The New York Times reports: After Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the Supreme Court, his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, gave up her career as a law firm partner to become a high-end legal recruiter in an effort to alleviate potential conflicts of interest. Mrs. Roberts later recalled in an interview that her husband’s… Read More »
The Washington Post reports: His obsessively precise written opinions for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond had marked Luttig as one of the leading conservative intellectuals in the legal system — the most conservative judge on the most conservative court in America. More than a quarter-century later, it was Luttig… Read More »
Jonathan Chait writes: As they watch Donald Trump launch his third consecutive presidential campaign, many Republicans have been gripped by a sickening feeling of déjà vu. The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins believes the only plan is to sit around and hope Trump dies of natural causes. “Somebody is going to have to make the case that he cannot be the… Read More »
Louis Menand writes: When the Washington Post unveiled the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” on February 17, 2017, people in the news business made fun of it. “Sounds like the next Batman movie,” the New York Times’ executive editor, Dean Baquet, said. But it was already clear, less than a month into the Trump Administration, that destroying the credibility… Read More »
RFE/RL: Can Russia be defeated outright? Lawrence Freedman: If Ukraine was able to push Russian forces out of all of Ukraine, that would be a defeat. It’s not wholly impossible, but I think at the moment it’s very difficult. It’s not impossible. I think to lose Crimea would be unequivocally a big defeat for Putin.… Read More »
Democracy for the Arab World Now: The Biden Administration should reevaluate its “special relationship” with Israel if the Israeli government advances its plans to forcibly displace the Palestinian villagers of Khan al-Ahmar and destroy the village in the occupied West Bank, war crimes under international law. On Wednesday, February 1, 2023, the Israeli government is… Read More »
Jonathan O’Callaghan writes: A group of astronomers poring over data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has glimpsed light from ionized helium in a distant galaxy, which could indicate the presence of the universe’s very first generation of stars. These long-sought, inaptly named “Population III” stars would have been ginormous balls of hydrogen and… Read More »
E&E News reports: China once again topped the world in clean energy investments last year, a trend that could challenge U.S. efforts to develop more homegrown manufacturing. Nearly half of the world’s low-carbon spending took place in China, according to a recent analysis from market research firm BloombergNEF. The country spent $546 billion in 2022… Read More »
Michael McFaul writes: Nearly a year after he invaded Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has failed to achieve any of his major objectives. He has not unified the alleged single Slavic nation, he has not “denazified” or “demilitarized” Ukraine, and he has not stopped NATO expansion. Instead, the Ukrainian military kept Russian troops out of… Read More »
The New York Times reports: The Manhattan district attorney’s office on Monday began presenting evidence to a grand jury about Donald J. Trump’s role in paying hush money to a porn star during his 2016 presidential campaign, laying the groundwork for potential criminal charges against the former president in the coming months, according to people… Read More »
Greg Sargent writes: Senate Democrats, prepare to investigate the investigations of the investigators. If this sounds likely to be mind-numbingly complicated, well, yes, it is. But there’s only one way to tackle this difficulty: head-on. The New York Times disclosed extraordinary new revelations this past week about prosecutor John Durham’s years-long quest to delegitimize the… Read More »
David Dayen writes: Somewhere in Plains, Georgia, an aide or 98-year-old Jimmy Carter himself is rifling through old boxes, searching for any document from the late 1970s marked “classified.” I’m not sure what threats there are to the Republic from high-level information about Rhodesia or the Warsaw Pact slowly decomposing in a filing cabinet, but… Read More »
Mohammad Fadel writes: Twelve years have now passed since Egyptians bravely took to the streets demanding a right to govern themselves democratically. Some might quibble and claim that the protesters in the center of Cairo, and across so many other cities and towns in Egypt, were not demanding democracy, but something more tangible: “bread, freedom… Read More »
Science News reports: In shallow coastal waters of the Indian and Pacific oceans, a seagrass-scrounging cousin of the manatee is in trouble. Environmental strains like pollution and habitat loss pose a major threat to dugong (Dugong dugon) survival, so much so that in December, the International Union for Conservation of Nature upgraded the species’ extinction… Read More »