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An American History of Botched Executions
July 30, 2014
A series of executions has recently gone wrong, leaving prisoners gasping and writhing long after clean and precise lethal injections were supposed to have quietly taken their lives. In Oklahoma, convicted murderer Clayton Lockett tried to lift his head off the table where he ...

Why Aetna Should Pay Reparations
July 24, 2014
“This is a civil rights bill—this is reparations,” Rush Limbaugh said of the Affordable Care Act back in 2010. As you might expect, he didn’t mean it in a good way. Limbaugh’s ability to condemn the Civil Rights Act and reparations in a single breath is an achievement ...

Why “American” Is a Bad Word in Australia
June 19, 2014
In a recent episode of his new show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver featured Australia’s new-ish right wing prime minister, Tony Abbott, in a segment devoted to “Other Countries’ Presidents of the USA.” The show highlighted Abbott’s long history of verbal slip-ups, ...

Traffic and Weather
“I compare [fortuna] to one of those raging rivers, which when in flood overflows the plains, sweeping away trees and buildings, bearing away the soil from place to place; everything flies before it, all yield to its violence, without being able in any way to withstand it; ...

Throwdown at the Memorial
October 03, 2013
As The Baffler’s Zero Tolerance blog noted Wednesday, a full 95 percent of the news coverage of the 2013 government shutdown, days one and two, was devoted to our Greatest Generation not being able to visit the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C. For a little while, at ...

Moving Walls
September 25, 2013
Where matters. Specifically, where a monument is built matters a great deal. These constructions are grown on particular sites, out of particular plans and origins, with a particular intent that can be subverted, or reinforced, over time. The context of the monuments should ...

My City Was Pawned
July 26, 2013
Line up, everybody! It’s time for the Tough Lessons America Must Learn from the bankruptcy of Detroit. Please consult your center-right policy hymnal for the talking points. Or, you know, pick up the August 5 issue of Time magazine, where the cover story on Motor ...