Volume 268 | No. 20

Sun, June 16

2020—The Wall Street Journal publishes Mike Pence’s op-ed, “There Isn’t a Coronavirus Second Wave.” 2019—“Last Call” at The Hammer. 2015—For $50 each, 240 actors cheer on cue in the lobby of Trump Tower as the star of a [cancelled] TV show announces he’s running for President. 2000—The Energy Department discovers two missing Top Secret computer hard drives in a location which had previously been searched twice. 1992—Reagan Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger is indicted for lying to Congress, but is soon pardoned. 1991—Otis Nixon steals six bases. 1966—Stokely Carmichael, continuing the March Against Fear as James Meredith recuperates from an assassination attempt, introduces “Black Power” to …

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Make America Primitive Again!

To the Editor: Is your view of the world “conservative,” meaning you have an aversion to change or innovation that might threaten traditional values? Or, is your world view “primitive,” meaning you favour a return to an earlier stage in the evolutionary development of society? It’s a relevant question because in MAGA world, the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Congress, the needle has swung past conservative and points squarely at primitive. Facing a daily gusher of fear and loathing dished out by politicos, persuaders, and propagandists, no wonder we’re losing our bearings. Hell, what harm does a little dose of coercion and cruelty do, if …

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Courts Protect Right to Profit From Destruction

by Julia Conley A week after the European Union announced its withdrawal from the controversial Energy Charter Treaty, which has been criticized for being one of many global agreements that allow fossil fuel companies to sue governments, a coalition on June 6th released an analysis showing just how lucrative such deals have been for firms whose emissions are wreaking havoc on the planet. The Transnational Institute, the Trade Justice Movement (TJM), Power Shift, and the Institute for Policy Studies joined forces to unveil the Global ISDS Tracker, which includes data on more than 1,300 cases that have made their way to secretive tribunals set up …

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Techno-Assault & Battery

by W.D. Ehrhart Technology and I have a long and unhappy history dating back to the fall of 1970 when I took a course during my sophomore year at Swarthmore College called Engineering for Non-Majors, but popularly known as “Engine Whiz.” In those days, the computer took up the entire basement of the engineering building. You would sit in the classroom, and Professor Doby would write on the blackboard exactly the instructions you were supposed to type in. And then you would go down to the computer room and type it onto the computer punchcards. And I would do exactly as I was instructed. But …

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A Long and Sordid Tradition

Our former—and perhaps our future—president, after being convicted of 34 felonies, submitted to an interview with his probation officer on Monday. Even Nixon was never made to do that. Ecclesiastes 1:9 says, “…there is no new thing under the sun.” Maybe the Bible is fallible after all. Who’s going to tell Samuel Alito, Mike Johnson, and the rest of the theocrat caucus? We can state with confidence that, in our 267 years, we have never before reported on a tossup presidential election in which one of the top candidates is an habitually bankrupt con artist bearing all the hallmarks of dementia, who has been seen …

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