West Point Sergeant Accused of Spying on Female Cadets

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An Army Sergeant employed at West Point Military Academy has been charged with secretly videotaping female cadets in the school's showers and locker rooms. 

By Dashiell Bennett

Apr 10, 2013

Yep, Anthony Weiner Is Running for Mayor of New York City

Disgraced ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner and his very supportive wife Huma Abedin get a splashy cover profile in this weekend's The New York Times Magazine that basically uses 8,300 words to say one brief thing: He's going to run for office again. 

Comments | 44,197 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Apr 10, 2013

Jay-Z & Beyoncé Probably Broke Rules of a Government-Approved Cuba Trip

A treasury department letter shows the U.S. government fully, officially approved Beyoncé and Jay-Z's "educational exchange" trip to Cuba, but some politicians still aren't satisfied that they played by the government rules.

Comments | 1,835 Views

By Dashiell Bennett

Apr 10, 2013

The Obama Budget Has Something for Everyone to Hate

By offering to raise taxes and cut entitlement spending at the same time, the new formal budget proposal from the Obama administration should sufficiently upset just about everyone who will have to vote on it.

Comments | 184 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Apr 9, 2013

Bloomberg's Candidate Wins Open House Seat But Don't Call Him a Kingmaker Quite Yet

Robin Kelly, the gun hating former Illinois state rep who's friends with Obama and enjoyed over $2 million of Bloomberg's money for her campaign, has won the election to replace Jesse Jackson Jr. It wasn't even close.

Comments | 535 Views

By Elspeth Reeve

Apr 9, 2013

Why is Immigration Reform So Hard If It Looks So Unanimous?

The Senate will release a bipartisan immigration reform bill by the end of the week — maybe. The "gang of eight" can't even agree on whether they'll come to an agreement in time. But you wouldn't know that, watching the kook-free coverage of the immigration debate.

Comments | 4,405 Views

By Philip Bump

Apr 9, 2013

The Answer to McConnell's 'Nixonian' Tape Paranoia, from an Office Spy

McConnell is blaming liberals for "bugging" his campaign office and leaking the embarrassing Ashley Judd critiques. According to an expert we spoke with that's possible — but it's almost certainly not the case.

Comments | 3,304 Views

By Esther Zuckerman

Apr 9, 2013

Did This Instagram Tackler Really 'Get' the Lone Star Mass-Stabber?

Since the stabbing that wounded 14 people at a Houston-area college, one student has been taking some of the credit for apprehending his fellow student.

Comments | 9,177 Views

By J.K. Trotter

Apr 9, 2013

Biden Directly Confronts NRA and 'Black Helicopter Crowd' as Gun Deal Looms

After President Obama got emotional in Connecticut but refused to name the most powerful arm of "the gun lobby" that is bending back the administration's legislative push, Biden spared no words in describing the political tactics of the National Rifle Association.

Comments | 2,753 Views

By Elspeth Reeve

Apr 9, 2013

Brad Paisley Is Still Happy About His 'Accidental' Racism

Why did country star Brad Paisley write the song "Accidental Racist"? Because he thinks it's time musicians step in to have a national conversation about race.

Comments | 3,260 Views

GOP Filibuster of Gun Bill Begins to Fizzle

The planned GOP filibuster of gun-control legislation was losing steam on Tuesday, as more than half a dozen GOP lawmakers abandoned their conservative colleagues' effort to block consideration of the bill.

Comments | 713 Views

By Philip Bump

Apr 9, 2013

Ron Paul's Home Schooling Curriculum Will Turn Your Kid into a Little Ron Paul

The two-time presidential candidate just launched a home schooling curriculum which promises to get your elementary school student up-to-speed on the hijacking of the Constitution in no time. Seriously. It promises that. And so much more.

Comments | 11,419 Views

By Philip Bump

Apr 9, 2013

The Real Secret of the Secret Ashley Judd Tape: It's Politics as Usual

With all due respect to Mother Jones's conversation-leaker-in-chief David Corn, the recordings published today of a conversation between Sen. Mitch McConnell and some consultants disparaging Ashley Judd is not that big a deal. It's the sausage being made.

