Britney Spears news

• Kim Davis’ legal team is behind discriminatory anti-LGBT bills in 20 states

  14-04-2016 23:16 via salon.com
  
  You can thank America's most notorious county clerk for the sudden onset of discriminatory anti-LGBT laws sweeping across the South and Midwest.The legal team behind Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples after the Supreme Court found state bans unconstitutional in 2015, are also the lawyers behind an organized effort to prohibit localities from passing anti-discriminatory measures in an effort to protect the rights of LGBT people
  
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• Did Time magazine bum you out? The internet debunks mag’s claim that you owe $42.998.12 for the national debt

  14-04-2016 22:37 via salon.com
  
  Time magazine is taking some heat for the provocative (some say misleading) cover story of this week's issue, which tells readers they each owe $42.998.12 in order to pay off the national debt.https://twitter.com/TIMEPolitics/status/720605188927533056?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwThe main issue most critics seem to have with the piece is that while the amount of the debt burden that falls on each citizen makes for an interesting rhetorical framing device, it has little to do with
  
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• Right-wing trolls attack #ShoutYourStatus campaign: “American feminists now feel the need to brag about what stds they’ve caught”

  14-04-2016 22:17 via salon.com
  
  Last week, as part of STD Awareness Month, four friends, Kayla Axelrod, Ella Dawson, Britni de la Cretaz and Lachrista Greco, who met because they all have some form of herpes, started the Twitter hashtag #ShoutYourStatus as a way to show solidarity and lessen the stigma associated with having an STI (sexually transmitted infection). “We took a cue from the #ShoutYourAbortion folks. We felt like if people could dismantle abortion stigma by sharing their stories, we wanted to try the same t
  
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• Ted Cruz is a strange guy: 6 times he weirded everyone out, including when he celebrated his marriage with 100 cans of soup

  14-04-2016 20:56 via salon.com
  
  Something about Ted Cruz is just a bit off. The latest evidence of Cruz's weirdness came during CNN's Town Hall event on Wednesday, when his wife Heidi told a truly bizarre anecdote about their days as newlyweds. Here is Heidi's tale in her own words, as transcribed by Gawker:When I married Ted, we got back from our honeymoon, and he went off to the store and came home by himself. And I was completely shocked to see that he arrived back at our apartment with literally 100 cans of
  
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• Ted Cruz praises North Carolina’s “perfectly reasonable” anti-LGBT bathroom ban

  14-04-2016 20:47 via salon.com
  
  At a MSNBC town hall on Thursday, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz voiced his support for North Carolina's controversial ban on non-discriminatory bathrooms in the state, effectively restricting bathroom access for gay and transgender people.The recently passed bill, overturning the city of Charlotte's anti-LGBT discrimination ordinance, has caused an national outcry and sparked widespread financial backlash for the state. Earlier this week, Republican Governor Pat McCro
  
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• Make Dean Strang proud: If you really care about criminal justice reform, stop trying to get out of jury duty

  14-04-2016 20:21 via salon.com
  
  It is arguable that not since Atticus Finch have any defense attorneys been as adored by the American public as Dean Strang and Jerry Buting, the Wisconsin-based lawyers who defended Steven Avery in the the murder case explored in the Netflix hit Making a Murderer. As the 10-episode documentary series became a viral phenomenon earlier this year, Strang and Buting rose to fame as “the good guys” in a fight against injustice and corruption on behalf of the underdog. This depiction, alo
  
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• Bernie Sanders must accept that Pope Francis isn’t a friend to the left: The pontiff can’t be a true humanitarian with his anti-woman and anti-LGBT views

  14-04-2016 19:50 via salon.com
  
  In an already weird election season, things have gotten even stranger as Bernie Sanders vies heavily and openly for Pope Francis to meet with him. Sanders admires the pope so much that he is leaving the campaign trail for a couple of days, something even some allies question the wisdom of, to speak at the Vatican and, he hopes, get a chance to meet Francis and (of course), get a picture with him."I believe that the pope has been an inspirational figure in raising public consciousness about
  
