The National Council of the Boy Scouts of America passed a resolution permitting openly gay youth the participate in scouting activities on Thursday afternoon at a national meeting in Grapevine, Texas. Passed by a vote of 61% among 1,400 members, the resolution will go into effect in January 2014, and overturns more than century of organizational precedent.
You probably saw this coming: Andrew Watkins, the former president of the Harvard quiz bowl team that was stripped of four championships for allegedly cheating, is denying that he actually cheated. But did he?
Discovered: gay parents get viewed negatively; people support politicians who are vague about gun control; prostitute-seeking men are not, in fact, very common; excess choices increase risky decisions.
Will Portman on coming out, Reuel Marc Gerecht on the C.I.A.'s interrogation tactics, Ross Douthat on the Iraq War and Obama, Jonathan S. Tobin on the liberal reaction to Fox News, and Glenn Greenwald on racism's influence on the War on Terror.
Discovered: Men and women heal differently; doubling up on algebra improves learning; ears are flawed; revising financial statements indicates poor governance.
Timothy Noah, formerly a senior editor at the newly-relaunched New Republic, sent the political sector of Twitter into a confused frenzy Friday afternoon when he tweeted the magazine had unexpectedly fired him.
According to a "security update" posted earlier this week by the National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC (which holds and judges quiz bowl tournaments), a member of Harvard's quiz bowl team will be stripped of four quiz bowl championship titles after the company caught him illicitly accessing official quiz questions before the tournaments were held.
Last night's victory of fourteenth-seeded Harvard Crimson over the third-seeded New Mexico Lobos, 68-62, drew predictable displays of celebration, and, at the same time, pretty serious accusations that Harvard, in its desire to raise the stature of its athletic program, had recruited academically ungifted (but athletically phenomenal) student-athletes.
Paul Krugman on the dominoes of Cyprus, Mark Joseph Stern on the shifting tactics of gay marriage opponents, Ken Tucker on the joy of Scandal, John R. MacArthur on Obama's political failures, and Jonathan Cohn on the rising star of Dr. Ben Carson.
Discovered: Massive volcanoes caused widespread extinction 200 million years ago; men don't want to cheat with the wives of their friends; obese people share an altered gene; we remember things using social patterns.
The often-controversial animal rights group, known for staging provocative protests involving human props, considers euthanasia "a tragic necessity."
Barack Obama knows how to work a crowd. While speaking to a group of 600 college students at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem, the President was briefly heckled by a lonestudent speaking in Hebrew. Here's the video of Obama's reaction.
He is no stranger to assassination attempts — both real and potentially imaginary — but according to a piece in the new issue of The Atlantic the Iranian leader's closest brush with death was entirely accidental.
Dianne Feinstein on the trial of Sulaiman abu Ghaith, Richard Florida on misunderstanding the creative class, Mehdi Hasan on anti-Semitism among British Muslims, Roy Bourgeois on the call for female Catholic priests, and Irin Carmon on rehabilitating rapists.
Discovered: the emotional content of books is declining; men dominate in the post-recession economy; olive oil wards off Alzheimer's; sleep helps us retain 'competing' memories.
President Obama faced a simple question: Did the dueling accusations about chemical weapons in Syria cross his supposed line to engage or not? Well, in a press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu, he said the line is still there, and chemical weapons are a "game changer" — he's just not sure who crossed it yet. But he's "deeply skeptical" the opposition did.
Judd's rumored run for Senator of Kentucky isn't just rousing Republicans — it may be scaring big-time Democrats, too.
Matt Yglesias on the new news media, Jonathan Chait on getting Iraq wrong, Mark A.R. Kleiman on intelligent crime policy, Avik Roy on the GOP's minority outreach, and Joel Kotkin on the failed promise of the creative class.
Discovered: Soda is deadly; you're bad at sports gambling; nice people do better in school; teamwork can be traced back to chimpanzees.
With March Madness play-in games beginning in a few hours — starting with Liberty University and North Carolina AT&T — you may be wondering: what are my chances of predicting a perfect bracket? Your answer awaits.
Why was Bo Jiang, a Chinese national and NASA researcher, arrested at the airport by the FBI? And should you be worried? Here's what we know so far.
D.J. Hoek on the price of public libraries, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry on the narrow worldview of economists, Geoff Mulgan on the upside of financial crises, Max Boot on (not) apologizing for the Iraq War, and Kyle Wiens on the necessity of digital ownership.
Discovered: Humans know how dogs are feeling; health professionals are abusing propofol; massive bird nests function as socialist societies; male lions ambush their prey.
The credibility of The Daily Caller's report that New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez had sex with prostitutes during a junket in the Domincan Republic took yet another blow on Monday afternoon as The Associated Press reported that police in the Dominican Republic have determined that an attorney named Melanio Figueroa paid three women a couple hundred dollars each to make the claims on camera.
Nik Wallenda, the highwire acrobat who in June 2012 traversed Horseshoe Falls (the biggest waterfall of the Niagara Falls), has announced his plan to cross the Grand Canyon, presumably above one of the Arizona canyon's more dramatic drops.
