Новости за 03.11.2021

On Tuesday, residents of Minneapolis voted on a ballot measure portrayed by many as a referendum on the public’s appetite for defunding the police. What was actually on offer, however, was a vague and vexing reshuffling of one of America’s most notorious forces. It was defeated by around 20,000 votes. Predictably, various pro-cop talking heads have begun to make the rounds to take the vote as evidence that “no one supports this nonsense.” In the hours after the ballots were counted, Republican... Читать дальше...

Said Abdikarim wants to show me some pictures that he took while riding Boston’s subway system. He sends me cell phone shots of an old Orange Line car in which sections of the wall and flooring appear to be rotting away—a visual symbol of broader dysfunction. “On a consistent basis, we deal with delays for hours, train issues, and having to catch a bus,” Abdikarim, an engineer and social entrepreneur, says. The rider fares and portion of state sales tax revenue that fund the Massachusetts Bay... Читать дальше...

If we didn’t know it before, Democrats certainly realized Tuesday night that there’s a red-siren political problem that needs to be addressed quickly.

There’s no way to spin Terry McAuliffe’s loss. It’s a disaster.

Yes, the entire Virginia gubernatorial election may have hinged on one sentence McAuliffe spoke at a September debate. Glenn Youngkin brought up the fact that McAuliffe had vetoed a bill that would have made Virginia the first state—before Mississippi, before any of them—to allow parents to block their children from reading books with sexually explicit material.

McAuliffe did veto that bill, it’s a fact. It became known in the commonwealth as the Beloved Bill... Читать дальше...

Long before New Atheists stalked the earth, the cause of secularism possessed a peculiar missionary zeal. In part, this was thanks to the broader mood of social uplift that accompanied the rise of modern skepticism: Loosing the surly bonds of superstition and myth was, by the lights of rationalist dogma, all but certain to deliver humanity into a golden age of liberty, equality, and sober self-improvement. With this sort of serene confidence propelling the great cause of secularism, it’s little... Читать дальше...

As Virginia’s gubernatorial election draws to a close, debate continues over what, exactly, the state’s gubernatorial election—and seemingly the year’s only “bellwether” contest for the media to ponder this year—might tell us about what’s to come in American politics. Is it a sign that voters have soured on Joe Biden and that invocations of Donald Trump have lost their potency? Have the Democrats lost the suburbs amid the uproar over “critical race theory?” Is the Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin’s... Читать дальше...

When can school boards, state legislatures, and other elected bodies discipline their own members? Does a resolution to censure one of those members violate the First Amendment? Those questions bedeviled the justices on Tuesday morning when they heard oral arguments in Houston Community College System v. Wilson. At issue in the case itself was whether the HCC board of trustees had violated former member Dave Wilson’s free-speech rights by subjecting him to censure in 2018. How the court resolves... Читать дальше...