Новости за 26.01.2022

In one of the most divided Senates we can remember, President Joe Biden will make his first Supreme Court nomination to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer. He has promised to make history, appointing the first Black woman to the highest court in the land. Black women make up only 3 percent of the federal bench, and Biden has already made real strides in diversifying the bench.

Justice Stephen Breyer, the practical and erudite leader of the Supreme Court’s liberal wing, will reportedly retire from the high court at the end of the current term in June. His departure gives President Joe Biden his first and likely only chance to choose a justice, buoying the political fortunes of an administration that has been buffeted by the ongoing pandemic and a floundering legislative agenda.

To me, the saddest and most disturbing feature of this recent preoccupation of so many of our people with the problem of Communist penetration within our country is that it tends to rivet our attention upon ourselves, to seize us up in a sort of cramp of introspection, and to interfere in the most unhappy way with the attention which we ought to be giving to things outside of our own society, and particularly to the regime and the people of the Soviet Union. 

No one wants to talk about the business of religion. But it’s time we do. Last week, the FBI arrested Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein in Poway, California, for having received at least $6.2 million in fake contributions to his synagogue and affiliated charities and secretly refunding up to 90 percent of the donations to the “donors.” Those donors, in turn, used the counterfeit receipts to illegally claim huge tax deductions for their nonexistent donations; Goldstein skimmed about 10 percent of the take—more than half a million dollars—for himself. Читать дальше...

On Monday, Neil Young handed the streaming service Spotify an ultimatum in the form of an open letter. “I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,” he continued. “They can have [Joe] Rogan or Young. Not both.” Young, a polio survivor, is at odds with what is Spotify’s most important exclusive podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, which has increasingly come under heavy criticism for spreading misinformation about Covid-19 and, in particular, vaccines. Читать дальше...

The pitfalls of being the nominal majority party in an evenly divided Senate were reinforced last week, when Democrats failed to enact two voting rights measures without Republican support and then were unable to muster the votes to change the rules to allow the legislation to pass with a simple majority. Although all 50 Democrats supported the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, only 48 voted to weaken the filibuster, meaning that the bills were still subject... Читать дальше...

Late last week, seemingly out of the blue, the FBI raided the Texas home of sitting Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar. While the details of the raid and related subpoenas remain scant, all signs point to yet another story of how kleptocratic dictatorships access and influence American policymakers—with none of us any the wiser.

The images spread quickly on social media: railroad tracks strewn with empty cardboard boxes, packing material, heaps of bubble wrap. These photos and videos, of a Union Pacific railway hub in Los Angeles beset by package thieves, seemed straight out of a “post-apocalyptic film,” one New York Times newsletter writer mused. It wasn’t just junk, another Times article reminded us: “A family photograph, propped up in the garbage, stands sentimental to someone, somewhere, but of no interest to those... Читать дальше...

We’ve seen much commentary about whether it was inappropriate for Joe Biden to mumble into a hot mic that Fox News’s Peter Doocy was a “stupid son of a bitch,” and not enough about whether Biden’s assessment was truthful.

On Monday morning, a handful of health care employees appeared in front of a judge to argue that it was appropriate for them to take jobs where they would make more money and be able to spend more time with their kids. The new job was a “life-changing” opportunity, one said during the hearing, that she couldn’t possibly turn down. But administrators at the hospital where she worked insisted that a “collective resignation”—of seven workers—would “cripple” the medical center’s ability to treat patients... Читать дальше...