Tag: The Soapbox

Is the Flood of Graphic Imagery From Gaza Warping Our Perception of War?

“It’s an existential situation: They are being killed at an unprecedented rate, working under impossible conditions, and they have to communicate what’s happening to them,” said photojournalist Gafic. “The hope is, if you tell the story, ideally, the cumulative effect will create the momentum to stop what’s falling on your head.” That’s how the first […]

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Yes, They’re Pro-Confederacy. But They’re Just the Nicest Ladies.

“And when I say ‘pitiful’…,” he paused, trying to interpret how the UDC handled the incident. “There’s this sense of grandness from their perspective about what they’re doing,” he continued, “and that did not feel grand.” I’m accustomed to the UDC’s rebuffs, but I found it striking that the group refused St. Paul’s, a neighbor […]

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Few States Block Gun Purchases After Emergency Mental Health Hospitalizations

In The Trace’s analysis, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, New York, and Washington all limit guns for people who have been subject to an emergency hospitalization. But the laws vary widely from state to state, and it’s difficult to assess whether they prevent shootings. There are no statistics on how often these laws are implemented or how […]

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The Next Supreme Court Danger: Trashing One-Third of the Tax Code

Instead of worrying what the Supreme Court might say about the constitutionality of some hypothetical wealth tax that’s unlikely ever to become law—and would anyway, in my view at least, be kind of a dumb idea—I invite you to worry what the Supreme Court might say about taxing unrealized income. You should worry about that […]

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Liberals Are Wrong to Trash the Supreme Court’s New Code of Ethics

Would an individual justice avow that all the code means is that, while it would be nice to recuse from adjudicating a case faced with a blatant conflict, he or she doesn’t have to? If the circumstances were as flagrant as, say, a case involving an investigation that could result in criminal liability for either […]

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The Colombian Murder Case That Refuses to Die

The Murders “Alabama Coal Giant Is Sued Over 3 Killings In Colombia,” ran the headline above a New York Times story on March 22, 2002. The lawsuit, which Collingsworth and Otero entered in federal court in Alabama on behalf of Sintramienergética and the families of Locarno, Orcasita, and Soler, was brought under the Alien Tort […]

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Does Anyone Know Where Joe Biden’s Second-Term Agenda Is?

On domestic policy, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that Biden and his allies have yet to play their trump card. Voters have, across the country, repeatedly voiced their displeasure at the repeal of Roe v. Wade. There is every indication that they will continue to do so and that […]

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If Trump Wins Again, There May Be No Stopping Him

Finally, there is the Twenty-Second Amendment. Since its ratification in 1951, all presidents have been limited to two full terms in office. That prohibition is absolute: Neither Congress nor the electorate can suspend or lift it. It is also deeply ingrained in American culture. George Washington established it as a tradition by refusing to run […]

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Joe Biden’s Second-Term Agenda Is a Mystery (and That’s a Problem)

On domestic policy, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that Biden and his allies have yet to play their trump card. Voters have, across the country, repeatedly voiced their displeasure at the repeal of Roe v. Wade. There is every indication that they will continue to do so and that […]

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How the Club for Growth Fell Out With Trump

As happened with many conservative and establishment groups, the Club for Growth made peace with Trump after his surprise election in 2016. And, as with many conservative and establishment groups, the Club for Growth was hoping to play Henry Higgins to the new president’s Eliza Doolittle. “David viewed his partnership with Trump as a way […]

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No, TikTok, Joe Biden Doesn’t Control the Price of a Quarter Pounder

Relatedly, the idea that the economy is horrible and that it’s all Biden’s fault has taken firm hold on social media. That Washington Post piece I linked to above about the McDonald’s TikTok story cited a consultant who tracks these things as observing that chatter on the site around #economycollapsing went berserk over the past […]

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The Ultimate Cost of Biden’s Refusal to Call for a Full Cease-fire in Gaza

More bad news for Biden: Young voters tend to be loyal not to a party or candidate but to their preferred policy objectives, often voting on a single issue. They didn’t vote for Biden in 2020; they voted against Trump, more specifically his policy agenda. They weren’t excited about Biden, but their lack of enthusiasm […]

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Biden Can’t Save America From Trump if He Alienates Young Voters Over Gaza

But it’s not just young voters Biden has to contend with on this issue: 68 percent of all voters favor a cease-fire in Gaza, versus the 31 percent who support sending Israel weapons. And yet, Biden continues to refuse to call for an enduring cease-fire. The expectation in the White House is that after the […]

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Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley Have One Chance to Stop Trump

Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis are the two candidates who, based on polls and finances (including Super PACs), appear to have the staying power to challenge Trump in New Hampshire. With his anti-Trump fervor, Chris Christie is also betting on the Granite State. But Christie, who finished sixth in the 2016 New Hampshire primary, is […]

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Conservative Judges Are Dismissing Decades of Precedent to Try to Kill the Voting Rights Act

“Taken at face value, these statements appear to create an open-and-shut case that there must be a way to privately enforce Section 2,” Stras wrote. “If five Justices assume it, then it must be true. The problem, however, is that these were just background assumptions—mere dicta at most.” Generally speaking, the law is always whatever […]

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Hamas Will Survive Israel’s Invasion of Gaza

Hamas has even experimented in recent years with using cryptocurrencies to evade government surveillance. While the full extent of its efforts is unknown, Israel as recently as mid-October continues to freeze Hamas-linked crypto accounts. Even with these diversified income streams, the money itself never has to touch Gaza. Hamas and its allies, like most sophisticated […]

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The Red State Brain Drain Isn’t Coming. It’s Happening Right Now.