Comments | 13,206 Views

By Dashiell Bennett

Apr 9, 2013

David Axelrod Will Add to the Stack of Team Obama Memoirs

It looks like 2014 will be a busy year for book readers hoping to learn more about the inner workings of the Obama administration. Financial crisis + foreign adventures + re-election = The Lord of Rings, White House Edition. 

Comments | 734 Views

By Philip Bump

Apr 9, 2013

The War for Organizing for Action's Site Spans NRA, Sandy Hook, and Ben Carson

Let this be a reminder to register your domain names. Organizing For Action, the non-profit activism offshoot of the Obama campaign, doesn't own organizingforaction.com — and the owners of the domains certainly don't seem to agree with OFA's politics.

Comments | 535 Views

By J.K. Trotter

Apr 9, 2013

Today's Best

Five Best Tuesday Columns

Glenn Greenwald on the mourning of Margaret Thatcher, Bret Stephens on the other kind of marriage, Judith Miller on Jana Winter's jail prospects, David Plotz on his abusive high school basketball coach, and Jeffrey Goldberg on the legacy of the Iraq War.

Comments | 2,566 Views

By Elspeth Reeve

Apr 9, 2013

Rand Paul Confronts the GOP's Race Problem

As the 2016 contender, GOP libertarian spokesman, and son of Ron prepares to give a speech at Howard University about the history of black voters and the Republican Party, it's impossible not to be curious about which story he decides to tell: the one in which the GOP just forgot to campaign for black votes, or the one in which the GOP made a bad bet on racism and is trying to fix it.


Comments | 3,427 Views

By Philip Bump

Apr 9, 2013

No, Joe Biden Will Not Be President

It's fun to think about a President Joe Biden, mostly because the guy is lovable. But entertainment value and New York Times speculation aside, he will never, ever be president — and he'd be ill-advised to run. Indeed, polls and other factors suggest that we may have reached Peak Biden — and that he has nowhere to go but down.

Comments | 1,283 Views

By Esther Zuckerman

Apr 9, 2013

Stephen Colbert Forced Bill Clinton to Join Twitter

The former president's Twitter philosophy? "There's nothing worse than a friendless tweeter." Well now he has close to 34,000 Twitter followers for the new account Colbert took the liberty of setting up for him: @PrezBillyJeff.

Comments | 6,133 Views

By Dashiell Bennett

Apr 9, 2013

The Ugly Mitch McConnell-Ashley Judd Battle That Could Have Been

Ashley Judd won't be challenging Mitch McConnell for his Senate seat next year, but a leaked audiotape shows how the McConnell campaign considered all kinds of potential attacks—including bringing up Judd's mental health issues.

Comments | 2,198 Views

By Elspeth Reeve

Apr 8, 2013

Accidental Racists and More: A Field Guide to the Racists of America

Do you think racists are all the same? You are wrong. While racism is pretty much just racism there are so many different species of racists.

Comments | 56,539 Views

By Philip Bump

Apr 8, 2013

Obama's Last Weapon in the Fight for Gun Regulations: Emotion

President Obama, tired and clearly emotional, made another pitch for Congress to act on new gun restrictions Monday evening in Connecticut. His task: to translate the fury and urgency of the boisterous crowd in front of him into action in DC.

Comments | 2,198 Views

By Philip Bump

Apr 8, 2013

Public Opinion on Global Warming Is Easier to Change Than Science

If you're curious what a motivated political campaign to undermine established science looks like, allow Gallup and its new poll of climate change attitudes to demonstrate.

Comments | 1,778 Views

By Elspeth Reeve

Apr 8, 2013

Chart of the Day

A Map That Shows the Dramatic Spread of Legal Weed in the U.S.

Looking at the recent spread of liberalized marijuana laws across the United States, it's hard not to think we're entering some kind of Weed Spring. The latest state to act is Maryland, where on Monday the state senate approved a bill legalizing medical marijuana by 42 to 4, sending it to Gov. Martin O'Malley, who is expected to sign it into law.

Comments | 75,734 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Apr 8, 2013

Even the NRA Can't Keep Track of All the School Shootings

By the NRA's logic, one "detail" in the 225-page "report" that the gun lobby's National School Shield task force has now corrected should make the whole report just about useless. Yes, there are enough school shootings that last week's NRA-funded research findings managed to find a school shooting that never happened.

