Articles

May 31, 2016

If you don’t dismiss a journalist for dishonesty, then what? Of course Yahoo News should fire Katie Couric. She committed an act of gross intellectual dishonesty — and if you don’t fire a journalist for dishonesty, what in hell do you fire one for? Bad manners? Well, yes. More on that in a bit. Couric is under fire (you know,…

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May 31, 2016

Donald Trump has surged in recent national polls against Hillary Clinton, overtaking her for the first time in the coveted RealClearPolitics average of several polls earlier in the week. But for all the fuss over the national polls, the only outcome that will matter on election night is how many states Trump can convert from blue to red on the…

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May 18, 2016
Little Sisters — Again

The Supreme Court issued its long-awaited ruling on Monday in the consolidated challenge to Obamacare’s requirement that nonprofit employers collaborate in the provision of employee health insurance coverage that includes abortion-inducing drugs and devices. In a unanimous opinion, the Supreme Court “vacated,” meaning erased, all of the lower court cases and required them to reconsider the claims brought by the…

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May 18, 2016

A short-handed Supreme Court on Monday sent back to the lower courts several challenges to the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive-coverage requirement, saying there was a possible compromise between religious objectors and the Obama administration. The unsigned and unanimous three-page decision was unusual — and largely a punt by a court equally divided along ideological lines after the death of Justice…

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May 18, 2016

The Obama administration’s bathroom directive, ordering local school districts to allow transgender students to use the restrooms of their choice, has caught congressional Republicans off guard. The response has been a mix of pessimism, frustration, and a call for the states to defy the directive at the local level. Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., ventured into the fray Tuesday with a…

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May 16, 2016

(CNN)”There was nothing left to do to me. They did everything.” It was an ordeal that nightmares are made of. A 20-year-old Yazidi woman, who says she was held as a sex slave by ISIS, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview that her captor was a fighter who told her he was from the United States. The victim,…

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May 16, 2016

(CNN)”There was nothing left to do to me. They did everything.” It was an ordeal that nightmares are made of. A 20-year-old Yazidi woman, who says she was held as a sex slave by ISIS, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview that her captor was a fighter who told her he was from the United States. The victim,…

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May 16, 2016

The violent persecution and near genocide of Iraq’s Yazidis and Christians have made headlines around the world. Less well-known is the story of Iraqi Jews, who face near eradication. As millions flee Islamic militants in Iraq, one man has emerged to help rebuild the Jewish remnant. When I met with Sherzad Omar Mamsani, the Jewish representative to the Kurdish government,…

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May 10, 2016

For much of the last week, the very small world of pundits and policy wonks has been buzzing about the New York Times’s extended profile by David Samuels of Obama foreign-policy guru Ben Rhodes, the “aspiring novelist” (as the headline put it) with a master’s in fine arts who sneers with contempt at the president’s foes and has helped helm…

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May 10, 2016

In a 2–1 panel ruling in mid April, a federal appellate court decided (or at least seemed to think that it decided) that G.G., a girl who identifies herself as male, has a legal right to use the boys’ restrooms at her high school in rural Gloucester County, Va. In so doing, the panel’s majority, consisting of two appointees of…

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May 10, 2016

Hillary Clinton would have a significant electoral advantage over Donald Trump in the general election, based on an NPR analysis. The Democratic former secretary of state would start out with already exactly enough electoral votes to win the presidency, 270-191, based on states considered safe, likely and to lean toward either candidate. The ratings, which will be updated at least…

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