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• Hillary Clinton to sue Arizona over voting rights violations

  14-04-2016 19:46 via salon.com
  
  In Arizona's largest county the number of polling locations was cut by 85 percent from the 2008 primary and 70 percent from the 2012 primary during last month's presidential primaries.“In Phoenix, a majority-minority city, County officials allocated one polling location for every 108,000 residents," the city's mayor Greg Stanton wrote in a letter to the Department of Justice calling for an investigation into the Republican-led effort to slash costs at the expense of voters. Voters in
  
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• The Benghazi farce nears its end: Surprising no one, Trey Gowdy’s report will drop before the election

  14-04-2016 19:16 via salon.com
  
  Way back in August 2014, House Benghazi Committee chairman Trey Gowdy was guardedly optimistic that his committee’s investigation into the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack would be wrapped up in expeditious fashion. Gowdy anticipated that his committee’s inquiry – the eighth such inquiry into the attacks – would be completed by the end of 2015, “assuming cooperation from agencies, witnesses, and the administration,” he told the New York Times. Democrats, already
  
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• “It’s these gangsta rappers, it’s the athletes, it’s the tattoo guys”: Bill O’Reilly has a history of using “tattoo” as a racially coded signifier for black people

  14-04-2016 18:58 via salon.com
  
  Watch our video for Fox anchor Bill O'Reilly's history of using "tattoo" or "tattoo guys" to actually mean black people, gangs, or the formerly incarcerated.
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• Paul Ryan has 2020 on his mind: As GOP burns, Ryan’s decision to stay out of the race suggests he’s angling for future run

  14-04-2016 18:46 via salon.com
  
  “Let me be clear: I do not want, nor will I accept, the nomination for our party.” – Paul RyanPaul Ryan declared Tuesday that he’s not in the running for the Republican nomination. Against the backdrop of a disastrous Trump or Cruz-led ticket, backroom mumblings about Ryan as a savior candidate have percolated in recent weeks. Ryan isn’t nearly the wonkish statesman many Republicans imagine he is, but he is vastly preferable to the cavalcade of clowns currently seek
  
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• Texting at the movies is a terrible idea: Cinema chain determined to ruin the pleasure of going to the theater

  14-04-2016 18:03 via salon.com
  
  This was probably inevitable, but it’s still hard not to groan a little bit: The AMC cinema chain may allow – even encourage – texting in its theaters. AMC’s chief Adam Aron, who is improving the seats and the food in his cinemas, explained to Variety that he’s open to experimenting in other ways. He told reporter Brent Lang that “there does seem to be a consensus that there are pockets of consumers who do not see as many movies as other segments of the popula
  
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• The Alex Jones-Glenn Beck feud escalates into pure hilarity: “He’s an egomaniac, super-narcissist, probably psychotic”

  14-04-2016 17:53 via salon.com
  
  As noted by Brian Tashman at Right Wing Watch, the feud between conspiracy theorists Alex Jones and Glenn Beck has reached full chortle, with the pair throwing down over what Jones believes is a disagreement about -- wait for it -- aspartame.
  According to Jones, Beck is a "false prophet whose messiah is Ted Cruz," a "cynical, twisted weirdo" who "will end up destroying himself, [because] he is an egomaniac, super-narcissist, probably psychotic, in my view, and he’s insane and wants to be a
  
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• The South’s new re-segregation plan: The Koch brothers, ALEC and the sneaky scheme to undo Brown v Board of Education

  14-04-2016 17:44 via salon.com
  
  The segregated states of the Deep South fought desegregation tooth-and-nail for years after the 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision. The white leadership did not want white children to go to school with black children, period. Their first response was to declare that they would never desegregate: never, never, never. As pressure from the federal government and the courts accelerated, Southern officials found a new tactic to preserve segregation: school choice. School choice, they
  
