Politics
Crime
Fights over crime aren't partisan - they're being fought by different generations. "There is a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers ready to change the U.S. criminal justice system, from changing drug laws and eliminating mandatory minimum sentencing to changing practices inside prisons like solitary confinement. But standing in the way is a generation of older lawmakers who came of age politically ... when being tough-on-crime was a prerequisite for office. 'The issue is when you came of age on the justice issue and what your experiences have been.'" Evan McMorris-Santoro at Buzzfeed.
One spot where you can legally get away with murder. "Imagine Daniel and Henry are vacationing in Yellowstone ... and set up camp in the 50 square miles ... in Idaho ... And Daniel winds up killing Henry ... He invokes his right, under the Sixth Amendment, to a jury composed of people from the state where the murder was committed (Idaho) and from the federal district where it was committed ... So Daniel has the right to a jury composed entirely of people living in both Idaho and the District of Wyoming ... No one lives in the Idaho part of Yellowstone. A jury cannot be formed, and Daniel walks free. All the legal maneuvers Daniel employs are completely legitimate." Dylan Matthews at Vox.
Department of Homeland Security
There's literally zero evidence that the TSA provides any benefit to society. "It's worth remembering that the inconvenience and injustice of the TSA's activities exists for literally no reason. If the agency's privacy violations and annoying carry-on regulations were merely the price we paid for reducing the incidence of terrorist attacks, that'd be one thing. But, as security expert Bruce Schneier likes to note, there's no evidence that the TSA has ever prevented a terrorist attack, and there's some research suggesting it could serve to increase non-airborne terrorist attacks. Airline security is, so far as we can tell, totally useless." Dylan Matthews at Vox.
Department of Veterans Affairs
Explaining the VA scandal. "The US Department of Veterans Affairs scandal is, at its heart, a fight over scheduling procedures ... Allegations have surfaced that the VA's shoddy scheduling practices at its medical facilities have put the lives of veterans in danger — and ... contributed to patient deaths. The problems all seem to stem from abuses of the scheduling system that the veterans' hospitals use — particularly, from hospital administrators hiding thousands of patients on secret waiting lists ... Reports now allege that scheduling issues at the Phoenix, Arizona, VA hospital led to 40 deaths ... The White House and VA are both conducting investigations, and Congress is holding hearings about the issue." German Lopez at Vox.
The Economy
Cutting off unemployment benefits hasn't helped unemployed workers. Shocker. "The case against extending unemployment benefits essentially boils down to two arguments. First, the economy has improved ... Second, extended benefits could lead job seekers either to not search as hard or to become choosier about the kind of job they will accept ... But the evidence doesn’t support either of those arguments. The economy has indeed improved, but not for the long-term unemployed ... And the end of extended benefits hasn’t spurred the unemployed back to work; if anything, it has pushed them out of the labor force altogether." Ben Casselman at Five Thirty Eight.
The housing sector hasn't recovered yet, in three charts. Danielle Kurtzleben at Vox.
We use the least efficient method to board airplanes. "Most US airlines ... let people who are sitting in the back board first, then people in the next few rows, gradually working their way toward the front. This procedure makes absolutely no sense ... Numerous studies have shown this is not a good way to board an airplane, in terms of time or customer satisfaction. The fastest ways to board a plane are Southwest's boarding method — where people choose their own seats — or a theoretical boarding method known as the 'Steffen method' that's not currently in use. Both simulations and real-life experiments have proven the standard method to be the slowest out of several different ones." Joseph Stromberg + Videos at Vox.
Elections
The media needs to make the GOP own up to their healthcare policy. "Nunn came under media fire for refusing to say whether she would have voted for Obamacare ... But ... the handling of health care by multiple Republican Senate candidates has been at least as ridiculous ... Surely these Republican evasions are also newsworthy. They go right to the heart of the GOP’s approach to the central policy debate of the Obama era, shedding light on Republicans’ widespread inability to mount an even remotely credible policy response to fundamental questions that debate raises about how, or whether, government should act to expand health care to the poor." Greg Sargent at the Plum Line.
