- The Women Take Over – Dahlia Lithwick (Slate)
- Obama Cuts All Funding for Christian-Based ‘Abstinence Only’ Sex-Ed Programs – Andrew Wertz (Deadstate)
- How America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable – Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone)
- Ted Cruz’s Campaign is Fueled by a Dominionist Vision for America – John Fea (Religion News Service)
- Al Jaffee Explains How Mad Magazine Made American Humor Jewish – Leah Garrett (Forward)
March 2, 2016
If you count Justice Stephen Breyer as one of history’s great feminists—and I do—then you can view the arguments in this term’s landmark abortion case, Whole Woman’s Health v Hellerstedt, as creating a neat 4–4 split. On one side, you have a group of testy male justices needling a female lawyer for Texas clinics about whether it was even appropriate for them to hear this appeal. On the other, you’ve got four absolutely smoking hot feminists pounding on Texas’ solicitor general for passing abortion regulations that have no plausible health purpose and also seem pretty stupid.
Obama Cuts All Funding for Christian-Based ‘Abstinence Only’ Sex-Ed Programs
By Andrew Wertz
February 16, 2016
President Obama’s 2017 budget proposal has removed a $10 million annual grant that goes towards funding “abstinence-only” sexual education classes in public schools. By eliminating the grant, Obama would end the financial incentive for states to continue teaching the debunked sex-ed program.
“Abstinence Only” is a sex education course that refuses to teach about condoms or other forms of birth control in favor of encouraging teens to abstain. The outdated and ineffective curriculum is favored by many Christian sects, and is supported by many Republican lawmakers.
How America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable
By Matt Taibbi
February 24, 2016
A thousand ridiculous accidents needed to happen in the unlikeliest of sequences for it to be possible, but absent a dramatic turn of events – an early primary catastrophe, Mike Bloomberg ego-crashing the race, etc. – this boorish, monosyllabic TV tyrant with the attention span of an Xbox-playing 11-year-old really is set to lay waste to the most impenetrable oligarchy the Western world ever devised.
It turns out we let our electoral process devolve into something so fake and dysfunctional that any half-bright con man with the stones to try it could walk right through the front door and tear it to shreds on the first go.
Ted Cruz’s Campaign is Fueled by a Dominionist Vision for America
By John Fea
February 4, 2016
Cruz resonates with the evangelical culture warriors. He mixes what New York Times columnist David Brooks describes as political “brutalism” with a belief that he is engaged in a fight with the devil for the soul of the nation. It is only a matter of time before Cruz assumes the role of the Old Testament prophet Elijah and tries to cast down fire from heaven to destroy the “prophets of Baal” who oppose his campaign.
When Cruz says he wants to “reclaim” or “restore” America, he does not only have the Obama administration in mind. This agenda takes him much deeper into the American past. Cruz wants to “restore” the United States to what he believes is its original identity: a Christian nation.
Al Jaffee Explains How Mad Magazine Made American Humor Jewish
By Leah Garrett
February 21, 2016
Mad is famous for delivering pointed attacks on the powerful from a subversively left-wing perspective, and, according to Jaffee, this was because the first generation of Mad—Kurtzman, Elder and Jaffee himself — came from Jewish traditions. All the founders had grown up in Yiddish-speaking New York homes and became close friends at the High School of Music and Art. Raised in a world of Jewish humor and Borscht Belt schtick, this group of talented young men brought that background to Mad and in so doing made it the one of the most popular magazines in American history, reaching a pinnacle of 2 million circulation during the 1970s.
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