Five Best Monday Columns
James Surowiecki on Facebook's IPO, Michael Medved on the popular vote, Garry Kasparov on the Russian alliance, Noah Feldman on Mormon assimilation, and Roderick MacFarquhar on Bo Xilai
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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.
James Surowiecki on Facebook's IPO, Michael Medved on the popular vote, Garry Kasparov on the Russian alliance, Noah Feldman on Mormon assimilation, and Roderick MacFarquhar on Bo Xilai
In this week's The New York Times Magazine, Well columnist Tara Parker-Pope asks, "Does Facebook turn people into narcissists?" which, when paired with The Atlantic's own recent cover story by Stephen Marche, "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?" leads us to wonder whether we're all a bunch of isolated self-obsessed twits.
Just days after General Motors decided to pull all its Facebook advertising, deeming it "ineffective," the automaker has decided it won't be advertising on the Super Bowl broadcast either. Broadcast networks, consider yourselves warned.
The Associated Press is highlighting a fun story: a Texas city council election resulted in a tie, and rather than spend the city's money on a re-vote, the candidates decided to just flip a coin, which is apparently something that Texas election law actually allows.
Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein on partisanship solutions, George W. Bush on the Arab Spring, Charles Krauthammer on Obama's gay marriage arguments, Paul Krugman on the euro's collapse, and Joshua Green on the filibuster.
Americans Elect announced that they officially won't be fielding a third party presidential candidate after all, the group said in a statement Thursday.
Speaking at a press conference Wednesday, Mitt Romney answered a question on a statement he made about Reverend Jeremiah Wright by saying, "I’m not familiar precisely with exactly what I said, but I stand by what I said. Whatever it was."
Breitbart's senior management appended a long editor's note to their post that "exposes" a promotional booklet from President Obama's literary agency in 1991 that describes him as "born in Kenya," and their justification for running with it is ridiculously thin.
Dealbook's Evelyn M. Rusli reports that the music-sharing company Spotify is raising money as part of a deal that values it at $4 billion, and fresh off this morning's enormous $1.5 billion valuation for Pinterest, we can't help but fear this is more evidence of a social media bubble.
This week, several media outlets rediscovered an old New York Times chart that tells you how popular your birthday is, ranking each day of the year from 1 to 366. While it's fun to learn the most common birthdays in the U.S., it's much more fun to think about the most popular conception dates!
Gustin Reichbach on medical marijuana, George Will on subsidized college loans, Ezra Klein on American decline, Michael Tomasky on Romney and the Tea Party, and E.J. Dionne on Romney's praise for Clinton
We had some fun Monday with The Washington Post's report that Henry Kissinger, wheelchair bound and unrecognized by TSA security guards, underwent a "full Monty" patdown, but ever the Realpolitik practitioner, Kissinger himself didn't take too much issue with the incident
Herman Cain hosted a somewhat random press conference Wednesday to announce (for the second time!) that he's endorsed Mitt Romney, a man who has no Republican competitors in his race for president.
Margaret Carlson on Rob Portman, Tom Frost on big banks, Ruth Marcus on John Edwards, Holman W. Jenkins Jr. on Facebook's IPO, and George Packer on Biden and LBJ
It's the second biggest George W. Bush endorsement of the day: The former president is now a cat person.
General Motors is ending their $10 million ad campaign with Facebook, reports The Wall Street Journal, because the automaker determined their ads "had little impact on consumers."
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon may be having a rough time after his bank lost $2 billion on a bad trading position, but it does not mean he is sparkly on the inside.
Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers on economics of gay marriage, Jonathan Macey on J.P Morgan, Frank Bruni on Republicans and marriage, Michael Gerson on Romney's Liberty University speech, and Atossa Abrahamian on dual citizenship.
A wheelchair bound 89-year-old Henry Kissinger was submitted to a "full Monty" pat down (per The Washington Post's In the Loop) from the TSA at New York's LaGuardia Airport Monday.
Ron Paul sent an email to supporters Monday saying he would stop campaigning in states that haven't voted yet, but he's not quite dropping out.
President Barack Obama gave his commencement speech at Barnard College, and rather than make any big news, he mostly kept to the mix of light jokes and advice more typical of graduation speeches.
Newsweek's cover has been called "controversial" and "pretty shocking," but looking at this run-down of presidential firsts that weren't, it begins to seem a bit inevitable.
Adam Sorenson on Jamie Dimon, Jackson Diehl on Obama and Putin, Juliette Kayyem on Mississippi and immigration, Albert Hunt on Joseph Kennedy III, and Mustafa Aykol on Islamists and liberalism
MSNBC's Tamron Hall got quite angry with the Washington Examiner's Tim Carney when he suggested she was doing "a typical media trick" by covering the day two "non-story" about Romney's bullying, and woo boy, this is a confrontation worth watching.
The New(ly trendy) Republic made a rather fun series of images (not a slideshow, much to some people's chagrin) pondering just how Tina Brown, whose scandalous Newsweek covers have become something of a media in-joke, would represent President Obama's same sex marriage endorsement.
