Britney Spears news

• Bruce Springsteen’s North Carolina concert cancellation in support of LGBT rights: 6 other times The Boss took a stand

  08-04-2016 22:35 via salon.com
  
  Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band have announced the cancellation of its Greensboro, North Carolina show scheduled for Sunday, citing recently passed state legislation that "attacks the rights of LGBT citizens to sue when their human rights are violated in the workplace," Springsteen wrote in a message to fans. Cancelling the concert, Springsteen wrote, "is the strongest means I have for raising my voice in opposition to those who continue to push us backwards instead of forwards."Lik
  
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• What’s going on at The Washington Post? The paper played a willing role in the silly Sanders-Clinton “qualifications” flap

  08-04-2016 22:34 via salon.com
  
  Hillary Clinton's tiff this week with Bernie Sanders over their respective qualifications to serve as president is a bit of a head-spinner. Let's begin with a brief recap.In an interview on the Wednesday edition of MSNBC's "Morning Joe," host Joe Scarborough pressed Clinton on whether she thinks Sanders is "qualified" to serve as president. Clinton stopped short of explicitly saying she thinks Sanders is unqualified, but said this: "I think he hadn't done his homework and he'd bee
  
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• “Suicide vest included?”: Right-wing nutjobs go bonkers as “Sesame Street” unveils hijab-clad puppet, Zari

  08-04-2016 21:13 via salon.com
  
  After the female-led "Rogue One" trailer dropped Thursday morning, conservative values were already working for the weekend. The last thing conservative white males needed was to see this:https://twitter.com/SesameWorkshop/status/718076790254780416Meet Zari, "a curious and eager six year-old girl" who "will be featured in new, locally produced segments that focus on curriculum topics like girls’ empowerment, national identity, physical health, and social and emotional wellbeing," acco
  
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• Go ahead Republicans, nominate Paul Ryan: Why this brokered-convention scheme is doomed to fail spectacularly

  08-04-2016 21:03 via salon.com
  
  On Thursday, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan posted a video to YouTube. The video, which was set to stirring music, showed Ryan saying this in a speech:"What really bothers me the most about politics these days is this notion of identity politics: that we’re going to win an election by dividing people, rather than inspiring people on our common humanity and our common ideals and our common culture on the things that should unify us. We all want to be prosperous. We all want to be healthy. W
  
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• Bernie Sanders to Seth Meyers: If Clinton campaign attacks, we will push back

  08-04-2016 13:19 via salon.com
  
  "Late Night" host Seth Meyers last night welcomed Bernie Sanders as his guest. Meyers pressed Sanders on the increasing nastiness (hugging, still, relative to mudslinging on the other side of the aisle) between him and Hillary Clinton."I think the Clinton campaign has been getting a little bit nervous," Sanders said. "And I think they have been getting more negative. And I hope very much that we can have an issue-oriented campaign.""But if people attack me and distort my record, we will respond,
  
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• The GOP is just this screwed: Stephen Colbert explains the options beyond Donald Trump

  08-04-2016 13:00 via salon.com
  
  "Late Show" host Stephen Colbert last night explored the scant and undesirable offerings — Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and that third guy — on the Republican primary ballot."The GOP could nominate someone who did not even run this year," Colbert said of a contested convention. "And believe it or not, there are some people who did not run this year.""Some names have already been floated — like Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney and Mitt Romney," he continued. "I know I just said him, b
  
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• For Ann Coulter, it’s OK when Republicans cheat on their wives: Right-wing bigmouth’s justifications for Trump’s adultery shines light on the sexual double standard

  08-04-2016 12:00 via salon.com
  
  While everyone is riveted to the grudge match in the Democratic primary, the Republicans continue to show that they are the absolute masters at meaningless gotchas and bizarre rationalizations. Ann Coulter, who has been going hard for Donald Trump this campaign, took it upon herself recently to try to defend him from his not exactly secret past of enthusiastically committing adultery.She was a talk show with host Eric Metaxas to push her idea, which is so shameless it's painf
  
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• Bill Clinton needs to go away: Why his presidency has become a political liability

  08-04-2016 11:59 via salon.com
  
  Bill Clinton is no doubt his wife’s double-edged sword: Though he is among the most charismatic politicians of his era, he’s also prone to saying things that make campaign life rather awkward. The big problem, however, isn’t just that Bill Clinton can’t keep his mouth shut. It’s that his right-leaning New Democrat policy record is a bad fit for today’s liberal politics.Yesterday, speaking in Philadelphia, Clinton responded to protesters by defending two now-ve
  
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• Spreading hate has backfired on right-wing media: How Fox News unwittingly destroyed the Republican Party

  08-04-2016 11:58 via salon.com
  
  The Republican Party is in a pickle.The Party itself despises its own two leading presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. This is a remarkable oddity just in itself.  But there is good reason for it.  Both of these candidates are so extreme and disastrous that they will almost certainly never be able to win a national election for the Republican Party.But much worse, if and when one of these candidates does become the Republican Party’s nominee, the GOP could ver
  
