Новости за 01.03.2017

Walter M. Kimbrough is a hardcore Democrat: His son was born on Election Day in 2008, and thus given the middle name “Barack.” But this week Kimbrough, the president of Dillard University, a historically black college in New Orleans, came to Washington, D.C., to see if he might be able to work with the Republican leaders—including America’s birther-in-chief—who spent eight years demonizing President Obama.

By the time Mitt Romney selected him to be his running mate in 2012, Paul Ryan (then chairman of the House Budget Committee) had already cultivated the reputation within the political press corps of an earnest, well-meaning numbers guy. Ideological? Sure, maybe, but not at the expense of numerical and analytic truth.

Recently, I bought a deck of Celebrity Goddess Tarot Cards to give as a gift to a friend. The cards are illustrated by artist Faye Orlove, and they present the twenty-two figures of the Major Arcana as female celebrities and pop cultural characters, a matching of archetype to archetype. Law & Order: SVU’s Olivia Benson is Justice; Katherine Hepburn is Judgment; Miley Cyrus is Death. Orlove also sells prayer candles that style Kim Kardashian as The Saint of Self-Confidence, and a pack of pale... Читать дальше...

Jerry Coyne knows a good protest when he sees one. Once a rambunctious leftist, the esteemed evolutionary biologist recalls traveling regularly to Washington to march for civil rights. He remembers when state police chased him off his own college campus for protesting the Vietnam War. For his most climactic endeavor, Coyne says he tried to post an anti-apartheid petition on the door of the South African embassy, and was arrested for trespassing.

President Donald Trump won plaudits for his joint address to Congress on Tuesday night, which was far more presidential—that is, less petty and vindictive—than any of his performances to date. “Trump eased up on his deeply dark rhetoric during his first address before Congress on Tuesday night,” Politico reported, “instead infusing his speech with aspirational talk of Americans’ ‘hopes and dreams’ while making bold promises about his presidency.”

In September 2009, after a month that nearly saw legislative support for his domestic agenda collapse, President Barack Obama convened a joint session of Congress to focus the minds of wavering Democrats on the task at hand: reforming the nation’s health care system.