BOOKS: The Greatest Story Ever Told

  My grandfather was born in 1900 and his life followed the historic trajectories and sociocultural contours of America in the 20th century — he weathered two world wars and the Great Depression and lived to tell. He was educated and well-read, a cement company executive who traveled widely on company business, clapping the backs of power in foreign lands — the Shah of Iran gave him an incredible wall-sized Persian rug, the ambassador of Mexico gave my grandmother a sterling silver tea set, etc. He taught Sunday School. Always voted Republican and subscribed to the National Review. He was […]

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WORTH REPEATING: 33 Questions About Russia

  VOX: Michael Flynn’s resignation — under fire — as national security adviser has the larger question of Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia back in the news. It’s a story that centers on three big, but fundamentally unproven, allegations: that Trump is on the take from Russia, that he is somehow exposed to Russian blackmail material, that his campaign actively collaborated with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign, or some combination of the above. The evidence for those explosive charges is thin. What we have instead are a lot of small, unanswered questions. Questions about Flynn’s behavior and the […]

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REALPOLITIK: Who’s Afraid Of Steve Bannon?

Illustration by WMXDESIGN LAWFARE: My point is that Bannon is not some sui generis political genius. And his supposed vast and arcane intellect is neither vast, nor is it arcane. It’s the regular stuff of the trolling culture of the modestly-educated, pseudo-intellectual hard right. This brings me to the nonsense that Bannon is some kind of Darth Vader-like figure or the evil master manipulator behind the throne. The alternative and more convincing explanation is that Bannon’s just a clod with delusions of grandeur and that his disrespect for process has come back to bite him, as it will tend to […]

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WORTH REPEATING: The 1st Rule Of Kremlin Club

  THE OBSERVER: Presidential mania on social media isn’t a pretty picture and will do nothing to stop the coming investigations by Congress into what exactly was going on between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin last year. Trump’s bluster and deflections on the campaign trail sufficed to push aside some of those troubling questions, but things have reached a point that the full story, no matter how unpleasant it may be, will come out, eventually. At a minimum, the House and Senate intelligence committees will be conducting investigations which ought to worry the White House, whose political future will […]

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NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t

  FRESH AIR: The late James Baldwin was one of the most influential African-American writers to emerge during the civil rights era. During the late 1950s and 1960s, he traveled through the South and addressed racial issues head on. In the course of his work, Baldwin got to know the civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers and Malcolm X. He was devastated when each man was assassinated, and planned, later in life, to write a book about all three of them. Though Baldwin died in 1987 before that book could be written, the new Oscar-nominated documentary, I […]

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KILLING PABLO: Q&A With Retired DEA Special Agent Steve Murphy, Who Brought Notorious Colombian Drug Lord Pablo Escobar To Justice

  BY JAMES M. DAVIS Retired DEA Special Agents Steve Murphy and Javier Pena were central players in the takedown of Pablo Escobar, the notorious King Of Cocaine, one of the most ruthless and murderous drug lords of all time. Their white-knuckle on-the-job adventures are the inspiration for Narcos, Netflix’s hugely popular crimes series detailing the rise and fall and ultra-violent demise of Escobar. Murphy [pictured below, in red with the corpse of Pablo Escobar] joined the DEA in 1987 and cut his teeth Miami, where the cocaine trade was metastasizing into a billion dollar industry, leaving a trail of […]

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CONTEST: Win Tix To Get Rickrolled Live!

  First, the complete history of rickrolling, via Wikipedia: British pop star Rick Astley recorded “Never Gonna Give You Up” on his 1987 album Whenever You Need Somebody.[3] The song, his solo debut single, was a number one hit on several international charts, including the Billboard Hot 100, Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks and UK Singles Chart. As a means of promoting the song, it was also made into Astley’s first music video, which features him performing the song while dancing.[4] Rickrolling was reported to have begun as a variant of an earlier prank from the imageboard 4chan known as duckrolling. […]

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