Hillary is getting some (quiet) pushback from Democrats. "There’s also a smaller but increasingly vocal group making its presence felt lately — call it the 'Wary of Hillary' Democrats. They’re not outwardly opposing a Clinton candidacy. But they are anxious about the spectacle of a Clinton juggernaut, after seeing what happened when she ran a campaign of inevitability last time. Some feel a competitive primary, regardless of the outcome, is good for the party. Others say Clinton, who’s been out of electoral politics for five years, needs to be tested. And some Democrats are merely concerned that the party won’t have an open airing of views on economic policy." Maggie Haberman at Politico.
The ideal challenger to Clinton. "Let’s say you’re a high-powered campaign strategist shut out of Hillaryland, and you’re looking for a candidate to back; you might ask, 'Where is Clinton weakest?' ... Put it all together, and you start to get a picture of what a Clinton challenger might look like: probably male, moderate and anti-establishment. Who matches that profile? Webb, for one. He has been both a Democrat and Republican. Maybe Brian Schweitzer, the former Montana governor who mixes liberal and conservative positions and is not a fan of the Washington, D.C., establishment." Harry Enten at Five Thirty Eight.
Energy and the Environment
Obama to announce a new major policy to combat climate change. "President Obama is expected to announce ... an Environmental Protection Agency regulation to cut carbon pollution from ... coal-fired power plants ... Mr Obama's most forceful effort to reverse 20 years of relative inaction on climate change ... The president had tried, without success, to move a climate change bill through Congress ... such legislation would now stand no chance of getting past the resistance of Republican lawmakers ... So Mr. Obama is ... using his executive authority under the 1970 Clean Air Act to issue an E.P.A. regulation taking aim at coal-fired power plants, the nation’s largest source of carbon pollution." Coral Davenport at the New York Times.
Everything you need to know about the new regulations. Jonathan Cohn at the New Republic.
Foreign Policy
Someone goofed. Big time. "The White House accidentally blew the cover of the top CIA officer in Afghanistan Saturday, when his name and title were released in an e-mail sent to reporters who traveled with President Obama on his surprise visit to Bagram Air Field ... The individual was identified as 'Chief of Station,' a term used for the top spy in a country ... It remains unclear how the exposure will affect the CIA officer's ability to continue in his in role in Afghanistan. The Post is withholding the official's name at the request of White House officials who warned publication of his name could put the official and his family in danger." William Cummings at USA Today.
Gender
#YesAllWomen - and why it's important. Alex Abad-Santos at Vox.
Eight startling facts about domestic violence against women. Sarah Kliff at Vox.
GOP
Conservative reformers don't have a ton of space for reforms. "It puts the current reform conservatism in context to see McCain as this era’s first reform conservative ... McCain was a passionate campaign finance reformer ... He acknowledged the human causes of global warming and introduced ... legislation to curb carbon emissions. He opposed the Bush tax cuts ... Today’s reform conservatives are operating in a much more constrained environment. They are reacting against the Tea Party’s extreme opposition to government. But they are also limited by an increasingly conservative Republican primary electorate, the shift in the GOP’s geographical center of gravity toward the South, and a rightward drift within the business community." E.J. Dionne Jr. at Democracy.
Rand Paul's foreign policy hypocrisy. "Paul’s public position is that we should cut off all foreign aid, including aid to Israel ... But if Paul were ever in a position to end aid to Israel ... the only time his personal position would really matter—he would ... instead vote to ensure that the aid continues. I’m not sure I can think of a more irresponsible position. If Rand Paul thinks aid to Israel is truly important, then it’s deeply cynical to badmouth that aid simply because bad-mouthing appeals to the type of voter he’s courting. And if he thinks aid to Israel is irredeemably wasteful, then it’s deeply cynical to fink out when given the opportunity to roll it back. Either way, it’s hard to spot the conviction here." Noam Scheiber at the New Republic.
