Five Best Friday Columns
Stephen Carter on fanatical politics, Mark Vanhoenacker on restrictions to tourists, Tevi Troy on think tanks, Amy Davidson on anti-war voters, and Michael Kinsley on ugly campaigns
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Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope, the hip hop duo that makes up Insane Clown Posse is pretty unhappy with the FBI for labeling their fan-base, known as Juggalos, as a "loosely-organized hybrid gang," so unhappy that they're suing.
Stephen Carter on fanatical politics, Mark Vanhoenacker on restrictions to tourists, Tevi Troy on think tanks, Amy Davidson on anti-war voters, and Michael Kinsley on ugly campaigns
Call it brash independence, a unique way of seeing, or simple cantankerousness, but it's often struck us while reading film reviews that some critics enjoy going against the grain. We crunched some numbers to crown America's most cantankerous film critic.
Rush Limbaugh has had a personal Twitter account since 2009, but it has taken him over three years to send his first tweet. He wanted to share a blog post concerning the boycott of advertisers on his show.
This feels like a Catch-22: An election board in Sen. Richard Lugar's Indiana hometown ruled him ineligible to vote Thursday because he's lived in Virginia since voters sent him to Washington in 1977.
President Obama is receiving a fair amount of amused attention for lobbing a seemingly random dig at Rutherford B. Hayes Thursday, but maybe Hayes can thank Obama, because America is sure paying a lot more attention than usual to our 19th president.
Ezra Klein on Americans Elect, Felix Salmon on the Goldman op-ed, Fareed Zakaria on deterrence, Garry Kasparov and Boris Nemtsov on sanctioning Russia, Theresa Brown on measuring hospital care
"The bunny didn't suffer, said the distraught director of the zoo in Germany who had hoped to turn the rare rabbit into a media star." [Der Spiegel]
Campaigning in Puerto Rico, Rick Santorum doesn't show any signs that he wants to pander Wednesday, telling voters (erroneously) that they must declare English their only official language to achieve statehood.
Just one day after the president kicked off his annual March Madness bracketing, that other yearly ritual of overanalysis and conservative criticism has begun.
Shirin Ebadi on women and the Arab Spring, Greg Smith on quitting Goldman Sachs, Peter Orzag on electing a new Congress, Michael Medved on beating Obama, and Maureen Dowd on Hillary Clinton.
The Associated Press's Richard Lardner has attracted the admiring eyes of Beltway reporters Tuesday by flouting the Obama administration's demand for anonymity, even as another A.P. article granted the administration's request.
The Federal Reserve released results of its "stress test" Tuesday, announcing that four banks, most notably Citigroup, were not keeping sufficient capital on hand.
The SEC is filing charges against five individuals for illegally trading on a tip one man received while at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, an odd instance in which the organization's confidentiality rules dovetail nicely with securities law.
Rick Santorum's campaign sent out an e-mail to reporters Tuesday with an unfortunate typo: "MEDIA ADVISORY: SANTORUM PUBIC SCHEDULE," and no, we journalists are not above having a little fun with it.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
Michael Gerson on teleprompters, Roger Cohen on #StopKONY, Jeffrey Goldberg on Netanyahu, Gideon Rachman on China's history, and Geoff Porter on Libya's flawed election law.
Researchers think they may have found a lost mural by Leonardo da Vinci hiding behind another fresco on the wall of a famous Florentine building.
While the voter identification laws passed in several states have become a national political debate, the Justice Department blocked Texas's law Monday for extremely local reasons.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
Elliott Abrams on Tunisia's press freedom, L. Gordon Crovitz on Apple and anti-trust, Patricia Murphy on Gingrich's Southern strategy, James Surowiecki on the recovery, and Richard Brodsky on nuclear regulation.
For the second time in a year, newspapers are temporarily removing controversial Doonesbury strips from their papers, meaning that, for the second time in a year, Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau has stumbled into a winning publicity strategy.
A flight attendant who told a plane full of passengers that their flight was going to crash will not engender the kind of sympathy that America's famous Jet Blue flight attendant's freak-out.
The White House greeted Friday's news that the economy added jobs in February with a sunny statement, one that ought to inspire a creeping sense of déjà vu.
Michael Medved on Republicans and college grads, Jonathan Tepperman on intervening in Syria, Matthew Yglesias on housing shortages, Condoleezza Rice on Russia's middle class, and Virginia Postrel on over-the-counter birth control.
