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Warren confronts ghost of Howard Dean

Warren confronts ghost of Howard Dean

Politico reports: Liberals swooned. The Democratic establishment was on its heels. Powered by small donors and grassroots energy, in late 2003 Iowa seemed Howard Dean’s for the taking. But then came the attacks — from both the center and the left. The surge became a stall. On caucus day, the Vermont governor came in third and never recovered. Elizabeth Warren is trying to avoid the same fate. While the Warren campaign has stuck to its corruption-centric message, it has noticeably…

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Russia rubs its hands at the prospect of profit from climate change

Russia rubs its hands at the prospect of profit from climate change

RFE/RL reports: When it wasn’t burning, Siberia was flooding. The permafrost in the Far North continued to melt, and the Arctic ice kept breaking up. But as a year that underscored the troubles in store for Russia from global warming comes to a close, Moscow is making plans to “adapt” to climate change — and seek to profit from it. At his annual press conference, on December 19, President Vladimir Putin said that climate change poses “very serious” challenges for…

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Why we need to branch out to solve global warming

Why we need to branch out to solve global warming

Summer Praetorius writes: As a paleoclimatologist, I often find myself wondering why more people aren’t listening to the warnings, the data, the messages of climate woes—it’s not just a storm on the horizon, it’s here, knocking on the front door. In fact, it’s not even the front door anymore. You are on the roof, waiting for a helicopter to rescue you from your submerged house. The data is clear: The rates of current carbon dioxide release are 10 times greater…

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James Comey: This is what it is like to be attacked by the president

James Comey: This is what it is like to be attacked by the president

James Comey writes: What’s it like to be personally and publicly attacked by the president of the United States? Like many others in and out of government, I have some experience. I have also watched friends and former colleagues deal with vicious, repeated assaults. The attacks have interfered with their ability to find work after government service, as even employers who see through the lies fear hiring a “controversial” person or being attacked themselves. It can mean reassuring concerned friends…

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American airstrikes rally Iraqis against U.S.

American airstrikes rally Iraqis against U.S.

The New York Times reports: Iraq has been caught for years in a tug of war between its two most powerful patrons, the United States and Iran. In recent months, public opinion began to tilt against Iran, with street protests demanding an end to Tehran’s pervasive influence. But American airstrikes that killed two dozen members of an Iranian-backed militia over the weekend have now made Washington the focus of public hostility, reducing the heat on Tehran and its proxies. Iraqi…

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Bret Stephens and the perils of the tapped-out column

Bret Stephens and the perils of the tapped-out column

Jack Shafer writes: New York Times columnist Bret Stephens ambushed and gravely wounded his own career on the evening of Dec. 27 when his piece about—bear with me here—the alleged superior intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews went live on the Times website. As Twitter fury rose to smite Stephens for his “The Secrets of Jewish Genius” column and press coverage tilted hard against him, his editors attempted some post-publication damage control. They went back into his column and simply deleted the…

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Earth’s hottest decade on record marked by extreme storms, deadly wildfires

Earth’s hottest decade on record marked by extreme storms, deadly wildfires

InsideClimate News reports: Deadly heat waves, wildfires and widespread flooding punctuated a decade of climate extremes that, by many scientific accounts, show global warming kicking into overdrive. As the year drew to a close, scientists were confidently saying 2019 was Earth’s second-warmest recorded year on record, capping the warmest decade. Eight of the 10 warmest years since measurements began occurred this decade, and the other two were only a few years earlier. Arctic sea ice melted faster and took longer…

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Jews are going underground

Jews are going underground

Deborah Lipstadt writes: In a month of terrible anti-Semitic attacks, including a stabbing yesterday of multiple people at a Hanukkah celebration at a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York, the news that most depressed me did not involve violence. It was not something done to Jews but something Jews did. A synagogue in the Netherlands is no longer publicly posting the times of prayer services. If you want to join a service, you have to know someone who is a…

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Why no one can talk about the attacks against Orthodox Jews

Why no one can talk about the attacks against Orthodox Jews

Batya Ungar-Sargon writes: There’s a poem Jews sing every evening after lighting Hanukkah candles. It’s called “Maoz Tzur” — Rock of the Ages — and was written during the Crusades, one of the many times when Jewish blood ran through the streets; its lines are laced with the tragedy and longing that typifies Jewish liturgy. One chokes me up every time I sing it – eight nights every year: “Our salvation takes too long, and there is no end to…

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Behind the Ukraine aid freeze: 84 days of conflict and confusion

Behind the Ukraine aid freeze: 84 days of conflict and confusion

The New York Times reports: Deep into a long flight to Japan aboard Air Force One with President Trump, Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, dashed off an email to an aide back in Washington. “I’m just trying to tie up some loose ends,” Mr. Mulvaney wrote. “Did we ever find out about the money for Ukraine and whether we can hold it back?” It was June 27, more than a week after Mr. Trump had first…

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How a decade of disillusion gave way to people power

How a decade of disillusion gave way to people power

Rebecca Solnit: As I write, immense protests are taking place in India against the new anti-Muslim law and Hong Kong activists, who have been protesting for their own rights for months, stand in solidarity with the Uighur people being persecuted on the other side of China. The decade will end in protest. But who can look back a decade when a week in Trump time is like a century, and hardly anyone can remember the overstuffed chaos of the month…

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A farmed animal is someone not something

A farmed animal is someone not something

Lori Marino writes: We’ve all heard them and used them – the common references to farmed animals that appeal to the worst part of human nature: ‘pearls before swine’, ‘what a pig’, ‘like lambs to the slaughter’, ‘bird brain’. These phrases represent our species’ view of farmed animals as not particularly bright, uncaring about their treatment or fate, and generally bland and monolithic in their identities. My team of researchers asked: ‘What is there to really know about them?’ Our…

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The gangster in the White House

The gangster in the White House

David Frum writes: Amid a two-day binge of post-Christmas rage-tweeting, President Donald Trump retweeted the name of the CIA employee widely presumed to be the whistle-blower in the Ukraine scandal. On Thursday night, December 26, Trump retweeted his campaign account, which had tweeted a link to a Washington Examiner article that printed the name in the headline. Then, in the early hours of Friday morning, December 27, Trump retweeted a supporter who named the presumed whistle-blower in the text of…

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