Новости за 22.02.2017

A hallmark of the Trump era is that fringe ideas are now at the forefront of American politics. Such has been the trajectory of the phrase “deep state,” which has its origins in Turkish politics (it described the entrenched secularist faction in the military that resisted, sometimes violently, elected Islamist governments) and was introduced into America by the radical left. But thanks to President Donald Trump’s ongoing feud with the intelligence community, which he has compared to the Nazis for leaking information against him... Читать дальше...

President Donald Trump and his advisers probably didn’t expect his choice for education secretary to cause much of a fuss. After all, Rick Perry was tapped to run the Department of Energy, which he once said he wanted to eliminate. Senator Jeff Sessions, who has spent his career attacking voting rights, was up for attorney general. Scott Pruitt, nominated to run the EPA, has sued the agency at least 14 times. Even Ben Carson was offered a job.

Sigmund Freud hated bicycles. He also hated motorcycles, which is more intuitive since they are noisy and dangerous. But what is there to hate about bicycles? I thought a lot about Freud and the mysteries of the human subconscious while watching A Cure for Wellness, the new horror movie from director Gore Verbinski. As the hero and heroine try to escape on a bike from a horrible mountaintop sanatorium full of nasty repressed desires, you can almost hear Freud shaking his fist.

Last Sunday, on President Donald Trump’s third consecutive weekend visit to his private country club in Florida, the White House told reporters traveling with him that, among other activities, he’d played “a couple of holes” of golf. By Monday, professional golfer Rory McIlroy spilled the beans that he and the president had played a full round—all 18 holes—at the president’s invitation.

In early December, Mike Pence took the stage in the Presidential Ballroom at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. “We did it,” the incoming vice president told the cheering crowd. Donald Trump, he said, had secured a mandate. “It was a victory,” Pence insisted, “that was born of ideas.”

Norma McCorvey never had an abortion. When she found herself pregnant for the third time in 1969, at 22, she went to an illegal clinic in Dallas, but found that it had been shut down. She tried getting a legal abortion by claiming, falsely, that her pregnancy was the result of a gang rape; that attempt failed, and she later recanted. Eventually, she was directed to two lawyers, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, who had her sign an affidavit that she did not read. By this point, she was five months pregnant. Читать дальше...