Britney Spears news

• Adult superhero fans make Daniel Clowes sad: “People need something that has very clear moral boundaries, I guess”

  19-03-2016 23:30 via salon.com
  
  It feels strange to rave about someone who’s both self-effacing and the creator of so many self-loathing characters. But the comics artist Daniel Clowes is one of the masters of the genre. As cartoonists who draw people who don’t wear capes and tights have moved from the underground to literary respectability, Clowes -- an early forerunner -- has stayed in the game without losing his edge. And he’s been an important influence on younger cartoonists like Adrian Tomine and Craig
  
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• “Well, that’s the big mystery about God”: It’s amazing what a 4-year-old who’s given the opportunity to speak freely in preschool can come up with

  19-03-2016 22:30 via salon.com
  
  It’s preschool application season, a selection process so brutal in some parts of the country that it can make the college admissions game look like a round of Candyland: Will my child be offered a spot? Can we afford the fees? Is this a good education? In the troika of preschool concerns, access and affordability directly affect parents’ lives while the elusive concept of “quality” is mainly felt by the children themselves. Studies show that parents often miss many of th
  
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• The right’s pathetic blame game: Now it’s the left-wing media’s fault Trump is winning

  19-03-2016 21:30 via salon.com
  
  Following CNN's Republican Party primary debate last week, the conservative site NewsBusters, which exists to bash the press for its supposed liberal bias, quickly published a piece focusing on the debate moderators' prime-time performance. No doubt NewsBusters was furious with CNN, right?Recall that last November, following a raucous Republican debate hosted by CNBC, Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell released a scathing critique of the moderators, insisting they were dripping with
  
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• Conspiracy theories are for losers: Science explains why conservatives see sneaky cabals in every defeat

  19-03-2016 20:30 via salon.com
  
  Don't tell Donald Trump, but conspiracy theories are for losers. Seriously. I mean it. This is huge. And nobody wants to talk about it.OK, it's actually more complicated than that. Other potential explanations paint an even less flattering picture of the current conservative conspiracy craze. But whatever it is, conservatives—at least in the current political moment—are significantly more prone to embrace conspiracy theories, and the more they know, the more they embrace them...
  
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• Cranks, zealots, extremists: How the paranoid style of Trump, Cruz and Palin took over the GOP and infected America

  19-03-2016 19:00 via salon.com
  
  One day before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in November 1963, Richard Hofstadter was in London, delivering a lecture that a year later would appear in Harper’s as “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.”At 47 years of age, Hofstadter was an American brand. He held an endowed chair at Columbia University—not to mention two Pulitzers. He was considered to be one of the finest historians and public intellectuals of his time.Right-wing putschist
  
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• Borked! America’s creepiest-ever Supreme Court nominee still haunts our broken system

  19-03-2016 17:00 via salon.com
  Not long after I moved to New York from California in the mid-1990s, I was walking somewhere in midtown Manhattan and nearly collided with Robert Bork, who was coming out of a hotel carrying his suitcase. (One of my first thoughts: Robert Bork carries his own suitcase?) I recoiled mentally, and quite likely physically as well; it was like coming face to face with Lord Voldemort, or a highly venomous cobra, on 54th Street. Bork did not appear to notice and carried on with lugging his suitcase to
  
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• Trump’s disingenuous Ted Cruz smear: Birtherism is back, still dangerous and wrong

  19-03-2016 16:59 via salon.com
  Perhaps President Obama was waiting for the prime opportunity to describe “birtherism” as a symptom of a broader pathology afflicting the Republican Party. Lucky for him, that moment arrived during a joint press conference this week with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, when CBS News reporter Margaret Brennan asked Obama if he bears any responsibility for the polarized politics that brought us “someone as provocative as Donald Trump.”“I have been blamed by Re
  
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• Robert Reich: The GOP is shirking its constitutional responsibility

  19-03-2016 16:00 via salon.com
  
  The Constitution of the United States is clear: Article II Section 2 says the President “shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint … judges to the Supreme Court.”It doesn’t say the President can’t appoint in the final year of his term of office. In fact, a third of all U.S. presidents have appointed a Supreme Court justice in an election year. Yet many Republicans argue that no appointment can be made in the election year.A
  
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• Saying “Hillary only won the Confederacy” isn’t just idiotic — it’s also bad for the Democratic Party

  19-03-2016 15:45 via salon.com
  
  Earlier this week, the activist group Progressive Democrats of America sent out an email in which it tried to downplay Hillary Clinton’s primary victories by noting she has “won the Confederacy” while the rest of the country is “primed to go for Bernie.” This was an awkward attempt to make the case for not giving up on the Bernie Sanders campaign despite Clinton’s almost insurmountable lead in pledged delegates. The race, this line of thinking goes, is no
  
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• Barney Frank throws down with GOP strategist: “[Your] party has put itself above a functioning federal government”

