David Frum writes: Let’s say you’re a politician in a close race and your opponent suffers a stroke. What do you do? If you are Mehmet Oz running as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, what you do is mock your opponent’s affliction. In August, the Oz campaign released a list of “concessions” it would offer to the Democrat John Fetterman in a candidates’ debate, including: “We will allow John to have all of his notes in front of him…
Science reports: When two male mice meet in a confined space, the rules of engagement are clear: The lower ranking mouse must yield. But when these norms go out the window—say, when researchers rig such an encounter to favor the weakling—it sends the higher ranking male into a depressionlike spiral. That’s the conclusion of a new neuroimaging study that reveals how the mouse brain responds to an unexpected loss of social status, which has been shown to be a major…
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 job made it “awkward to be practicing law in the firm.” Now, a former colleague of Mrs. Roberts has raised concerns that her recruiting work…
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 (pronounced LEW-tig) who would get a late-night call to come to the aid of his tribe: Mike Pence, in his final days as vice president,…
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 nominee in 2024 in the Republican Party,” urges John Podhoretz. After the trauma of 2016, it is easy to see why Republicans fear a repeat performance….
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 of the mainstream press was a White House priority, and that this would include an unabashed, and almost gleeful, policy of lying and denying. The Post kept…
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. To have the Russians being pushed back elsewhere — to the 2013 borders or the 1991 borders — could probably be manageable with guarantees for…
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 required to inform the country’s High Court of Justice whether, and when, it intends to carry out its long-delayed plans to demolish the entire village….
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 on investments that included solar and wind energy, electric vehicles and batteries. That is nearly four times the amount of U.S. investments, which totaled $141…
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 Kyiv, defended Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, and launched successful counteroffensives in the fall so that by the end of 2022, it had liberated over 50…
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 with knowledge of the matter. The grand jury was recently impaneled, and the beginning of witness testimony represents a clear signal that the district attorney,…
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 FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. In 2019, this obsession of President Donald Trump was initiated by his attorney general, William P….
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 the National Archives is on the case, directing former presidents and vice presidents to scour their properties for any official secrets. (Carter has found classified…
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 and social justice.” Nearly a decade ago, backers of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s coup claimed the intervention of the military was necessary to preserve the “civic”…
The Wall Street Journal reports: Israel carried out a drone strike targeting a defense compound in Iran, as the U.S. and Israel look for new ways to contain Tehran’s nuclear and military ambitions, according to U.S. officials and people familiar with the operation. Iranian officials said that the country’s air defenses had fended off an attempted attack by three small quadcopters targeting a munitions factory in the city of Isfahan, right next to a site belonging to the Iran Space…
The New York Times reports: Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, the architect of President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, took over the day-to-day running of Russia’s war effort this month by convincing his boss that his predecessor was too passive, American and European officials say. But General Gerasimov’s turbocharged strategy is what led to Russia’s problems to begin with, and Moscow still does not have the troops, ammunition or equipment that military officials say it needs to mass the big…