NEW YORK TIMES: After she recovered from the initial shock of her diagnosis, Johnson began to wonder why she had such an unusual cancer. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that only about 3,700 Americans find out they have gallbladder cancer each year; breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in the country, with more than 276,000 new cases annually. Because Johnson’s disease was so uncommon, doctors at University Hospital had to formulate a special treatment plan. Gallbladder cancer occurs mainly in older people, and 72 is the average age at diagnosis. Johnson was 46. “I started […]
WORTH REPEATING: Return To Sender
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: Neighborhoods across the Philadelphia region are experiencing significant delays in receiving their mail, with some residents going upwards of three weeks without packages and letters, leaving them without medication, paychecks, and bills. The delays come at a time when the U.S. Postal Service is experiencing significant changes. The new Postmaster General’s policies eliminate overtime, order carriers to leave mail behind to speed up their workdays, and slash office hours, which — coupled with staffing shortages amid previous budget cuts and coronavirus absences — are causing extensive delivery delays. According to local union leaders and carriers, mail is piling […]
WORTH REPEATING: Defang The Police Unions
NEW YORKER: In the modern labor movement, police unions are outliers, their politics well to the right of even the Teamsters and the building trades. They can make common cause with the movement when union-killing legislation looms, as it briefly did in New York State a few years ago. But when they know they will be spared, as in Wisconsin, they stay quiet even while teachers and nurses and sanitation workers are being squashed. For the left, one problem with hammering police unions is that the right is doing the same thing. National Review and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial […]
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: Just Do It!
HeadCount and Fort William Artist Management have announced VOTE READY, A Concert for Voter Registration, happening Friday, August 14th at 7pm Eastern, to motivate fans to verify and update their voter registration. The concert, part of the “Live From Out There” livestream series, will feature original self-recorded performances by The War On Drugs, Robin Pecknold, Daniel Rossen (of Grizzly Bear), Christopher Bear (of Grizzly Bear/Fools), Kyp Malone (of TV On The Radio), Jaleel Bunton (of TV On The Radio), Kevin Morby, Waxahatchee, Tarriona Tank Ball, Hand Habits, Ciggy, Kam Franklin (of The Suffers), The Building and Allison Russell & Leyla […]
WORTH REPEATING: Defund The Secret Police
THE NEW YORKER: In early June, after the killing of George Floyd, when tens of thousands of mostly peaceful demonstrators assembled in cities across the country to protest police brutality, the Department of Homeland Security sent hundreds of its agents to patrol the crowds. They cleared space for a Presidential photo op in front of St. John’s Church, in Washington, D.C., by forcibly removing demonstrators, and in New York City they reportedly made at least one arrest at gunpoint. The legal rationale for their being on the scene was a statute from 2002 that gave them broad authority to protect […]
DEFUND THE SECRET POLICE: Q&A With Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner
BLOOMBERG NEWS: So you are prepared to prosecute federal law enforcement officials if they do in Philadelphia what they are doing in Portland? D.A. LARRY KRASNER: If we have clear probable cause for the commission of crimes, by anyone, including law enforcement, including federal law enforcement, we will prosecute that. We’re not going to tolerate any kidnappings and assaults going on in Philadelphia streets. We’re not going to tolerate showing up under the guise of making things safer and [instead] causing violence. BLOOMBERG NEWS: Is there precedent for this — local police arresting federal police? D.A. LARRY KRASNER: There are […]
SUPPRESS THE VOTE: The Plot Against America
Illustration by VICTOR JUHASZ via Rolling Stone ROLLING STONE: On November 3rd, 1981, Lynette Monroe, who lived in northwest Trenton, headed out to her polling place. It was Election Day in New Jersey. When Monroe, a Democrat, arrived at the polling site, she was stopped outside by a member of a group called the National Ballot Security Task Force. Monroe was asked if she had her voter-registration card with her. She said she did not but that it didn’t matter — she was a registered voter. But the National Ballot Security Task Force members “turned her away, preventing her from […]
AMERICAN GHANDI: John Lewis Rest In Power
ESQUIRE: Congressman John Lewis (D-Georgia) is a Civil Rights icon and a Mt. Rushmore-worthy American hero. At the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, Lewis marched fearlessly into the maws of the Jim Crow South, through angry, racist mobs and truncheon-wielding state troopers, armed with nothing more than the courage of the righteous and unconditional love in his heart. Lewis shed his own blood to shame this country into living up to its founding promise that “all men were created equal.” This remains a work in progress. At 76, he is the last man alive who spoke at the […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Can’t Happen Here?
It’s the middle of the night and out of the darkness on a quiet street in one of the nation’s major cities black SUVs with full-tinted windows screech to the curb. Out jump heavily armed stormtroopers in full camouflage field uniforms complete with gas masks and full facial coverings. Words are exchanged between the armed men and the civilians they have quickly detained on the sidewalk. Next thing you know the civilians are being led back to the SUVs and forcibly placed therein. The vehicles and their unwilling passengers quickly disappear into the night. Who were the detainees? Why […]
District Attorney Larry Krasner Announces Philly’s Zero Tolerance Policy For Trump’s Cosplay Gestapo
RELATED: Trump Threatens To Send More Stormtrooper Goon Squads To ‘Democrat Cities’ For Performative Law & Ordering
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Put Your Mask On
A Trump supporter explains why he/she refuses to social distance or wear a mask: 1) It’s inconvenient, 2) It’s my Constitutional right not to (I don’t know where that came from, but I know I heard it somewhere), 3) I really don’t give a shit about anyone other than myself, 4) That includes my wife or husband and/or my girlfriend and/or my boyfriend, 5) That also includes all of my children (known or unknown), 6) It also includes my mother, 7) And my father, 8) And my grandmother, 9) And my grandfather, 10) It also includes all of my […]
Police Blinded Eight People In ONE Day At BLM Protests Around The Country & Then Lied About It
WASHINGTON POST: Protests erupted in cities across the country on May 30, the Saturday after George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis. As law enforcement officers moved to clear the streets, some fired what are called “less lethal” munitions.The Washington Post found that eight people lost vision in one eye after being struck by police projectiles, including lead pellets packed in cloth pouches that were fired from shotguns. They were among 12 people who were partially blinded by police during a week of national unrest. Of the eight who lost sight that day, six were protesters, one was a […]
REALITY CHECK: The Stone Cold Truth About Trump’s Tenure At The University Of Pennsylvania
PHILADELPHIA MAGAZINE: It was, it can be said without fear of exaggeration, a day that will live in infamy. When President Donald Trump emerged from his mysterious one-on-one summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July of 2018, the respective visages and body language of the two world leaders could not have been further apart. The Russian president looked smug and sated, like a vampire with a bellyful of peasant blood; Trump looked like a man who’d just received a painful enema. Or, as grizzled, now-banished White House aide-de-camp Steve Bannon describes it in Siege, Michael Wolff’s […]