  19-03-2016 14:39 via salon.com
  
  "Real Time" host Bill Maher last night welcomed Sisters of Social Service lobbyist Sister Simone Campbell, former-Congressman Barney Frank, and GOP strategist Rick Wilson.Among a slew of topics, the panel discussed GOP obstructionism with respect to Obama's SCOTUS nominee, Merrick Garland."I think it's strictly the principle of Mitch McConnell's decision that President Obama should only be a one-term president," Campbell said. "He's been successful on certain issues, but in the end I don't think
  
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• They have not been the party of Lincoln for decades: Donald Trump exposes the truth about GOP racism that David Brooks keeps denying

  19-03-2016 14:30 via salon.com
  
  Donald Trump's win in Mississippi on March 8 completed his sweep of Deep South states, effectively destroying the myth that the GOP rise in the South was due to the embrace of "small government conservatism" rather than racism. It's a myth I've written about before, most recently here at Salon, first in the wake of Ferguson (here and here), then after Trump’s failed attempt to marshal a sizable group endorsement by black ministers. At that time, I wrote:Trump’s situation is anything
  
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• Bill Maher diagnoses Donald Trump: “He’s a spoiled 5-year-old throwing a tantrum”

  19-03-2016 14:30 via salon.com
  
  As part of his "New Rules" segment, "Real Time" host Bill Maher clobbered Donald Trump and what he called "the self-esteem movement" -- the latter facilitating the former, he argued."Stop trying to pin the rise of Donald Trump on easy targets like racism, xenophobia, and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome," Maher said. "If there's anything scarier than the fact that Donald Trump thinks he's the most important person in the world, it's that in eight months, he could be.""Every time the parent takes the
  
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• America’s disturbing voter-turnout crisis: How inequality extends to polling place — and why that makes our country less fair

  19-03-2016 14:29 via salon.com
  
  Automatic voter registration isn’t the sexiest way to start a political revolution, but it may be the most effective. The United States lags behind the rest of the rich world in turnout, but it leads the rich world in disparity in turnout across income and education levels, which has profound effects on policy. This so-called "turnout skew" further biases policy towards the rich, even more than it already would be because of the structural advantages the rich enjoy. Bolstering tu
  
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• “The system is rigged against regular people”: Big money has completely warped American democracy

  19-03-2016 14:00 via salon.com
  
  Few are as qualified to tackle the massive topic of money in politics as Wendell Potter and Nick Penniman. Their new book, Nation on the Take: How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy (read an excerpt), is a comprehensive and important examination of the many ways our lives are affected by the stranglehold corporations have on our government and society. And it’s a look at how we can fight back.Wendell Potter is senior analyst at the Center for Public Integrity, an ex-newspaperman and a f
  
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• Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland is a lot more ruthless than it looks

  19-03-2016 13:00 via salon.com
  
  The first and most important thing to say about President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court is that it might not work.Not in the sense that Garland won’t receive the Republican-controlled Senate’s approval — that goes without saying, at least until November — but in the sense that Obama’s “Godfather” move might not be the political checkmate that the White House hopes it will be.It’s possible that less-engaged #NeverT
  
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• “The Islamic State would not be with us today if the United States hadn’t invaded Iraq”: Islam, religion, and the interview Donald Trump and Ted Cruz must read now

  19-03-2016 11:30 via salon.com
  
  At approximately 9:40 p.m., on Nov. 13, 2015, three heavily armed gunmen stormed into the Bataclan theater in Paris and began killing people at random. According to some of the survivors, the attackers shouted “Allahu Akbar,” meaning “God is great.” But the gunmen also reportedly exclaimed, “This is for Syria” and “What are you [the French] doing in Syria? You’re going to pay now.”These statements gesture at the complex tangle of motivational
  
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• Leaked phone numbers, white powder substances in the mail, a threatening note: Authorities are reportedly investigating possible attacks on the Trump family

  19-03-2016 10:30 via salon.com
  
  Eric Trump, son of GOP front-runner Donald Trump, received a suspicious package in the mail containing white powder (which was later announced unharmful after running tests). Around the same time that hacktivist group Anonymous leaked Donald Trump's alleged personal information online and although some of the information leaked has been on the web for months now, a federal investigation is currently underway against Anonymous, according to Time.
  Watch our video for more details.Eric Trump, son o
  
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• Stop medicalizing female desire: Here’s what the scientific breakthroughs in sex science still don’t tell us about women

  19-03-2016 00:00 via salon.com
  
  On the evening of Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2015, flibanserin was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a viable treatment option for premenopausal women struggling with Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD). A non-hormonal pill that must be taken daily, flibanserin—marketed as Addyi—is said to be the cure for those who have problems with low libido.
  So why aren't sexuality professionals collectively losing their shit over flibanserin, throwing confetti into the air a
  
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• Asian guys get to be sexy, too: Finally, TV gives me the romantic leads I’ve been waiting for

  19-03-2016 00:00 via salon.com
  
  Guys, I’m in love with Josh Chan from “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.” And the most amazing thing is, I’m not the only one.What’s not to love about him? He’s sweet, funny, has killer boy-band moves, and biceps for days. He’s the kind of guy that you give up a successful career and minimalist-chic apartment in New York City and move 3,000 miles for. At least that’s the conceit of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.” And what’s more remarkable is its main
  
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