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• Look out Paul Krugman: Elizabeth Warren slams “revisionist history” after report finds Wall Street still too-big-to-fail

  14-04-2016 17:38 via salon.com
  
  In his New York Times column on Friday, economist Paul Krugman argued that Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' rhetoric on Wall Street banks “misses the point,” claiming that the 2008 financial “crisis itself was centered not on big banks but on ‘shadow banks’ like Lehman Brothers that weren’t necessarily that big":The easy slogan here is “Break up the big banks.” It’s obvious why this slogan is appealing from a politi
  
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• Perverted, right-wing hypocrites: Dennis Hastert’s alleged sexual abuse reminds us to check the closets of those who demonize consensual sex

  14-04-2016 17:35 via salon.com
  
  So much of the politics of 2016 is rehashing the '90s, so perhaps it's no surprise that the nation got an ugly reminder, with Dennis Hastert being in the news again, of one of the most iconic incidents of the era, the Great Hypocrite Purge of 1998.For those who are fuzzy on the details of that embarrassing period of American history, Hastert only rose to prominence as the Speaker of the House because of the long-standing problem of conservative moralizers invariably having skeletons in thei
  
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• This week’s damning “60 Minutes” report shows just how absurd our War on Terror is

  14-04-2016 17:30 via salon.com
  
  After 15 years, it's finally about to be okay to talk about Saudi Arabia's role in fostering anti-American terrorism.On Sunday, a "60 Minutes" report newly refocused attention on 28 pages of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks that have been censored since the report's release. The 28 pages describe evidence of Saudi involvement in the attacks, but when the Inquiry released their report, the Bush Administration censored those pages, citing national secu
  
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• Men aren’t entitled to sex: Crybaby guy throws racist fit at woman who politely refuses to hook up

  14-04-2016 17:02 via salon.com
  
  This should sound completely obvious, I would hope: men aren’t entitled to have sex with women because they’ve bought them dinner, or for any other reason. It is 2016, after all. Yet one disgusting dude seems to think otherwise, and his texts to his date calling her a disgusting racial slur for denying him sex have gone viral after her friend who goes by @arafarel posted them on Twitter, writing:https://twitter.com/araferal/status/719758279023423488In the course of his badgering
  
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• Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld isn’t a fan: Bernie Sanders is the “soiled diaper” of the 2016 presidential race

  14-04-2016 16:57 via salon.com
  
  Reacting to news that leaders of Occupy Wall Street were regrouping in order to support Bernie Sanders' bid to win the New York Democratic primary next week, The Five's Greg Gutfeld argued that this should have been expected, as the pair are "a perfect match.""Well, they're getting the band back together," Gutfeld began. "I'm speaking of that soiled diaper, Occupy Wall Street." He complained that "the movement -- and yes, it was a movement in more ways than one," was re-forming in order to suppo
  
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• Desperate Trump’s makeover: His months of bullying and classless tactics have backfired — but his strategy shift won’t save him at the convention

  14-04-2016 16:56 via salon.com
  
  Donald Trump’s chances of securing the Republican nomination will disappear if he doesn’t win on the first ballot at the convention. If the contest goes to a second ballot and beyond, Trump is ill-prepared for the protracted, under-the-radar struggle. He doesn’t have the support within the party and he’s being badly out-maneuvered by the Cruz campaign. And there are plenty of signs that Cruz's efforts are already paying off.“Many delegates,” The Washington Pos
  
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• Bill O’Reilly finally admits what everyone else already knows: “The GOP could very well be slaughtered next November”

  14-04-2016 16:12 via salon.com
  
  On The O'Reilly Factor Wednesday evening, host Bill O'Reilly devoted his Talking Points Memo to discussing how, if his preferred candidate secures the nomination, the Republican Party will be "slaughtered" in November.There is a strange resignation to O'Reilly's comments about Trump now, as if he knows he's backed a horse that can always show, but never win. "It is becoming clear that many major Republican politicians might not attend the convention in Cleveland in July," he said. "The party is
  
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• Why is Megyn Kelly berating Al Sharpton over Ferguson?: “Do you feel bad … a man’s life was ruined?”

