AMERICA’S LETHAL COCKTAIL PARTY

By the mid-1920s, the American government was at its wit’s end. The era’s strict Prohibition laws had proved futile. Americans were still drinking; they were just doing so on the sly, frequenting speakeasies and buying alcohol from crime syndicates. Gangs would steal large quantities of industrial alcohol—used for everything from fueling machines to sterilizing instruments— then redistill the hooch to […]

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The truth about ‘secular’ America

American culture is sick, and secularism is the cause of our disease. That, said Steve Chapman, is the contention of religious conservatives like presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who insist that feminists, liberals, and gay marriage have undermined traditional morality, and that only a return to our Christian roots will cure what ails us. But all evidence suggests that this view […]

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A House that’s stuck in the 1950’s

The House of Representatives doesn’t represent America as it really is today, said Timothy Egan. The Republican-controlled House governs a “fantasy nation created in talk-radio land,” where black and gay people don’t exist, women remain subservient, and all gun-safety legislation is a step toward tyranny. Thanks to strategic redrawing of districts, Republicans managed to maintain a 33-seat advantage in the […]

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Shocking Negligence Before 9/11

In the months before 9/11, said Kurt Eichenwald, George W. Bush was warned not once, but multiple times that al Qaida was preparing a major attack on U.S. soil. Everyone knows of the Aug. 6, 2001, intelligence briefing that Bush received at his Texas ranch, headed, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S.” Administration officials later dismissed that warning’s significance, insisting—implausibly—that […]

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Newsroom Monologue: America Not The Greatest

It’s not the greatest country in the world, professor, that’s my answer. And you’re going to tell students that America’s so star-spangled awesome that we’re the only ones in the world who have freedom? Canada has freedom, Japan has freedom, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom. Two hundred seven sovereign states in the world, like 180 […]

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