Skip to content

Latest Posts

Web Exclusives

#DeleteUber, Delete Everything
February 01, 2017
Like many billion-dollar startups, Uber is notorious for its self-regard. One nugget buried in this week’s news serves as a reminder: until a few days ago, Uber had no automated system to process users’ requests to delete their accounts. That meant that every time a user ...

Originalism Is Dumb
February 01, 2017
Donald Trump has nominated Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. If confirmed, Gorsuch will replace Antonin Scalia, whose death a year ago has left a vacancy that Republicans refused to allow Barack Obama to fill. In the minds of conservatives, Gorsuch is a worthy heir to ...

Quick-Fire
January 31, 2017
In many ways, President Donald J. Trump has followed a script set down by President Richard M. Nixon. As a candidate for the presidency, Trump cribbed lines liberally from his Republican predecessor. Like Nixon, he claimed to speak on behalf of an aggrieved “silent ...

Presumed Terrorists
January 31, 2017
Welcome to the United States! These are words that hundreds of thousands of people traveling to America yearn to hear after they hand their documents to the immigration officials sitting in glass box at the airport. The moments until they are uttered are pregnant with dread and ...

Extreme Hating
January 30, 2017
I had always hoped, our nation’s first President wrote to one of its first refugees, “that this land might— become a safe and agreeable Asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.” It was 1787 and François Van der Kemp, ...

High on the Apocalypse
Maybe we all just decided it was cooler to be George Orwell (who came from money) than H. G. Wells (who did not)—cooler to be the smirker saying, “Pah, it'll never work,” than to be the kid chirping, “Here is what we can do.” The H. G. Wells we find profiled in Krishan ...

Dispatch from the JFK Refugee Rally
I’m at JFK Terminal 4, where hundreds of people and growing every minute are here to denounce the unconscionable and unconstitutional executive orders that Donald Trump signed yesterday and that now are tearing families apart here at JFK Airport, we know of at least twelve ...

Zephyr Teachout: We’re Mired in Corruption
January 27, 2017
Speaking on the morning of January 20, 2017, as Donald Trump was about to take the oath of office, Zephyr Teachout observed: "He’s on track to violate a key provision of the Constitution within the next hour or so. The moment he’s sworn in." Teachout's book "Corruption in ...

Make American Dystopias Great Again
It was a bright cold day in January, and the blogosphere was awash in the world of 1984. After senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway took to the airwaves to declare that her White House colleagues operated in a world of “alternative facts” it only seemed logical—and ...

Putting Our Bodies on the Line
I am not sure how someone goes from the Women’s March to direct action, frankly. I think the thing that would be closest would be the 350.org arrests that happened in Washington [against the Keystone XL pipeline]. That was people who decided to get arrested for climate change. ...

Office-Droned Out
It can be difficult to balance what you can live with and what you can live on. It usually takes experimentation, trial and error. That’s a luxury most people don't have these precarious days, but creativity helps, and you have a good sense of what will grind your psyche into ...