Events

This past weekend included the Chicago Gay Pride Parade and helping a friend prepare for hosing a brunch beforehand. Blogging fell a bit on the priority list. Meanwhile, here are some of the things I'm reading today: From last week, the Times discusses whether Earth's 23.4° axis tilt was actually a necessary precursor to life. New Republic's Josephine Huetlin asks, "Why do populists get away with corruption?" One of Chicago's last remaining over-the-tollway oases is slated for demolition. Josh Marshall...

Meetings and testing all day have put these on my list for reading tomorrow: The Atlantic's Carl Zimmer on epigenetics. New Republic's David Dayen saying AT&T has proved its critics right in only a week. London plans to spend £1.5 bn ($2 bn) to get enough trains on its four most-crowded lines just to keep up with demand. Jennifer Rubin says, contra the President, America is strong and he is weak. Andrew Sullivan says, fuck it, give Trump his wall. And pity the poor Trump Administration staffers who...

Yesterday I worried aloud that the Sessions/Miller/Trump immigration policy separating children from their parents at the border was a move in a longer game to get rid of Rod Rosenstein and Robert Mueller without making it obvious that was the goal. With the President's apparent policy reversal yesterday, that no longer seems the case. Josh Marshall has a new hypothesis taking into account yesterday's executive order: And there you have it. DOJ confirms that the White House knows the President’s...

The Supreme Court handed down its ruling in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. this morning: Brick-and-mortar businesses have long complained that they are disadvantaged by having to charge sales taxes while many of their online competitors do not. States have said that they are missing out on tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue under a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that helped spur the rise of internet shopping. On Thursday, the court overruled that ruling, Quill Corporation v. North Dakota, which had...

I had a thought last night that disturbed me. It goes something like this: Attorney General Jeff Sessions is being set up as the heel, so the President can fire him without it looking like a step in shutting down the Mueller probe. Think about it. Sessions has doubled down on a monstrous policy decision that almost the entire Republican Congressional caucus wants to stop. He has become almost a comic-book villain now, taking responsibility for a policy that actually came directly from the White House....

McKay Coppins, who profiled Miller for The Atlantic last month, believes that the outrage over the immorality of the administration's immigration policy is exactly the point: A seasoned conservative troll, Miller told me during our interview that he has often found value in generating what he calls “constructive controversy—with the purpose of enlightenment.” This belief traces back to the snowflake-melting and lib-triggering of his youth. As a conservative teen growing up in Santa Monica, he wrote...

That's the conclusion of a researcher at the University of South Australia: Cecilia Pemberton at the University of South Australia studied the voices of two groups of Australian women aged 18–25 years. The researchers compared archival recordings of women talking in 1945 with more recent recordings taken in the early 1990s. The team found that the “fundamental frequency” had dropped by 23 Hz over five decades – from an average of 229 Hz (roughly an A# below middle C) to 206 Hz (roughly a G#). That’s a...

To almost everyone's frustration, the Supreme Court rendered two unanimous decisions today in which they declined to rule on the constitutionality of two gerrymandering cases. This means both Wisconsin and Maryland will keep their district maps through the November election: In the Wisconsin case, the court said that the challenges must be brought district by district, with voters in each proving that their rights had been violated. The challengers asked the court to consider the state map as a whole....

The President has essentially admitted he lies constantly: In short, the president is saying that it’s totally acceptable to lie to the press, and by extension the public, as long as he is not under oath in the justice system. (As I’ve reported, Trump is far more honest under oath.) As a matter of law, this is true, but as a matter of character and leadership, it is not. The president is freely telling the public that he has no compunctions about lying through his teeth. Why does anyone still debate...

It's hard to believe this guy is that old: I mean, this wasn't so long ago: Here's to a few more.