A Federal court put a temporary block on two controversial provisions of a tough immigration law in Alabama, the A.P. reports, and other states that might contemplate similar laws are likely watching.
AshleyMadison.com, the dating site for people out to cheat on their spouses, made a clever publicity grab by offering to buy up all of Rush Limbaugh's ad spots as other advertisers fled the show in the wake of his rant against a Georgetown law student, but Limbaugh is apparently above accepting such an offer.
Some say that by devoting her entire Thursday column to the tale of Mitt Romney driving to Canada with his dog on the roof of the car, The New York Times's Gail Collins has finally (finally) found the line past which readers would no longer tolerate her many mentions of the story. But don't underestimate the persistence of Seamus: This old dog still has some bite.
Charles Murray on narrowing the class divide, Joshua Green on the politics of manufacturing, Steve Chapman on the NFL bounty scandal, Matt Miller on Obama's media strategy, and Ezra Klein on the Koch brothers and Cato
Sen. Roy Blunt endorsed Mitt Romney Wednesday, and both the Romney campaign and liberals are eager for you to know it.
Several anonymous diplomats told the Associated Press about satellite images of Iran cleaning up a military site after the country announced that they'll allow nuclear inspectors in, which seems, well, suspicious.
This morning when Buzzfeed announced it had found the "mysterious" video that the late Andrew Breitbart's site Big Government had been teasing for weeks, it seemed they'd taken the wind out of Big Government's sails, not that there was much wind to be taken.
Clarence Page on Rush Limbaugh, Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. on Apple's closed ecosystem, Dana Milbank on Obama's lobbyists, Samuel Waksal on paying for drug treatment, and Wendy Kopp on publicizing teacher rankings
Kirk Cameron said Tuesday he's not pleased with the public's response to his remarks on gay people. Perhaps with these new comments, he can quickly return to the quiet anonymity more fitting of a former 1980s sit-com star.
President Obama gave his first press conference of the new year Tuesday, and Iran, the campaign, and Rush Limbaugh were high on everyone's minds.
Michael Kinsley on the Limbaugh fallout, William McGurn on Reagan and Romney, Gideon Rachmann on democracy, Peter Popham on Myanmar sanctions, and Charles Lane on electric cars.
Speaking on Fox News Monday, Ann Romney showed that her husband's habit of making uncomfortable references to their wealth is rubbing off.
In a campaign speech Monday, Rick Santorum took advantage of a newly rediscovered op-ed from Mitt Romney to finally give him a harder time on his Massachusetts health care law. But Santorum probably would have benefited from making the case earlier.
Paul Begala on the foreign policy election, L. Gordon Crovitz on self-driving cars, Joel Klein on candidates and education, Luke Harding on Putin's election, and Bill Keller on New York transit.
Friday, Rick Santorum admitted that his comment that President Obama is a "snob" for encouraging every American to go to college may not have been "not the smartest thing" to say, marking the second well-publicized gaffe he's walked back this week.
Two more companies have decided to stop advertising on the Rush Limbaugh Show after his continued attacks Friday on a Georgetown Law student who testified before Congress about birth control. But so far, Limbaugh doesn't show signs that he'll apologize.
Over a week after journalists Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik were killed by government shelling in Syria, their bodies are now in the hands of the Red Cross and en route out of the country despite an otherwise frustrating day for the humanitarian aid group.
After Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a "slut" and "prostitute" for testifying to Congress about the need for contraceptive health care coverage, the Georgetown law student became something of a lightning rod. Now President Obama has called to thank her.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
Robert Samuelson on Obama's reelection odds, Timothy Geithner on forgetting the crisis, Scot Lehigh on candidate gaffes, Aram Nerguizian on Assad's support, and David Brooks on self-control.
"Who were your heroes growing up as a child, and who are they today?" Viggo Mortensen was asked. He answered. And answered.
Maryland's governor signed a gay marriage bill into law Thursday, but the likelihood of a statewide referendum on gay marriage remains high.
Doing his best to shift attention from the Federal investigations into his office's discrimination against Latinos and abuses of power, Arizona's notorious sheriff Joe Arpaio is resorting to a well-worn headline-grabber: birtherism.
Social-game maker Zynga is a huge driver of traffic for Facebook, and their announcement Thursday that they are launching a separate site where people can play their games without accessing Facebook could be bad news for the Social Network that's supported them.
After their unsuccessful campaign to get enough Democrats to vote for Rick Santorum and prolong the Republican nominating contest, mischievous liberal voters now can't decide which losing GOP candidate to "support."
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