Comments | 1,078 Views

By Elspeth Reeve

Apr 8, 2013

Republicans Want Conservative Fundraisers to Stop Scaring Their Moms

A new battle is raging in the conservative civil war over something that has long felt fundamental to organizing the GOP: the crazy right-wing email forward.

Comments | 9,190 Views

Chelsea Clinton Opens the Door... to Something

The former first daughter might have learned a few things from her mother about addressing the possibility of future elected office.

Comments | 541 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Apr 8, 2013

Is There a Secret Nutella Black Market?

Thieves in the German town of Bad Hersfeld spirited away some 5.5 tons of the chocolate-hazelnut spread over the weekend. But if you can trick one of the top schools in the United States into paying $2,500 per week for Nutella, perhaps everyone should get in the chocolate topping business.

Comments | 49,741 Views

By Philip Bump

Apr 8, 2013

You're Not Really Following @BarackObama on Twitter

The 29,503,030 people who follow Barack Obama's Twitter account might see his picture, see his name, see that little blue verified account badge and think they're following the President — but it's not him.

Comments | 74,653 Views

By Philip Bump

Apr 8, 2013

Who Will Win on Senate Background Checks: The NRA or the Middle?

Reports of a possible compromise on the Senate's gun control package will certainly be welcomed at the White House. But it cements where the debate is happening. It's not Democrat vs. Republican. It's NRA vs. the middle.

Comments | 540 Views

By Connor Simpson

Apr 7, 2013

The Sunday Grind

Graham Isn't Afraid of Hillary; Malloy Calls LaPierre a Clown

This week on the Sunday talk shows, Lindsay Graham isn't afraid of big, bad Hillary Clinton running for President; Dan Malloy thinks the face of the NRA is more a circus act than anything; and everyone else gabs about North Korea. 

Comments | 1,079 Views

By Elspeth Reeve

Apr 5, 2013

Women Haven't Been Having It All Since at Least 1939

Modern women face a stark choice: either give up their careers early to have loving families or die alone and be eaten by their pets. But we feel we must point out that this modern condition is not modern at all.

Comments | 894 Views

By J.K. Trotter

Apr 5, 2013

Ben Carson Is Sorry for Saying Horrible Things

Ben Carson, the Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon and newly minted conservative celebrity who inspired a hundred op-eds, has apologized for comparing gay couples seeking legal recognition of their relationships to NAMBLA and those who practice bestiality.

Comments | 2,856 Views

By Philip Bump

Apr 5, 2013

Math Says That Senator Susan Collins May Be Next to Support Gay Marriage

Since senators' announcements of support for gay marriage have gotten dull, the hot new trend in politics is to try and predict which senator will be next to come out into the open on the issue. We looked at the data.

Comments | 1,968 Views

By Elspeth Reeve

Apr 5, 2013

Obama Apologized to Kamala Harris for Saying She's Hot

President Obama called California Attorney General Kamala Harris to say he was sorry for calling her the hottest attorney general in all the land, White House press secretary Jay Carney explained Friday afternoon, after a ton of criticism that Obama acted like an unenlightened bro.

Comments | 1,967 Views

Why Isn't Joe Biden Giving Back Some of His Salary?

One possible explanation is Biden's net worth, which is on the modest side compared to the president and other Cabinet members.

Comments | 1,251 Views

By Elspeth Reeve

Apr 5, 2013

White Supremacists Think the Aryan Brotherhood Is a Gang of Race Traitors

An arrest Friday in Colorado capped a week full of connections between law enforcement killings and white supremacist groups, including Breitbart's claim that "the mainstream media has gone to great lengths to label ad-infinitum the Aryan Brotherhood as a 'white supremacist' group." So what do real white supremacists really think of the Brotherhood? We went straight to the source.

Comments | 6,258 Views

Why This Democratic Senator Won't Support Same-Sex Marriage

When Democratic senators Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Donnelly said Friday they were backing same-sex marriage, it was clear their "evolution" would carry less political import than it would have during last year's reelection campaign. But there's no better example of the incentive some Democrats still have to oppose gay marriage than in Arkansas, where Mark Pryor is up for reelection.