  14-04-2016 16:04 via salon.com
  
  The Fox News anchor most famous for explosive exposes into the New Black Panthers and the true color of Santa Claus is for some unexplained reason still vehemently committed to discrediting the Ferguson protests.Megyn Kelly went to MSNBC host Al Sharpton's National Action Network annual conference on Wednesday to get his thoughts on the 2016 race, before eventually pivoting to race relations under President Obama's tenure in office."What do you think of what is happening in this country rig
  
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• Fox News’ Dana Perino: Hillary Clinton’s acknowledgement of white privilege’s existence proves she’s the only one who can unite the GOP

  14-04-2016 15:47 via salon.com
  
  On Fox News' The Five Wednesday, the panelists discussed a recent speech by Hillary Clinton on the subject of white privilege and, after declaring it "pandering at its finest," declared her as the GOP's only hope to unify the party."White Americans need to do a much better job of listening when African-Americans talk about the seen and unseen barriers you face every day," Clinton said at Al Sharpton's National Action Network Convention. "We need to recognize our privilege and practice humility,
  
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• “Incompetent” Donald Trump has only himself to blame: This is why he won’t be GOP nominee

  14-04-2016 14:54 via salon.com
  
  "Late Night" host Seth Meyers last night took a "Closer Look" at Donald Trump's inability to win over delegates."Trump and his supporters are angry about the delegate process, but Trump has only himself to blame," Meyers explained. "His organization has proved incompetent when it comes to recruiting delegates, and he clearly lacks a basic understanding of the rules."Meyers ran several clips of Trump touting his self-described "very good brain" before noting, "Trump's campaign has made some of th
  
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• Trevor Noah lets Dennis Hastert, Catholic Church have it: “The wrestling coach installed a recliner in the boys’ shower?”

  14-04-2016 14:38 via salon.com
  
  "Daily Show" host Trevor Noah last night focused critical attention on former House Speaker Dennis Hastert's indictment.In the past year, details have emerged alleging Hastert sexually assaulted several teenage boys as the Yorkville (Illinois) High School wrestling coach between 1965 and 1981. Hastert was known at Yorkville in that time to sit in a reclining chair and watch his athletes shower."What was going on in that school?" Noah responded. "Did no other adult think it was strange that the w
  
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• WATCH: Bernie Sanders unloads on Donald Trump and Ted Cruz in ringing defense of “New York values”

  14-04-2016 14:01 via salon.com
  
  Having only lived in city for a year and a half, "Nightly Show" host Larry Wilmore felt it best to defer his critique of Ted Cruz's "New York values" comment to a "native New Yorker." Enter Bernie Sanders."Guess what, Ted Cruz, I have New York values," Sanders said. "I value a living wage for all Americans. I value a justice system that treats everyone fairly. I value a government which works for all of us, not just Wall Street and powerful special interests. Those are New York values.""Whe
  
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• Ted Cruz’s dark, twisted world: Why his far-right social views are even scarier than you think

  14-04-2016 14:00 via salon.com
  
  Probably one of the most unlikely scandalettes of the 2016 primary has to be the National Enquirer "exposé " of Senator Ted Cruz's alleged serial infidelity. Nobody knows to this day where the story originated, although some reporters suggested after it was run that the Rubio campaign had shopped it to them earlier in the cycle. But  Donald Trump is known to be quite close to the publisher of the Enquirer (a man aptly named David Pecker) so it's always p
  
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• Debunking Washington Post’s absurd call for (more) intervention in Venezuela’s democracy