Fox News host Geraldo Rivera is attracting some attention for a gross joke he made while discussing the rising tide of anger at the TSA for their often invasive airport security mishaps.
John Dickerson on Romney's bullying story, Michael Gerson on millenial attitudes, Kimberley Strassel on trolling Romney's donors, Gerald Rafshoon on Jimmy Carter's courage, and Elizabeth Mitchell Armstrong on baby formula and hospitals.
Perhaps an answer to the question on just how deliberate Vice President Biden's pre-emptive same-sex marriage endorsement was: He apologized to President Obama for jumping the gun, The New York Times reports.
Delta Airlines has taken some criticism for pulling their ads from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart after the Catholic League protested a coy image of woman with her legs spread, but a Delta spokeperson told The Atlantic Wire Thursday the decision wasn't pegged to the Catholic League's campaign.
Dancing with the Stars runner-up Bristol Palin takes issue with President Obama's announcement that his daughters helped "evolve" his thinking on gay marriage, and not a few people have pointed out that her post on the subject lacks some, um, self-awareness.
Ben Adler on Obama's next gay rights issue, Mark Kantrowitz and Lynn O'Shaughnessy on the college loan debate, Joan Vennochi on Elizabeth Warren, Noah Feldman on Israel's new coalition, and Nicholas Kristof on poverty on Indian reservations.
Famed British hairdresser Vidal Sassoon passed away Wednesday at 84 of an "unspecified illness" at his home, The Los Angeles Times' Andrew Blankstein reports, and his family was there. So this doesn't sound unexpected, but still, of course, quite sad.
Here's your President Obama conspiracy theory for the day: Was he Photoshopped into the iconic image of the Situation Room meeting during the Osama Bin Laden raid?
Amy Davidson on North Carolina's ban, Jonathan Chait on Dick Lugar's defeat, Derrick Jackson on the obesity crisis, David Ignatius on threats to airplanes, and Adam Kirsch on Obama's literary criticism.
Mike McQueary, famed for observing Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky sexually assaulting a child, is now filing a whistleblower lawsuit against his university, and while details are still thin, any case with McQueary will eventually make big news, we imagine
The Associated Press' Mike Groll captured a great photo of President Obama speaking alongside New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Tuesday, and we especially like how it perfectly captures our favorite of the many ways Obama likes to point at people: the "This guy!"
New York 's Transportation Department and Citibank jointly introduced their bike share program Monday, but rather than drool over the shiny blue bikes, journalists focused on the prices, which some thought to be too high, but some of their arguments ignored or undersold the way cities intend people to use the bike share system.
Frank Bruni on Obama's gay marriage stance, Noah Feldman on the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial, William McGurn on Chen Guangcheng's timing, Joanna Weiss on the 'Life of Julia,' and Sally Satel on Facebook's organ donation program.
The Catholic League has taken to mailing "a color photo of a naked woman with her legs spread" to executives at companies that advertise with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to get them to leave the program, and the apparently, they're having some success.
We were skeptical when writer Paige Williams declared this Flavorwire post that collects photos of "gorgeous and innovative" bookshelves "bookshelf porn."
The Obama campaign and a few others are finding fault with Mitt Romney Monday for declining to immediately correct a woman at a campaign event who alleged that President Obama had committed treason.
The Pentagon has rather hilariously decided that it couldn't cooperate with the filming of this weekend's big blockbuster superhero flick The Avengers because it didn't think the depiction of the military bureaucracy was realistic, according to Wired's Spencer Ackerman.
The Chicago Tribune has a long story out about the decades-long lobbying campaign for fire retardant products that has ignored their health hazards while pushing products that don't actually... retard fire.
Rosecrans Baldwin on Nicolas Sarkozy's exit, Jerome Cohen on Chen Guangcheng's luck, Mark Halperin on the Obama campaign's confidence, James Surowiecki on Wal-Mart and bribery, and William Cohan on arrogance at Lehman Brothers
Fox has found a solution for the potential challenges of marketing the awkwardly named upcoming film Neighborhood Watch -- with its unintentional echo of the Trayvon Martin case -- by just changing the name altogether.
Let's all welcome David Mitt and William Ryder Romney into the world, twins born to Mitt Romney's son Tagg and his wife Jen.
We're unsettled to hear that Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys, better known as MCA, has passed away at just 47 years old, according to several outlets.
John Pomfret on China's view of the U.S., Peggy Noonan on Dick Lugar's primary, Ruth Marcus on Ric Grenell, David Brooks on online education, and Joan Wickersham on reality TV.
The Congressional-Executive Commission on China held an emergency hearing Thursday to discuss the uncertain fate of Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng, and they got some surprising testimony from none other than Chen himself.
"[Tareq] Salahi has the dubious designation of being one of the least popular people we've ever polled," Public Policy Polling's Tom Jensen said of the White House-crashing reality star's potential run for the Virginia governorship.
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