| Post Partisan: The best counterattack against terrorism |
| Part of the response to the terror in Paris has been as gratifying as the killings were horrifying. There have been spontaneous physical and social media expressions of solidarity with the Muslim community. These actions aren’t just morally correct; they are strategic. |
| Read full article » |
| Intermission: For Elvis, on his 80th birthday |
| Since I’m at the Television Critics Association press tour, let’s have a relevant question of the day: Which new show are you most looking forward to? Which returning show are you most excited to have back? And how are you preparing, psychologically, for the beginning of the end of “Parks and Recreation”? |
| Read full article » |
| Tom Toles: Trying to kill free speech |
| Read full article » |
| Wemple: On CNN, Jay Carney sticks to position that Charlie Hebdo should have pulled back |
| This morning on CNN, former White House press secretary Jay Carney stuck to his position that Charlie Hebdo magazine had gone overboard with some 2012 cartoons lampooning the prophet Muhammad. Those cartoons, published after the terrorist attacks on the U.S. diplomatic installation in Benghazi, caused enough of an uproar that France closed embassies in some Muslim countries. In a briefing with reporters at the time, Carney said, “Well, we are aware that a French magazine published cartoons featuring a figure resembling the prophet Muhammad, and obviously, we have questions about the judgment of publishing something like this. We know that these images will be deeply offensive to many and have the potential to be inflammatory.” |
| Read full article » |
| Sargent: Is there any chance of a deal on infrastructure spending? |
| We keep hearing that there are three areas of potential compromise between the new GOP Congressional majority and Democrats, President Obama included: Trade, tax reform, and infrastructure. The first appears real; the second less so. |
| Read full article » |
| Rubin: Six tips for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker |
| Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker at his second inauguration Monday said:[I]n Wisconsin, it doesn’t matter what class you were born into or what your parents did for a living. Here, our opportunities should be as equal as possible, but the outcomes should still be up to each and every one of us. |
| Read full article » |
| Could Bill Cosby’s comedy special ever make it to Netflix? |
| This fall, as sexual assault allegations against comedian Bill Cosby dominated the headlines, NBC canceled its plans to do another family sitcom with him in the vein of “The Cosby Show,” and Netflix shelved a special he had shot for them earlier in the year. |
| Read full article » |
 |
| Rubin: Gullible media don’t get the GOP |
| The Hill intones:Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) are competing for influence among the Senate’s 12 Republican freshmen, with the outcome potentially shaping the agenda for 2015 and beyond. |
| Read full article » |
| Wemple: New York Times invents ‘Kyrzbekistan’ |
| The dissolution of the Soviet Union some 23 years ago unleashed a bunch of new countries on the world, several ending in “stan.” It can get a little confusing, as exemplified in this correction from a recent New York Times story on two men, Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson, who undertook a massive rock-climbing challenge: |
| Read full article » |
| USA Today was right to publish a terrorist sympathizer |
| Editor’s note: Sonny Bunch is guest-blogging at Act Four this week while Alyssa Rosenberg is at the Television Critics Association winter press tour.There was a bit of angst on social media last night following publication of an op-ed at USA Today authored by Anjem Choudary, a radical British cleric who has been arrested by the Brits in the past for encouraging terrorism. In the op-ed, Choudary argued that true Muslims do not believe in freedom of expression; rather, they believe in submitting to the will of Allah. As a result, he said, it’s only reasonable that some Muslims, when Allah is insulted, will take matters into their own hands and punish the blasphemers. Due to such ever-looming threats, Choudary continued, it’s only reasonable that liberal democracies curtail the speech of satirists who may risk sparking violence from jihadi extremists. |
| Read full article » |
| The killing of cartoonists |
| I felt sick when I heard the news.After an initial feeling of shock upon learning of the killings at the offices of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, I became nauseous when I learned that four cartoonists were among the twelve murdered during an editorial meeting. I never personally met any of them, but I was familiar with the magazine and its irreverent cartoons and how, in 2006, they defiantly published the Danish Mohammed cartoons when hardly any U.S. newspapers decided to do so (including The Washington Post). |
| Read full article » |
| Rubin: Paris attack is a myth buster |
| In the wake of the horrific mass murder in France, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who knows more about the threat of jihadists than any leader on the planet — explained what many Americans have resisted hearing. The Jerusalem Post reports: |
| Read full article » |
| Want to marry a doctor? You’re probably too late. |
| BloombergBusinessweek has a fun breakdown of which occupations have had the highest shares of people who are married from 1950 to 2010, based on data from the Census Bureau.While engineers, mathematicians and scientists today are (unfairly) stereotyped as awkward nerds who don’t know how to interact with the opposite sex, in 1950 they were among the occupations most likely to be married. Today, the most commonly conjugated occupations are instead more often medical professionals with doctorates, starting with dentists (81 percent of whom are hitched): |
| Read full article » |
| Meyerson: The AFL-CIO is on sound political ground to push for wage increases |
