Новости за 08.11.2021

On Monday morning, the self-canceled former New York Times editor Bari Weiss tweeted: “We got sick of complaining about how broken higher education is. So we decided to do something about it.” Attached was a link to a piece Weiss had published on her Substack by former St. John’s College president Pano Kanelos announcing the proto-formation of the innocuously named University of Austin—a new, as-yet-unaccredited, and largely half-baked “college” intended as a rebuke to America’s existing system of higher education... Читать дальше...

Last week’s lackluster elections for Democrats dumped gasoline atop already smoldering debates about what political commentators diagnose as the party’s impending doom, and what the hell ought to be done about it. Republican Glenn Youngkin’s win in the Virginia gubernatorial race—a state whose transition from could-go-either-way purple to more decisively blue had already been considered entrenched, unlike blue-newcomer Georgia or Arizona—led The Atlantic to declare “If Democrats can lose in Virginia... Читать дальше...

After months of ugly infighting and amid a crushing campaign loss in Virginia, Democrats finally came to agreement on part of President Biden’s sweeping set of domestic policy proposals, moving the bipartisan hard infrastructure bill out of Congress and to the president’s desk.

Before a panel Friday at the COP26 Glasgow climate summit announcing that the Energy Department would be investing in an “earthshot” to bring the price of carbon capture and sequestration down to $100 per ton, Secretary Jennifer Granholm was approached by Port Arthur, Texas, native John Beard Jr. In the exchange—captured on video by the nonprofit Earthworks and provided to The New Republic—Beard asked Granholm if she’s willing to “stop oil and gas exports to save the climate for the Gulf Coast.”

For most of Virginia’s gubernatorial race this year, Democrat Terry McAuliffe had a simple strategy for dealing with his Republican opponent, private equity baron Glenn Youngkin: Make the election a referendum on Donald Trump. With polls tightening in the lead-up to last Tuesday’s election, McAuliffe turned up the heat, calling his opponent a “Trump wannabe” and including footage of the January 6 riot at the Capitol in his closing advertisements. Days before the election, a Washington Post headline... Читать дальше...

Back in 2006, two FBI agents told a fitness instructor named Craig Monteilh to infiltrate Orange County’s Muslim community. Monteilh, who had been busted by the Drug Enforcement Administration in a drug investigation in 1986, had avoided prison by working as a confidential informant for various federal law enforcement agencies over the prior two decades. He posed as a Syrian French immigrant, adopted the name Farouk al-Aziz, and publicly converted to Islam to complete his fabricated identity.

On November 4, a handful of unions representing more than 30,000 Kaiser Permanente workers notified the health system of their intention to strike on November 15, a move that would be among the largest hospital workplace actions in recent memory. The strike, should workers not make a deal with their employer, would be truly massive in scope. It would affect at least 366 facilities in Southern California alone, spanning from hospitals and medical offices to clinics in Target department stores,... Читать дальше...

A curious habit of euphemism governs our way of talking about that genre of novel which has mainly to do with killing people. Mystery and crime: So libraries and bookstores advertise the relevant section of their shelves. But life abounds with mysteries; very few of them have to do with the true authorship of gruesome murders. Detective fiction supplies another common designation for novels and short stories about homicide, but, again, detectives also have plenty of other crimes to investigate—not... Читать дальше...

The Democrats aren’t very good at storytelling—not even, apparently, to some of their own members. There’s a compelling story behind the party’s two infrastructure bills that President Biden does a decent job of conveying, but congressional Democrats do pretty horribly, with a few exceptions. So I’ll tell it.