Kate Masur and Greg Downs break it down. A must-read. Jan. 6 and the Long Shadow of Civil War- and Reconstruction-Era Political Violence talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/jan-6-a...

Being name-checked in a review of the great Eric Foner’s latest would be nicer if, you know, the reviewer didn’t wildly mischaracterize my view of Reconstruction.

It is just too absolutely freaking on the nose that the newly elected member of the Harvard Corporation is a partner at (drumroll) Paul Weiss.

Breaking: NYU revokes Olmert's diploma.

Whatever hype you are reading now about powerful people will almost certainly turn out to be bullshit

A ray of light on the "kids these days" front: the students in my undergraduate course on slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction liked the long, scholarly readings the best - Foner's short(est) Reconstruction, Taylor's Embattled Freedom.

"Science Fiction is for people who can't face reality."

Dept. of Joy: If you have the slightest fondness for Sharon Van Etten (or PJ Harvey or St Vincent or Patti herself) do yourself a favor and catch Sharon and her band on tour. My kid’s Xmas present to me and what a gift it was.

This is a shockingly mistaken understanding of due process by Stephen Miller. It is likely this misunderstanding that is informing the President’s misunderstanding.

Can they not even hear themselves over the "both sides"?

"The Constitution, all of the sudden, out of nowhere, has words."

See also Yarvin, Curtis.

If by "holding power to account" you mean "killing the Pulitzer Prize-winner's cartoon because it criticized the paper's owner," sure.

Article II, Section 3: the president "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Oath of office: I "will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

This is exactly what my syllabus warning on LLMs says, quoting Frankfurt.

Happy 80th anniversary of Hitler killing himself in his bunker to all who celebrate, which, as I now understand it, is not everybody

“And I’m like, what do you mean, you ‘do your own research’? You running a double-blind study in your living room, dawg?” - A guy walking ahead of me with his friends on a NYC sidewalk in 2021, also my favorite overheard dialogue of the entire pandemic

So just to recap, the Transportation Secretary is scared shitless of public transport. The Education Secretary is being sued for enabling child sex abuse. The Health Secretary is bringing back measles. And the Defense Secretary is texting classified war plans to the editor in chief of the Atlantic

UVA being number 1 on this "campus free speech" list, when you had a former board member successfully lobby to suspend campus tours that addresses UVA's history w slavery, is evidence of how idiosyncratic and right-wing-coded the cosponsoring organizations' definition of "free speech" really is.

Two Naval Academy faculty members have resigned, and 18 more have taken early retirement. One was offered a place of honor at the annual dedication parade. He declined, telling the academy’s superintendent:

"I am hereby reinstating" but it's Michael Scott yelling "bankruptcy!"

Before this fraud is through, we're all going to miss Joe Manchin.

"They don't know how the economy works, and they won't obey the law."

Ezra's opening started in on illiberalism and I thought "yeah fine, but maybe he should have Steve Hahn on to talk about this" so apologies to the dogwalkers terrified by my sudden cackle when he introduced his guest.

Courage is contagious. Markey's not running for president, and he's not going to face a primary. This is because Van Hollen, Frost, et al. set a good example.

passive voice, no less

We are in a dire place when this tiniest truth feels profound.

Administration blather and the wishful thinking of right-wing scholars cannot disguise what Bethany Berger and Greg Ablavsky eloquently demonstrate here: "subject to the jurisdiction" means just what we think it does, and the history of Indian Law supports rather than undermines that meaning.

Apparently the DOGE ate their homework.

"...abandon all the concerns—rankings, donors, campus amenities—that preoccupy and distract them, and focus on their core mission: the production and dissemination of knowledge. Intellectuals have adopted this strategy to fight against autocrats in other countries. It works." tinyurl.com/yc54ptwt

"The [gov't] has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process. The Government’s contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable."

The detention of Mahmoud Khalil puts all Americans fundamental rights at risk. And if you can’t see that because you oppose his politics, well that’s exactly the reaction Trump and his cronies are counting on. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

if you find yourself reluctant to support the guy at Columbia because you find some of the politics he espoused distasteful or even abhorrent, you should know that this is exactly the reaction that they hoped for in choosing him as a target for unlawful detention based on political speech.

This is a picture of a man who cannot bring himself to understand that he holds his office so that Trump can humiliate him at whatever moment suits him.

A few years ago, the teenager in my household introduced me to the species of evil that is Andrew Tate, after the boys in her class tried to put his picture on their classroom door. Thanks to the Republican administration, he's out from under criminal investigation, and in the U.S.

If there were an outbreak of the Black Death tomorrow, Trump would tweet "DEI!," RFK would fire all the rat-catchers, and Musk would demand a trillion-dollar contract to ship a saving remnant to Mars.

Not unsubscribing (yet). But from this day forward no one should ever repost or even acknowledge the existence of the WaPo "opinion" page.

Behold, anti-semitism's self-proclaimed nemesis, approvingly citing an infamous racist (published on her "free speech" platform) "contextualizing" Nazi salutes.

So many reasons to be grateful for Roberta Flack. For me, nothing tops this:

Someone please tell me who said "If you're not threatened to your very bones, you're not in a coalition" because we are going to need this coalition.

The memory hole is open. Trans history is being tossed in first. No one's history will be safe from the purge. Do not let this pass unprotested. www.nps.gov/ston/index.htm

Sassoon clerked for Scalia and is a Federalist Society member. In a moment when most movement conservatives will prove faithless to the rule of law, her resignation offers the hope that some will not comply.

Hey Google, what will you do when Trump tells you to re-label the map "Judea and Samaria"?

this stuff makes perfect sense when you understand that these people have a slaveholder’s ideology and believe that liberty means the freedom to dominate others

"Stephen Kantrowitz [ @skantrow.bsky.social ], a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote 'Citizens of a Stolen Land,' chronicling this history and the creative ways that Ho-Chunk resisted removal through claiming land ownership and U.S. citizenship."-via Wisconsin Public Radio

This opinion piece, by a member of the board of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, describes Gazans as "fundamentally evil" and "collectively guilty." What the board does in response will tell us what it understands the lessons of the Shoah to be. www.jpost.com/opinion/arti...

@moubanerjee28.bsky.social designed the Nonviolence Project "to highlight how nonviolence has remained one of the most popular, important, and effective weapons of political resistance for those who are underrepresented, minoritized, and oppressed." Read more about the project in #AHAPerspectives. 🗃️