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• Bernie’s campaign is failing him: The Sanders revolution is being undermined by outmatched, reckless advisors

  08-04-2016 11:57 via salon.com
  
  If there has been a dumber controversy in the Democratic primary this cycle than whatever we’re calling the back-and-forth over who said what about whose qualifications for the presidency – Unqualified-gate? Unqualified-ghazi? – I am hard-pressed to remember it. The screeching for the last 36 hours, starting with Bernie Sanders’s tone-deaf comments in Philadelphia and the Hillary supporters who clutched their pearls in response (the tone-policing on Lawrence O’Donne
  
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• Bernie is crashing the American party system. That’s why establishment Democrats are so afraid of him

  08-04-2016 11:56 via salon.com
  
  Since Bernie Sanders extended his winning streak to seven out of the last eight states on Tuesday with a decisive victory in Wisconsin, the race has quickly turned into a grudge match reminiscent of the 2008 contest between current frontrunner Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama. Presidential qualifications have been debated, tragedies have been politicized, and loyalties have been questioned. Indeed, Clinton has become increasingly vocal
  
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• Evangelicals put to shame: Atheists tend to be more religiously tolerant than Christians

  08-04-2016 10:30 via salon.com
  
  In the wake of another terrorist attack on the West coming from ISIL, pundits and politicians on the right are ramping up calls for greater surveillance of Muslim communities, eliminating Muslim immigration and restricting the religious expressions of Muslims in the United States.Incendiary rhetoric has been particularly common among Republican presidential candidates. Ted Cruz stated, “We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they beco
  
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• Nuclear winter on a planetary scale: The biggest threat to mankind virtually no one is talking about

  08-04-2016 10:15 via salon.com
  
  Undoubtedly, for nearly two decades, the most dangerous place on Earth has been the Indian-Pakistani border in Kashmir. It’s possible that a small spark from artillery and rocket exchanges across that border might -- given the known military doctrines of the two nuclear-armed neighbors -- lead inexorably to an all-out nuclear conflagration.  In that case the result would be catastrophic. Besides causing the deaths of millions of Indians and Pakistanis, such a war might bring on &ldquo
  
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• “When there is no middle class, there cannot be real democracy”

  08-04-2016 10:00 via salon.com
  
  It's no secret that America's middle class is in decline. But while we focus on how that decline started (and who is to blame), we often forget to consider what happens if our middle class is wiped out entirely.If we don't work to restore the American middle class to the vibrant, robust segment of our nation it once was, we may soon witness the end of small-d democracy as we know it. As history and nature both show us, working for the collective good is essential to a functioning democracy
  
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• Addiction is a learning disorder: Why the war on drugs is useless, AA undermines treatment, and addiction studies can learn a lot from autism

  08-04-2016 01:15 via salon.com
  
  In September of 1986, Maia Szalavitz was charged with felony possession – nearly 2.5 kilos – of cocaine and faced 15 years to life under New York’s unduly harsh Rockefeller drug laws. Before then, she was a student at Columbia University, but had been suspended for dealing. After getting kicked out of a school she had worked her whole life to get into, her cocaine use accelerated to the point where she was injecting up to 40 times a day, and eventually escalated to speedba
  
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• How a failed rebellion changed the world: The Easter Rising’s strange centennial

  08-04-2016 01:11 via salon.com
  
  Everything about the Easter Rising of 1916 is controversial, including when to celebrate its centennial. By longstanding tradition, the anniversary of the doomed rebellion that ultimately led to the creation of an independent Irish state is celebrated on Easter Monday, the day picked by the insurgents for the most overtly Catholic revolt in the long history of Irish-British discord. So the centennial observation of the Rising happened in Dublin last week, complete with speeches, parades, wreath-
  
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• “Homeland” made me laugh: Here’s what it’s really like being a CIA agent in the Middle East

  08-04-2016 00:58 via salon.com
  
  For a book that’s clearly been under the censor’s knife – words, sentences, entire paragraphs are blacked out -- “Left of Boom” is a very revealing document. Subtitled “How a Young CIA Case Officer Penetrated the Taliban and Al-Qaeda,” the book follows Douglas Laux from his hometown in rural eastern Indiana to the Middle East. And while the CIA has excised classified material about his missions in Afghanistan and Syria, his descriptions of his life state
  
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• The one percent always ate us alive: How human sacrifice led to our society’s gross inequality

  08-04-2016 00:56 via salon.com
  
  Religion has long been a particularly useful tool for social control, with the “fear of god” used in service of every despicable practice from slavery to war. A new study now reveals that religious rites – particularly, ritual sacrifice – helped create and maintain class stratification in ancient societies. According to researchers from the University of Auckland, Victoria University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, the findings re
  
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