Comments | 714 Views

By Elspeth Reeve

Apr 5, 2013

Obama's Budget Will Force GOP to Admit What Obama's Been Offering All Along

The proposals will include cuts to Medicare and Social Security and tax increases... which doesn't change what the president was offering Republicans last fall — but it does mean pundits will declare Obama is offering a serious budget for serious times, DOA or not.

Comments | 892 Views

By Philip Bump

Apr 5, 2013

Can the Republican Establishment Get the Base on Board with Immigration?

The tragedy at Newtown hasn't inspired Republicans to embrace gun control. And it's starting to look like the tragedy of Mitt Romney isn't enough to get its base on board with immigration reform either.

Comments | 535 Views

By Esther Zuckerman

Apr 5, 2013

Jon Stewart Finally Calls Out the New Absurdity of CNN

On The Daily Show last night, Stewart went after Jeff Zucker's newfangled approach at CNN, taking aim at hologram goats, vegetarians who eat bacon, and horrifying murder recreations.

Comments | 20,657 Views

By Philip Bump

Apr 4, 2013

Oh, Look: Another Democratic Senator Now Supports Gay Marriage

America has officially become indifferent to Democratic senators declaring support for gay marriage. On Thursday afternoon, Bill Nelson of Florida indicated that he'd switched positions. Few seemed to care.

Comments | 1,785 Views

By Elspeth Reeve

Apr 4, 2013

Obama Praises Female California Attorney General for Being a Hottie

President Obama revealed his secret adherence to fascist beauty standards when he praised the female California attorney general for being, like, mad hot at a DNC fundraiser Thursday afternoon in Atherton, California.

Comments | 3,926 Views

By Philip Bump

Apr 4, 2013

Senator Inhofe and an NFL Receiver Are Stooping to Kim Jong-un's Threat Level

Let no one ever intimate that we Americans can't be as flippant about threats to bomb things as Kim Jong-un. Senator Jim Inhofe and the Buffalo Bills' Stevie Johnson have gotten in on the act.

Comments | 357 Views

By J.K. Trotter

Apr 4, 2013

Stat of the Day

52% of America Wants to Legalize Weed

More than five months after two states voted to legalize marijuana — and as a host of other states consider the same — a majority of Americans now say pot should be legal to consume.

Comments | 4,861 Views

By Elspeth Reeve

Apr 4, 2013

The GOP's Pursuit of BuzzFeed-Style Memes Is Suicidal

A Republican Party website is going to try to reach young people by stealing the jokey lists and memes from BuzzFeed. While it's funny to imagine "stuffy white men" (the RNC's words!) brainstorm OMG LOL listicles, this is not cosnervatives' first attempt to tap the power of social media to make their ideas go viral.

Comments | 3,926 Views

By Elspeth Reeve

Apr 4, 2013

The 2016 Guessing Game Needs to End

The conventional wisdom centers on who might be running. But the reality is that Hillary "Book Deal" Clinton, Rand "New Hampshire" Paul, and Marco "Kindler Gentler" Rubio are already running. Here's the latest look at the field.

Comments | 3,213 Views

By J.K. Trotter

Apr 4, 2013

The Latest New York Bribery Scheme Involves Day Care — and Maybe More

Just when you thought New York politics couldn't get any more drenched into dirty money, Bronx Assemblyman Eric Stevenson was charged on Thursday morning with several counts of corruption and conspiracy.

Comments | 357 Views

By Philip Bump

Apr 4, 2013

The States Have Spoken on Guns, and It Doesn't Look That Good for Gun Control

States aren't waiting to act on guns. But while high-profile restrictions packages make headlines, most new state gun laws have instead focused on loosening controls. Activism, partisanship, and time are a powerful combination.

Comments | 712 Views

By Esther Zuckerman

Apr 4, 2013

Jon Stewart Says Congress is an Old Fart

Stewart compared the process of getting genetically modified foods legislation passed to buying porno, then hiding it under a bigger purchase that might include, say, Mountain Dew and Funyuns. And then came the "flatulent grandpa."

Comments | 356 Views

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