  14-04-2016 13:59 via salon.com
  
  According to the logic of the Washington Post, the U.S. is in desperate, desperate need of external intervention.The newspaper's editorial board published an op-ed this week insisting that "Venezuela is in desperate need of a political intervention."Why? Democratically elected Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is ostensibly "deeply unpopular," the Washington Post insists, and the oil-rich South American nation is spiraling "toward an economic and political crash."How unpopular is Maduro
  
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• Hey, Democrats, stop gloating — your party is imploding right before your eyes, too

  14-04-2016 12:00 via salon.com
  
  The governing narrative of the 2016 Presidential campaign so far has been that GOP is imploding. All it took was the adolescent agitprop of Donald Trump to lay bare the rift between the Party Establishment (i.e. corporate donors) and the Party Base, whose anxieties and prejudices they have been manipulating for decades.There’s been a gleeful sense of schadenfreude in the coverage churned out by left-leaning outlets in particular. How lovely it has been to watch the conservative movement&rs
  
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• Hillary Clinton’s superdelegates should stop whining: Why Sanders supporters have every right to question to challenge their super-votes

  14-04-2016 11:59 via salon.com
  
  Bernie Sanders supporters are making phone calls and writing angry notes to superdelegates because Hillary Clinton has locked down an overwhelming number of these above-average-and-very-important Democratic Party voters. Some are upset and claim that it’s harassment, and in so doing are providing the media with its latest opportunity to paint the median Sandernista as an overly passionate and ill-mannered crank with interpersonal skills honed in 
  
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• Hillary Clinton’s superdelegates should stop whining: Why Sanders supporters have every right to challenge their super-votes

  14-04-2016 11:59 via salon.com
  
  Bernie Sanders supporters are making phone calls and writing angry notes to superdelegates because Hillary Clinton has locked down an overwhelming number of these above-average-and-very-important Democratic Party voters. Some are upset and claim that it’s harassment, and in so doing are providing the media with its latest opportunity to paint the median Sandernista as an overly passionate and ill-mannered crank with interpersonal skills honed in 
  
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• They won’t stop until they get what they want: The GOP’s Supreme Court blockade will go on for months — at any cost

  14-04-2016 11:58 via salon.com
  
  Republicans have potentially backed themselves into a corner in the ongoing obstructionist fight over the Supreme Court vacancy left by the late Antonin Scalia. The official position of Republican leaders in the Senate is that the timing of the vacancy, coming in the midst of the presidential primary, requires that the nomination be put off until the next administration takes office. The process will just be too politicized, they argue, if it happens in the middle of a presidential election. And
  
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• The saddest campaign in America: Why John Kasich’s bid for the GOP nomination is completely & utterly hopeless

  14-04-2016 11:57 via salon.com
  
  As Republican presidential candidate John Kasich brings his faux-humble, golly-gee-aw-shucks-I’m-just-a-mailman’s-kid routine to New York to beg for votes in the Republican primary, while condescending to Jewish yeshiva students, it is worth asking the question: What does he gain by staying in this race that he has virtually no chance to win?I’m not being flip when I say he has no chance to win it, either. I mean Kasich was mathematically eliminated long ago. Clinching the nomi
  
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• The progressive movement is in the shadows: It’s time to rally, protest and get in politicians’ faces to become a force they can’t ignore

  14-04-2016 11:56 via salon.com
  
  In my travels and conversations this year, I've been encouraged that grassroots people of all progressive stripes (populist, labor, liberal, environmental, women, civil libertarian, et al.) are well aware of the slipperiness of "victory" and want Washington to get it right this time. So over and over, Question No. 1 that I encounter is some variation of this: What should we do!?! How do we make Washington govern for all the people? What specific things can my group or I do now?
  Thanks for asking
  
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• Meet Monsanto’s evil twin: 8 disturbing facts about the chemical fertilizer industry