Guns
In the aftermath of another mass murder. "A college student who posted videos that documented his rage against women for rejecting him killed six people and wounded 13 others during a spasm of terror on Friday night ... He stabbed three men to death in his apartment and shot the others ... The gunman, identified by the police as Elliot O. Rodger, 22, was found dead ... near the University of California, Santa Barbara. The police said he had apparently taken his own life. Three semiautomatic handguns, along with 41 loaded 10-round magazines — all bought legally at local gun stores — were found in his car." Ian Lovett and Adam Nagourney at the New York Times.
Mass shootings on college campuses are becoming more common and more deadly. "Shootings — let alone mass shootings — were rare on and around college campuses ... But in recent years, they've been escalating; since the Virginia Tech shooting that killed 32 people in 2007, 28 others have been killed in mass campus shootings." Libby Nelson at Vox.
Health
If you refuse to expand Medicaid, you don't get to keep saying you support American veterans. "The failure of some states to expand Medicaid is leaving a quarter-million veterans without health insurance. Many assume that all of the nation's veterans are entitled to health care through the Veteran's Administration, but that's not the case ... About 1.3 million veterans remain uninsured nationwide ... Approximately 258,600 ... are living below the poverty line in states refusing to expand Medicaid. Without veteran's benefits — and with incomes too low to qualify for subsidies to use on the state exchanges — these veterans are left without affordable coverage options." Adrianna McIntyre at Vox.
The VA scandal is bad - but so is the whole healthcare system. "Falsification of government records is a serious offense, and anyone caught doing it must be punished ... Any instance in which a veteran’s health was threatened by the length of time he or she must wait to see a doctor is unacceptable. But there’s no reason to believe veterans’ wait times to see a VA doctor exceed, on average and to any significant degree, non-veterans’ wait times to see a private-sector doctor. Inadequate access to health care is a VA problem. But it’s a national problem, too." Timothy Noah at MSNBC.
We can't confirm the next surgeon general because ... he believes gun violence is a public health issue. Seriously. "The National Rifle Association is blocking the nomination of Vivek Murthy, a doctor ... and a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, for surgeon general. The reason? Murthy was one of the authors of a letter saying that 'strong measures to reduce gun violence must be taken immediately.' So despite a bipartisan recommendation ... the NRA promised to 'score' any vote on Murthy confirmation, meaning an affirmative vote would pull down a senator's annual rating from the group. The result? Murthy's confirmation process has gone nowhere." Adrianna McIntyre at Vox.
Why 1 in 6 Americans gets food poisoning every year. Susannah Locke at Vox.
America is getting more obese because we're eating more. "Long-time obesity research ... misses something really important about how the obesity has unfolded over the past few decades. Across different geographies, ethnic groups and income-levels, obesity rates are growing just as quickly ... So what is to blame? It's pretty much all about Americans eating more. A lot more. Americans pretty much everywhere consume more calories than they did a few decades ago." Sarah Kliff at Vox.
Immigration
Where the states' immigrants come from, in two maps. Jenna Kagel at Policymic.
Our vision of immigration is all over the place. "We want them to work harder than us, to inject new energy into the republic, but not to take our jobs. We want them to melt their culture into our proverbial pot, but not to change who we are. We want them to help sustain America’s self-image as a nation that takes the world’s tired, huddled masses, but we don’t want their tired, huddled selves going on welfare and deepening our debt. We want them to prove to us and the world that anyone with pluck can rise here from lowly origins, but we’d prefer it if they were already engineers with a job when they arrived ... If your goal is social cohesion, it’s not the easiest formula." Anand Giridharadas at the New York Times.
This is truly horrifying. "As the federal government cracks down on immigrants in the country illegally and forbids businesses to hire them, it is relying on tens of thousands of those immigrants each year to provide essential labor — usually for $1 a day or less — at the detention centers where they are held when caught by the authorities ... The federal authorities say the program is voluntary, legal and a cost-saver for taxpayers. But immigrant advocates question whether it is truly voluntary or lawful, and argue that the government and the private prison companies that run many of the detention centers are bending the rules to convert a captive population into a self-contained labor force." Ian Urbina at the New York Times.