| “Raising wages is the single standard by which leadership will be judged,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka announced Wednesday at the federation’s conference unveiling labor’s political agenda. To that end, he said, the AFL-CIO would launch projects this year in the four states that hold the first four presidential primaries and caucuses of 2016 — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — as a way to make presidential candidates spell out exactly what they would do to boost Americans’ increasingly anemic wages. |
| Read full article » |
| Wemple: Jon Stewart on Charlie Hebdo killings: ‘There is no sense to be made of this’ |
| At the top of “The Daily Show” last night, host Jon Stewart dedicated a two-minute monologue to Wednesday’s killings at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo. “I know very few people go into comedy as an act of courage mainly because it shouldn’t have to be that. It shouldn’t be an act of courage. It should be taken as established law,” said the host. “But those guys at Hebdo had it and they were killed for their cartoons. Stark reminder that for the most part the legislators and journalists and institutions that we jab and ridicule are not in any way the enemy.” Those folks, he noted, are on “Team Civilization.” The goal at this point, continued Stewart, is not to “make sense of this” because “there is no sense to be made of this.” |
| Read full article » |
|
|
| Sargent: Morning Plum: After terror attack, GOP rethinks showdown over Homeland Security |
| In the wake of the horrific terror attack in France, there are fresh signs this morning that Republicans are rethinking whether to stage a confrontation around funding of the Department of Homeland Security (which funds immigration enforcement) to block President Obama’s executive action shielding millions from deportation. |
| Read full article » |
| Rubin: Are Democrats losing Jewish voters? |
| Gallup reports that in 2014, 29 percent of Jewish Americans said they were Republicans, compared with 22 percent in 2008. “Meanwhile, 61% of American Jews identified as Democrats or leaned Democratic, down from 71% in the strongly Democratic year of 2008.” This appears to be more than just the normal downturn in Democratic support: “The diminished Democratic skew among American Jews in recent years is slightly more pronounced than the same trend among all Americans. The percentage of the general population that identifies with or leans Democratic has fallen by about seven percentage points since 2008, compared with the 10-point drop among Jews. The percentage that identifies with or leans Republican among the general population is up three points, compared with the increase of seven points among Jews.” |
| Read full article » |
| Rubin: Morning Bits |
| Before we hinder the National Security Agency and dismantle our anti-terror apparatus, we should consider what Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) had to say: “Through a combination of poor policy choices made by the Obama Administration regarding detention and interrogation policies, and budget cuts approved by the Congress with President Obama’s support, I believe our national security infrastructure designed to prevent these types of attacks from occurring is under siege. President Obama should immediately change his interrogation and detention policies as we are gradually losing the ability to detect, disrupt and prevent future terrorist attacks. In addition, it is time to restore the necessary funding to our intelligence-gathering and national security operations.” |
| Read full article » |
| The Meaninglessness of Meaning |
| Why, oh why do I ever take the David Brooks bait?This time it’s because we recently wrote on close-to-the-same topic. Empty happiness. Why, you’d think that we almost agree! I wrote that there are worthier goals than just immediate happiness, and that pursuing those worthiernessess would likely yield sufficient, and maybe better happiness. And Brooks rewrote a paper somebody sent him saying almost the same thing. But no, we don’t agree. And Brooks doesn’t even seem to agree with himself. (No, I’m not going to link). |
| Read full article » |
| Wemple: Washington Post opinions section publishes controversial Charlie Hebdo cartoon |
| In Thursday’s print edition, the Washington Post op-ed page is publishing the controversial cartoon of Charlie Hebdo magazine spoofing the prophet Muhammad — the very piece of satire that prompted the 2011 fire-bombing of the publication’s Paris offices. (See a PDF of the full page here.) The cartoon depicted Muhammad saying, “100 lashes of the whip if you don’t die laughing.” That drawing and many others that align with its edgy and often offensive spirit may have motivated terrorists on Wednesday to unleash a heinous and deadly attack that claimed the lives of 12 people. According to reports on the attack, the perpetrators could be heard saying, “We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad.” |
| Read full article » |
| Editorial: Arlington Co. officials take a worthy pause to engage more with citizens |
| OFFICIALS IN Arlington County were surprised in 2006 when school enrollment, holding at around 18,500 for a number of years, began to rise. They’d figured that the erosion of affordable housing in the county, a byproduct of gentrification spurred by Metro, would drive families out of the county and shrink the number of students. |
| Read full article » |
| Dionne: EJ Dionne: The right’s wrong idea of governance |
| This will be no ordinary Congress, so there are no ordinary ways for judging how effective it will be at governing. That is, in any event, a preposterous standard to hold up as a brand-spanking-new goal. Isn’t governing what Congress was supposed to be doing all along? Imagine an everyday citizen making a New Year’s resolution promising that this year, for a change, he or she would actually show up for work. |
| Read full article » |
| |||||||
| France’s tough task in reacting to the horrific attack on Charlie Hebdo |
| The slaughter by Islamic fanatics on Wednesday of nearly a dozen French journalists, several of whom I have known for decades, is a bitter, heavy price for that nation to pay for being what it is: a haven of free expression and intellectual combat; a country that has taken in the foreign-born more easily than most and worked, if imperfectly, to assimilate them; and a military power willing to fight enemies abroad in the name of universal values. |