  14-04-2016 10:45 via salon.com
  
  What do you know about the worldwide chemical fertilizer industry? If you’re like most people, not much.There’s plenty of press coverage and consumer awareness when it comes to genetically engineered food and crops and the environmental hazards of pesticides and animal drugs. But the fertilizer industry? Not so much, even though it’s the largest segment of corporate agribusiness ($175 billion in annual sales), and a major destructive force in polluting the environment, disrupt
  
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• Death on the street: America’s homeless population is growing older and sicker

  14-04-2016 10:30 via salon.com
  
  On any given night in the United States, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, over half a million people are without a home. That number may have decreased nationwide in the past few years, but California remains on the forefront of the problem, accounting for 20 percent of the country’s homeless in 2014.With the winter’s freezing temperatures and El Niño’s massive rainstorms, what to do about the thousands living in our city streets has been mak
  
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• The .1 percent are the true villains: What Americans don’t understand about income inequality

  14-04-2016 10:15 via salon.com
  
  “We are the 99 percent” is a great slogan, but is it distracting our attention from a sinister reality? There’s strong evidence that it’s not the 1 percent you should worry about—it’s the 0.1 percent. That decimal point makes a big difference.Over the last decade, a gigantic share of America’s income and wealth gains has flowed to this group, the wealthiest one out of 1,000 households. These are the wildly exotic and rapidly growing plants in our economi
  
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• Rush Limbaugh hit where it hurts: World’s greatest troll faces steep pay cut

  14-04-2016 10:00 via salon.com
  
  One of the favorite pastimes for sports fans is commiserating over the worst contract their home team ever made; guffawing over management’s decision to waste tens of millions of dollars for a player who never justified the huge payday. (See: Gilbert Arenas.)For talk radio, there’s probably only one contract that enters that realm of notoriety: Rush Limbaugh’s eight-year, $400-million deal, signed in the summer of 2008 with his longtime radio employer Premiere Ra
  
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• Is Donald Trump a new Hitler? Hannah Arendt might argue that they’re closer than you think

  14-04-2016 00:40 via salon.com
  
  Hannah Arendt was one of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th century, and 40 years after her death she may have eclipsed other figures who seemed bigger at the time. Many of the issues that Jean-Paul Sartre pursued, for example, feel like arid historical curiosities today, informed by Cold War disputes that no one cares about anymore. Arendt’s central obsessions — war, totalitarianism, genocide, mass migration and displacement, and the ambiguous nature of human rights — are
  
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• Stop pressuring women to be moms: It’s insulting to assume we all want the same thing

  14-04-2016 00:33 via salon.com
  
  We talk a lot about freedom of choice when it comes to reproduction, but there’s still one choice that women face an unconscionable amount of backlash over: the decision not to have kids. In an essay for Marie Claire, writer Starre Vartan details the opposition she’s faced in the dating and medical arenas over her choice to remain childfree, with a gynecologist telling her “That’s what we’re here for” and two boyfriends deliberately removing condoms during sex
  
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• “A crisis point in our democracy”: Why progressive leaders and thousands of others will risk arrest this week

  14-04-2016 00:30 via salon.com
  
  Hundreds of people from across the country, including leaders of scores of progressive groups, are being arrested outside the Capitol in Washington this week, where a Democracy Awakening mobilization is calling on Congress to restore voting rights protections and lessen the influence of big money."A broad and powerful movement is now erupting in the nation’s capital,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. “Four hundred people were arrested on Monday as part of Demo
  
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• 10 classic rock songs that radio stations need to stop playing now

  14-04-2016 00:29 via salon.com
  
  Land on a mainstream classic rock radio station anywhere in the U.S., and chances are it'll sound quite a bit like classic rock radio everywhere else. There's a good reason for this: In many cases, playlists are determined not by individual DJs or regional flavor, but by programmers or consultants. Plus, there's an aversion to challenging listeners, as there's a commonly held theory in radio that people will turn off things that are unfamiliar. In other words, radio would rather reinforce tastes
  
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