Country that still believes in elves opens door to electing pirates
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Iceland's prime minister, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, resigned Tuesday, a day after the "Panama Papers" leak revealed his wife held millions of dollars in secret offshore accounts. Vox's Libby Nelson and Zack Beauchamp explain.
The roots of the scandal lie in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Iceland was arguably the European country hit hardest, and it's continued to shape the country's politics.
In fact, Gunnlaugsson made his name in politics by arguing that Iceland should be tougher on its foreign creditors — which makes it particularly awkward that he's since been revealed to be, essentially, one of those creditors himself.
Gunnlaugsson's party has said it will simply name a new prime minister. But other parties might force an election. The current government was facing labor unrest and discontent long before the Panama Papers leaked.
The likely beneficiary of new elections would be Iceland's Pirate Party, a left-libertarian coalition that might, or might not, move the country substantially to the left.
If the possibility of a dominant Pirate Party strikes you as odd, bear in mind that this is a country where actual environmental protests take place on behalf of invisible elves.
The unity government arrived in Tripoli last week by sea, because the old (now-dissolved) "Tripoli government" was enforcing a no-fly zone. But the Tripoli militias weren't willing to engage in ground fighting.
The UN has been warning about the rise of ISIS in Libya, and Western countries are interested in intervening to counter it, but they want relative stability in the Libyan government first.
All of this, of course, has raised questions — not least for President Obama himself — about how wise it was for the US to go into Libya to begin with. (Obama's take: not wise.)
But Shadi Hamid makes the case that Obama was wiser than he thought, and that all indications are that without intervention, Libya would look like Syria.
The question for Sanders is whether he'll have a huge enough win to close in on Hillary Clinton's delegate gap — and boost him in her home state of New York, which votes in two weeks.
The failure of frontrunner Donald Trump to gain traction in Wisconsin, after what has (even by Trumpian standards) been a strange week for the campaign, has raised questions about whether he is finally collapsing.
The worst signs for Trump come from within the house: According to Politico, his campaign is dismantling its field organizations in some key swing states, which is generally not what you want to do if you're planning to run in a general election.
But that wouldn't keep Trump from getting the nomination. And he shouldn't worry about that, because "informal adviser" Roger Stone is literally promising to send Trump supporters to the hotel rooms of any Republican National Convention delegate who betrays Trump (which is a threat and is not okay).
George Mason recently renamed its law school the Antonin Scalia School of Law. They've changed the marketing to the "Antonin Scalia Law School." If you want to understand why, try looking at the acronyms.
"During a Libertarian forum that aired on the Fox Business Network on Friday night, the three candidates debated issues such as whether a Jewish baker should be required to bake a Nazi wedding cake and pondered questions such as 'what is a drug?' and 'why do we have war?' Mr. McAfee assured voters that he was never charged with murdering his neighbor, and Mr. Petersen argued that all foreign aid should be stopped."
"I was feeling cheeky one afternoon when I posted to Facebook that the '90s hit 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' was the worst song of all time … From the reaction to my post, I could see I wasn't the only one who still held a grudge against a harmless '90s earworm. My friends piled on, creating a delightful little bonfire of disdain, but I had forgotten one detail: A guy from the band was in my friend circle."
"Several representatives argued that given the Freshman Class Committee’s $10,000 budget, spending close to 10 percent of annual funds on berries for a single night would be a misuse of Council funds."
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