| Read full article » |
| Lane: Charlie Hebdo’s editors took big risks to defend freedom of expression |
| Suddenly, satire is the great issue of our time.Last month, North Korea’s Stalinist dictatorship launched a cyberattack, accompanied by threats of physical violence, against the makers and distributors of a silly film that dared to violate the cult of personality surrounding Kim Jong Un, according to the FBI. Pyongyang’s alleged hack succeeded, at least temporarily, in blocking the movie’s release. |
| Read full article » |
| Will: Climate change’s instructive past |
| We know, because they often say so, that those who think catastrophic global warming is probable and perhaps imminent are exemplary empiricists. They say those who disagree with them are “climate change deniers” disrespectful of science. |
| Read full article » |
| The Watch: This week in innocence: Derrick Hamilton |
| One of the year’s first exonerations is also merely the latest to emerge from the mess left by former Brooklyn district attorney Charles Hynes and disgraced former NYPD detective Louis Scarcella. The New York Times reports: |
| Read full article » |
| Milbank: Mitch McConnell is off to a bitter start |
| Mitch McConnell, the new Senate majority leader, has an exceedingly high opinion of his own power. In a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday morning outlining his priorities for the new Congress, the Kentucky Republican suggested that the GOP takeover of Congress — not yet 24 hours old — had already boosted the American economy. |
| Read full article » |
| Rubin: Jeb Bush is not about to release tax returns |
| Two sources close to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush tells Right Turn the Politico story reporting an imminent release of a decade of his tax records is inaccurate and grossly premature.One source says further that the former governor has not even decided definitively to run for president and is still in the exploratory phase. Moreover, the first action we can expect to see is the creation of a Web site with the emails from his governorship. Next will come his e-book, which the source says he is in the middle of writing. That will cover his years as governor as a way of introducing him to those who don’t recall or weren’t paying attention to Florida during his eight years. That is not a policy paper per se, although it will help rebut the claim of some that he is not a bona fide conservative. |
| Read full article » |
| Wemple: Fox News has ‘no plans’ to air Charlie Hebdo cartoons |
| In its breaking news coverage of the Paris killings at Charlie Hebdo magazine, “Fox & Friends,” the morning show of Fox News, showed a shot of one of the magazine’s controversial cartoons. Yet the network, according to a spokeswoman, has “no plans” to show further examples. Fox News’s decision falls in line with those of other cable news outlets. As reported earlier here and here, CNN has cropped out the provocative drawings from its coverage of the killings. And in an extensive rundown of the news media’s approach to the matter, Rosie Gray and Ellie Hall of BuzzFeed note this policy at the NBC family: “Our NBC News Group Standards team has sent guidance to NBC News, MSNBC, and CNBC not to show headlines or cartoons that could be viewed as insensitive or offensive.” |
| Read full article » |
| Post Partisan: The Insiders: From the Middle East to Capitol Hill, can President Obama adapt? |
| Of course it’s no surprise, but former diplomat Dennis Ross wrote a smart piece in the New York Times on Jan. 4 titled, “Stop giving Palestinians a pass,” about the current state of play in the Middle East. Here is a paragraph from Ross’s piece that jumped out at me: |
| Read full article » |
| No, America’s hero worship is not as bad as North Korea’s |
| Editor’s note: Sonny Bunch is guest-blogging at Act Four this week while Alyssa Rosenberg is at the Television Critics Association winter press tour.There was an odd piece by Ben Railton published by “Talking Points Memo” yesterday headlined “Sorry, Freedom Lovers: America’s Hero Worship Is Just As Bad As North Korea’s.” Writes Railton: |
| Read full article » |
| Sargent: Happy Hour Roundup |
| * Elise Foley reports: After gunmen attacked a satirical French newspaper on Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner said Republicans won’t back away from a fight over immigration that risks halting funding for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. |
| Read full article » |
| Editorial: New York’s police officers need to get back to their important work |
| THE NEW York City police officers who turned their backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio at the recent funerals of two slain officers were within their rights — no matter how boorish others (we included) think that behavior. What members of the force aren’t entitled to is not doing the job for which they get paid. In refusing to enforce the law, the police are jeopardizing public safety and undermining any claim they have for respect from the community. |
| Read full article » |
| The Watch: Lawsuit alleges botched drug raid, puppycide in Cleveland |
| Brutality allegations against law enforcement officials in Cleveland keep on coming:A Cleveland man is taking the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority to federal court, accusing its police of illegally entering his apartment following a drug raid at the unit below and shooting his two dogs that had been barking in a closed room. |
| Read full article » |
| Wemple: CNN cut off controversial Charlie Hebdo cartoons |
| Drawings in the magazine Charlie Hebdo that triggered reprisals and death threats against the publication’s staff have never been more newsworthy than today, when terrorists stormed the publication’s Paris offices in a rampage that claimed the lives of 12 people. Yet CNN and host Wolf Blitzer hid them in a segment this afternoon. |
| Read full article » |