For Tyler, the final straw was a dustup over a video he showed his class a few months after he collected his prize. The video was about the seventeenth-century English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia. It was hosted by John Green, author of the 2012 young adult novel The Fault in Our Stars. Green has engaged […]

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Hamas’s Main Source of Funding Might Surprise You

Hamas has even experimented in recent years with using cryptocurrencies to evade government surveillance. While the full extent of its efforts is unknown, Israel as recently as mid-October continues to freeze Hamas-linked crypto accounts. Even with these diversified income streams, the money itself never has to touch Gaza. Hamas and its allies, like most sophisticated […]

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Even Bank Workers Want to Unionize Now

In a 2022 letter to shareholders, Wells Fargo chief executive Charles Scharf insisted that “we have a different company today” and that “hubris, contempt and indifference” were no longer acceptable there. “We will listen and not retaliate,” Scharf pledged at a Senate Banking Committee hearing last year, when asked whether he’d interfere with unionization efforts. […]

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Unions Are Finally Going Where the Money Is

In a 2022 letter to shareholders, Wells Fargo chief executive Charles Scharf insisted that “we have a different company today” and that “hubris, contempt and indifference” were no longer acceptable there. “We will listen and not retaliate,” Scharf pledged at a Senate Banking Committee hearing last year, when asked whether he’d interfere with unionization efforts. […]

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Unions Are Finally Going Where the Money Is

In a 2022 letter to shareholders, Wells Fargo chief executive Charles Scharf insisted that “we have a different company today” and that “hubris, contempt and indifference” were no longer acceptable there. “We will listen and not retaliate,” Scharf pledged at a Senate Banking Committee hearing last year, when asked whether he’d interfere with unionization efforts. […]

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How the Hell Did This Guy Become Argentina’s Next President?

Massa, as he geared up for his presidential run, knew he faced major headwinds. The Fernández government had made a dog’s breakfast of the economy, sending inflation into triple digits. Given that Massa had been minister of the economy since 2022, he knew much of the blame for this catastrophe was bound to fall on […]

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“Genocide” Is the Wrong Word

As Lemkin’s theory found favor with the assembly (especially countries emerging from under the colonial heel) and made its way through the grinder of resolutions, consultations, debates, secretarial drafts, and committee hearings, it was pruned and reshaped into something else. A consensus hardened: Rather than a broad chain of actions and techniques, genocide now described […]

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The Moral Failure of “Genocide”

As Lemkin’s theory found favor with the assembly (especially countries emerging from under the colonial heel) and made its way through the grinder of resolutions, consultations, debates, secretarial drafts, and committee hearings, it was pruned and reshaped into something else. A consensus hardened: Rather than a broad chain of actions and techniques, genocide now described […]

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It’s Hard to Get Abortion Reporting Right in the Post-Roe Era

On its heels but seemingly unrelatedly, the week after Martinez filed his motion in the kidnapping case, there was a development in the state-level challenge to the abortion travel ban, the so-called “abortion trafficking” law: A judge blocked all enforcement of it by a temporary restraining order while the state-level challenge regarding the constitutionality of […]

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The Bizarre Reason a Colorado Judge Didn’t Disqualify Trump From Running in 2024

Two conservative law scholars, William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, also foresaw this argument and dismissed it out of hand. “No one denies that the President is an executive branch officer holding executive office,” they wrote. “At the risk of belaboring the obvious: Article II refers to the ‘office’ of President innumerable times. It specifies […]

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The Pitfalls of Outrage-Fueled Abortion Reporting

On its heels but seemingly unrelatedly, the week after Martinez filed his motion in the kidnapping case, there was a development in the state-level challenge to the abortion travel ban, the so-called “abortion trafficking” law: A judge blocked all enforcement of it by a temporary restraining order while the state-level challenge regarding the constitutionality of […]

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Bernie Sanders Picks an Important Fight in the Democratic Party

In the wake of the terrorist attack by Hamas in October, in which roughly 1,200 Israelis were killed and hundreds taken hostage, the White House, along with a slew of American lawmakers, have highlighted the need to aid Israel. But some Democrats in Congress have raised concerns about the humanitarian need in Gaza, as Israel […]

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Bernie Sanders Starts an Important Fight in the Democratic Party

In the wake of the terrorist attack by Hamas in October, in which roughly 1,200 Israelis were killed and hundreds taken hostage, the White House, along with a slew of American lawmakers, have highlighted the need to aid Israel. But some Democrats in Congress have raised concerns about the humanitarian need in Gaza, as Israel […]

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