Peter Feaver on Iraq war myths, Juliette Kayyem on remembering war, Eric Boehlert on the war and Twitter, Lewis Dvorkin on the economics of online media, and Ross Douthat on the challenges facing the Catholic Church.
Discovered: Bee venom can be used to neutralize HIV; gambling sites seduce people with free trials; dating in middle school is tied to truancy; a 'dirty blizzard' compounded Deepwater Horizon disaster.
That was quick: The governor of Louisiana apparently no longer thinks his party is stupid. He reused lengthy portions of a January speech on Friday at CPAC, but left out the most controversial remarks, like calling his own party "stupid."
Peggy Noonan on the new Pope, Rob Portman on marriage equality, Charles C.W. Cooke on Al Gore's evangelism, Ana Marie Cox on the GOP's youth movement, and Jonathan Alter on the man who filmed Romney's "47%" comments.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has some news for Paul Ryan and House Republicans: Obamacare was a losing battle.
Discovered: ancient bird species had four wings; milk is good for college students; texting errors can indicate a stroke; breast milk contains stem cells.
Even when answers seem to arrive on the controversial Benghazi attack, the questions never fade away: Faraj al-Shibli, a man thought to be involved in the September 2012 attacks on the American consulate, has been captured in Libya, according to two sources speaking to CNN, as Republicans back home refused to let the issue fade.
The marathon filibusterer brought his invigorated libertarian stump speech to an enraptured audience (and Metallica), inveighing that the GOP needs to change by returning to the classical principles spelled out in the country's constitution.
Explaining that he wanted to preempt liberal critiques of his speech, one of which (he predicted) was his lack of new ideas for the Republican Party, Rubio declared, "We don't a new idea. The idea is called America, and it still works." Also: water joke.
Yes, Kim Jong-un's state news agencies have been even more absurd than usual lately. But, no, North Korea did not film, produce, and distribute a four-and-a-half-minute propaganda film depicting the harrowing lives of Americans forced to eat snow and live in tents as the country around them collapses.
Daniel W. Drezner on Girls, Josh Barro on CPAC, Richard Kim on wealthy asceticism, Floyd Abrams and Yochai Benkler on the prosecution of Bradley Manning, and Douglas Rushkoff on our relationship to computers.
Discovered: Punishment works; traditional Chinese medicine works, too; people think the future is closer to them than the past; you really, really shouldn't text and drive.
Today's election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio to the papacy is notable for two big reasons: he's the first non-European, and the first ordained member of the Society of Jesus, to occupy the highest seat of the Roman Catholic Church, both of which upend millennia of precedent.
Adam Briggle on fracking politics, Jessica Valenti on the discourse of rape, Justin Green on the GOP's entitlement trap, Ben Smith on New York's soda ban, and W. James Antle III on Rand Paul's foreign policy.
Discovered: Babies are very calculating; political turmoil affects HIV treatment; another Earth is out there, probably; gender stereotypes affect the advancement of women in science.
The 36-year-old son of former Florida governor Jeb Bush — and nephew of former President George W. Bush — announced his run for Texas land commissioner on Tuesday afternoon, making him the latest (and youngest) Bush to set his eyes on political office.
In scanning the email of its resident deans in order to suss out the source of a leaked letter, Harvard may have made history — in setting an example for how to spy on employees in "blanket" fashion: Search 'em all to find just one, and don't tell anybody about it.
Ryan Chittum on the housing crisis, Emily Bazelon on the definition of bullying, Mark Seidner on the baby supposedly cured of HIV, Andrew Ross Sorkin on how to prosecute big banks, and Adam Gopnik on America's writing culture.
Discovered: Your Facebook likes can indicate your sexuality; frustration can make you seek out violent video games; HIV, if controlled, presents no increased risk of death; ancient humans suffered from heart disease, just like us.
Tell that to the judge in New York who just stopped the soda ban.
Judd knows she needs to convince party leaders that her perceived vulnerabilities — her Hollywood career, her outspokenness — can be turned into strengths in an expensive race. So she'll need the Democratic establishment to believe in her as much as she believes in herself... just as soon as both sides are ready.
Harvard isn't sorry for snooping through the emails of more than a dozen of its own deans. On Monday the university issued a length statement explaining its secret probe into last year's massive cheating scandal, and, well, the explanation is pretty thin.
Chris Hayes on judging foreign leaders, Jody Greenstone Miller on Sheryl Sandberg, James Temple on Silicon Valley hype, Paul Krugman on Washington's deficit obsession, and Glenn Greenwald on progressive reactions to Rand Paul.
Discovered: Alcohol helps accelerate the brains of heavy drinkers; Self-image affects self-expression; Antarctic lake hid evidence of never-before-seen life forms; Ancient humans liked to hike.
No, Jon Stewart didn't deliver one of his signature rants against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Rather, the Daily Show host's advice is set to appear in Rumsfeld's forthcoming tome of advice, Rumsfeld's Rules.
It looks like the dirt-digging campaign might not have scared her off after all: According to an "insider" interviewed by Fox News, the actress is seriously considering running against Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell in 2014.
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