Extraordinarily underfunded immigration courts are a large part of the problem. "The problem is that immigration courts are dramatically under-resourced ... The federal government is putting more effort into rounding immigrants up and putting them into detention than it is into processing their cases in court. And it's often resistant to letting them leave detention while they're waiting to see a judge. This creates a huge pool of vulnerable immigrant detainees, who can then be used as cheap labor by private detention companies or the government itself ... The problem with immigration detention isn't just the abuses ... It's the failures of the system that make it possible for those abuses to occur at all." Dara Lind at Vox.
LGBT Rights
Barriers to same-sex marriage are coming down like the Berlin Wall. "State bans on same-sex marriage are falling like dominoes in the courts—just as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia predicted ... Pennsylvania struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriages ... It's the 14th consecutive legal victory since the Supreme Court's landmark marriage rulings last year ... Lower-court judges have taken note of the Supreme Court's reasoning and rhetoric, striking down state marriage laws ... If Scalia's 2013 predictions continue to hold, it won't be long before marriage equality is back before the Supreme Court—and then becomes legal in all 50 states." Sam Baker at the National Journal.
War on Drugs
Where you're more likely to be arrested for smoking marijuana, in maps. "States completely differ in their approaches to marijuana: some arrest thousands of people each year, while others barely arrest anyone at all. Some of the most solidly blue states — New York, Illinois, and Maryland — make the most arrests each year, along with deep-red Louisiana and Mississippi." German Lopez at Vox.
War on Terror
10 ways Obama's targeting killing policy hasn't changed in the last year. Micah Zenko at Foreign Policy.
International
Global
Why the new Russia-China natural gas deal is good news for everyone. "China is happy that Russia will deliver from fields that are dedicated to them. Russia is happy that it is developing the new fields and has a paying customer to deliver it to. But everyone else should be happy that this means there are 1.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas available to the rest of the world. This is energy security." Clifford G. Gaddy at Brookings.
Africa
New UN sanctions on Boko Haram might not do much of anything. "Boko Haram is probably beyond the reach of global sanctions but attempts to curb the Nigerian Islamists' reign of terror is an indication of growing international commitment ... The UN Security Council ... designated the extremist group as an Al-Qaeda-linked organisation ... But with sanctions designed to cut off overseas funding and support for Boko Haram, which kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls last month, there are doubts about what impact they might have on the ground. 'Boko Haram has for several years now existed beyond the formal parameters where an arms embargo or asset-freeze would affect the group.'" Phil Hazelwood at AFP.
Sierra Leone has its first cases of Ebola. "Four people have died of Ebola in Sierra Leone, the first confirmed cases in the country following an outbreak in Guinea, the health ministry has said ... There is no cure or vaccine for Ebola - one of the world's deadliest viruses. But people have a better chance of surviving if it is identified early and they get supportive medical care. Ebola can kill up to 90% of those infected and is passed on through contact with the fluids of infected people or animals ... The UN World Health Organization said it has been informed about the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone and would help deploy essential supplies." BBC.
Europe
The European parliament elections - same old, same old. "Far-right political parties that are skeptical of the European project and hostile to immigrants saw an upswing ... The UK Independence Party won a plurality ... as did the National Front in France, and the Danish People's Party ... Parties affiliated with the center-right European People's Party ... won the most seats followed by parties affiliated with the center-left Party of European Socialism ... The EPP and the PES are both broadly supportive of the process of European integration ... This is the ... same outcome as in the past few ... elections, so ... nothing very interesting happened ... Euroskeptical parties got 130 out of 751 seats." Matthew Yglesias at Vox.
The Eurozone survived the financial crisis, but European citizens aren't doing as well. "Remember the eurozone crisis? You don't hear much about it anymore, which could easily lead you to the conclusion that the problems have been solved. And to an extent they have been. Nobody thinks the eurozone is going to collapse anymore, and nobody thinks there will be a worldwide banking panic. The only problem is vast swathes of the continent remain an economic disaster area. They saved the eurozone, but not the economies that it comprises or the people who live there." Matthew Yglesias at Vox.
