’s top lawyers think about the law. No justice did more to shape a political movement’s sense of what it can achieve through litigation. If President George H.W. Bush had chosen someone other than Clarence Thomas to sit on the Supreme Court, the world might look ...