Events

I'll be watching the debate tonight, as the candidate I support (including financially) has become the party's front-runner. Today's Washington Post takes a long look at how she got started in her career: Warren loved her job [as an associate law professor at the Houston Law Center]. To keep it, she realized she would have to maintain a good relationship with [Professor Eugene Smith], while also deflecting what she described as increasingly inappropriate behavior from him. He regularly sat in on her...

I don't know how much closer to shooting someone on 5th Avenue the President needs to get to show people he does not have American interests at heart. His abrupt withdrawal of our forces from Syria comes awfully close: U.S. forces, caught unawares by the move, began a hasty and logistically problematic retreat; at one point American troops found themselves deliberately “bracketed” by Turkish artillery fire—pinned in position and wholly reactive to the movements of a foreign state’s force, one set in...

Kenyan runner Brigid Kosgei ran the course in 2:14:04, setting a new world record fastest marathon for a woman: Paula Radcliffe held the previous record (2:15:25), set at the 2003 London Marathon. “I’m feeling good and I am happy because I was not expected to run like this,” Kosgei said during a TV interview. Kosgei also broke the course record (and what was for a year the world record) that Radcliffe first set 17 years ago to the day in Chicago (2:17:18) in 2002. Conditions in Chicago are ideal: at...

Michelle Goldberg details how Rudy Giuliani and President Trump have created a dangerous situation in Ukraine: The Ukrainians I spoke to aren’t naïve; they understand that America, like any other country, generally acts from self-interest rather than high principle. But there was a time when America at least viewed the projection of democratic values as being in its self-interest. That gave liberals in countries like Ukraine leverage against recalcitrant officials. “The majority of the reforms...

It has become a lot more likely in the last two weeks that my party will nominate Elizabeth Warren for President. (Note: I am a financial contributor to the Warren campaign.) One way you can tell is that journalists have started writing misleading stories about her: It is certainly true, as CBS noted, that some people have questioned Warren’s account [of being fired because she was pregnant in 1971]. A story in the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication, did so, as did a writer for Jacobin...

O'Hare's high temperature today of 19.4°C occurred at 5am. From then until about 9am the temperature lingered around 19°C. And then the cold front came through. Between 9am and 11am the temperature plunged 8°C. It's now 11°C and raining. Tomorrow it'll be 11°C and sunny. Overnight it'll be 3°C in the city and -2°C in the far Western suburbs. Autumn comes to Chicago all at once. Today's the day it chose this year.

Not too much: The Guardian asks, what happens if cities act to mitigate climate change but nations don't? Meanwhile, the New York Times shows where in the U.S. emissions are coming from. Josh Chafetz suggests the House should arrest Rudy Giuliani. Dan Lavoie asks, what if President Trump resigned? Ukraine's president talked to reporters yesterday for many hours. Closer to home, Greg Hinz examines the power struggle between the Chicago Teachers Union and the Chicago Public Schools. The Navy Pier Bike...

The Guardian has ranked the 20-largest polluters worldwide based on their addition to atmospheric greenhouse gases since 1965. You will not be surprised: New data from world-renowned researchers reveals how this cohort of state-owned and multinational firms are driving the climate emergency that threatens the future of humanity, and details how they have continued to expand their operations despite being aware of the industry’s devastating impact on the planet. The analysis, by Richard Heede at...

President Trump has told Congress that he doesn't believe they have any right to investigate him or any other part of the executive branch. This, ah, innovative view of the Constitution has garnered some criticism from just about everyone: Legal experts have already torpedoed the absurd idea that the White House gets to declare the House’s impeachment inquiry illegitimate. The Constitution grants the House “sole power of impeachment,” and the chambers set their own rules. The White House claims the...

My task this afternoon is to parse a pile of random text that has, shall we say, inconsistencies. Before I return to that task, I'm setting aside some stuff to read later on: The Chicago-area transit agency Metra plans to spend $2.6 bn over the next five years on fixing things. It can do this because Republican Bruce Rauner, who basically froze the state budget for his entire term, got booted out of office a year ago. The Trump Administration continues its assault on evidence-based research, for example...