Ukraine has a new president, who will have to deal with some huge problems. "Ukraine handed chocolate tycoon Petro Poroshenko a commanding victory in its presidential election ... giving the pro-European billionaire a chance to resolve a conflict that has created the greatest tensions between the West and Russia since the Cold War. The new leader takes the office once held by pro-Kremlin Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in February after anti-government protests. That revolt led to Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, the rise of a separatist movement in Ukraine’s east and a torrent of violence that increasingly looks like a low-grade civil war." Michael Birnbaum and Frederick Kunkle at the Washington Post.
In a year of anti-European parties, Italy's center-left, pro-European party is riding high. "The European elections have handed Italy's prime minister, Matteo Renzi, a resounding victory as the centre-left leader's Democratic party (PD) won more than 40% of the vote and trounced the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) ... It gives Renzi not only a strong mandate in Europe as Italy prepares to take over the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU but also, crucially, a much needed blessing from the ballot box – the prime minister, a former mayor, took power in a palace coup earlier this year and has not even been elected to Italy's national parliament." Lizzy Davies at the Guardian.
Polisci
European parliamentarians aren't super responsive to their constituents. "Taken together, these results paint a rather gloomy picture of political representation in Europe ... Members hardly appear responsive to the European demos. Neither E.U. nor left/right messages seem to boost response rates. However, what does seem to matter is the provision of electoral incentives, yet these are arguably still lower than in national elections. Perhaps the most optimistic finding is that longer E.P. tenure increases responsiveness indicating that members are socialized into norms of constituency service." Catherine E. De Vries at the Monkey Cage.
How race influences other political ideologies - the case study of health care reform. "Michael Tesler ... studied this question by looking at the role racial attitudes played in people's health-care opinions ... Prior to Obama's election, Tesler found that race had 'a substantively small and non-significant independent influence' on people health-care opinions. But that changed in the September 2009 data. 'Racial attitudes were strongly linked to health care opinions in that post-Obama survey.' After controlling for party and self-reported ideology, 'changing from least to most racially resentful decreased white support for governmental insurance by 20 percent.'" Ezra Klein at Vox.
No, Middle East borders aren't about to be redrawn. "The intensity of the civil war in Syria, combined with the continued upheavals in Iraq and the endemic instability of Lebanese politics, has naturally led to speculation that the famously 'artificial' borders in the eastern Arab world ... are on their last legs ... Are we about to see a grand redrawing of the borders in the Middle East? ... No ... Real governance in the eastern Arab world is certainly up for grabs, but the borders themselves will be the last things to change, because almost none of the actors, either regionally or internationally, really want them to change." F. Gregory Gause III at Brookings.
Science
Lab-grown meat is a great alternative to harmful environmental practices. But it's currently too costly to be a substitute. "Will lab-grown meat ever be feasible? Last year, a Dutch researcher showed that it was at least possible to create a hamburger using cow muscle cells grown in a laboratory ... And, this week, researchers published a new paper in Trends in Biotechnology sketching out a possible method for producing lab-grown meat on a much larger scale. The one flaw? Even with this latest process, lab-grown meat would be massively expensive, costing an estimated $242 per pound of meat produced. (That's roughly 50 times more expensive than current meat prices.)" Brad Plumer at Vox.
Miscellaneous
Henry Kissinger was once a comic book villain. "In this 1976 issue of the aptly titled Supervillain Team-Up, the Fantastic Four are battling arch-nemesis Dr. Doom. After fighting an army of robots and even the brainwashed superhero Namor, the heroes break into Doom's castle in Latveria (a fictional European country he runs). They're about to lay down one of those traditional super-hero smackdowns, but the Four are stopped by an enemy they can't fight with fists — Henry Kissinger: Yep. Henry Kissinger allied the United States with Latveria, a super-villain-run puppet state, in the name of American 'national security.' It's actually a pretty apt satire of Kissinger's policy agenda." Zack Beauchamp at Vox.
Batman or Superman - who would win in a fight? Video at the Verge.
Candidate for the best Wikipedia page. Wikipedia.
An organized collection of irrational nonsense. Chart.
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