Britney Spears news

• Beyoncé speaks for herself: Stop demanding an artist be all things for all of her fans

  08-05-2016 23:30 via salon.com
  
  Was Beyoncé’s North Carolina protest too little too late? On Tuesday, the “Lemonade” singer performed in the state’s capital, Raleigh. In March, that city witnessed the passage of one of the harshest pieces of anti-LGBT legislation yet. House Bill 2, signed into law by Gov. Pat McCrory, repealed local nondiscrimination ordinances across the estate that offer protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in housing, employment, and public accomm
  
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• Republicans have turned God upside down with their so-called “religious liberty”

  08-05-2016 21:30 via salon.com
  
  God understands the concept of religious freedom.
  Republicans, on the other hand, just don’t get it.
  The Republican Party is seeking to enact laws all across the country permitting businesses to refuse to serve LGBT people. Approximately 200 discriminatory bills have been proposed in nearly three-dozen state legislatures.
  And if you happen to work for a company with pious owners, you may be out of luck. Companies owned by religious families have denied birth control coverage to women emplo
  
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• “The evidence is pretty incontrovertible that he doesn’t exist”: Stephen Colbert’s favorite scientist on the universe, naturalism and finding meaning without God

  08-05-2016 20:00 via salon.com
  
  More than two decades ago, the renowned astronomer Carl Sagan wrote that “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. This is a clear prescription for disaster.” Unfortunately, Sagan’s warning remains as true today as ever: American culture is deeply infused with an anti-intellectual distrust of scientific knowledge, a failure to understand the nature of peer-review, and an unwavering
  
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• Andrew Sullivan is wrong again: His mainstream liberalism has become scarily anti-democratic

  08-05-2016 18:00 via salon.com
  
  In Andrew Sullivan’s ballyhooed debut in New York magazine, he presents the candidacy of Donald Trump as a unique, “extinction-level” threat to the United States of America. One does not have to read far beyond his headline, however, to realize that Sullivan’s real purpose is to malign his usual antagonists on the left. His argument is an example of just how bankrupt the mode of liberalism he represents has become. It’s anti-democratic and culturally elitist message
  
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• We want Robert E. Lee’s name off our school — and in return, we were greeted with hateful Internet trolling

  08-05-2016 17:59 via salon.com
  
  You may have seen the headlines this week.
  “Trump, Hitler, Schooly McSchoolerson in running for renaming Robert E. Lee Elementary”
  “Of course Schoolie McSchoolface is a suggested name for a school”
  “Boaty McBoatface, meet Donald J. Trump, er, or Adolf Hitler Elementary School”
  In Austin, Texas, the School Board solicited suggestions for new names for Robert E. Lee Elementary School, and it got hijacked by the internet. The suggestions included Adam Lanza Eleme
  
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• “SNL” skewers no-fun Hillary Clinton with President Barbie ad: “It feels like she’s trying too hard”

  08-05-2016 17:12 via salon.com
  
  “Saturday Night Live” took aim at the try-hard eagerness of Hillary Clinton’s campaign last night with a fake commercial for President Barbie, who comes complete with a cell phone “and Snapchat,” designed to appeal to little girls.
  “Girls don’t have to play with dolls, we can play with whatever we want,” one of the cute kids playing with Lego and other imaginative toys replies.
  The chipper Mattel voice-over tries to convince them, and slo
  
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• This is how they tear her down: The press is already undermining a potential Hillary victory

  08-05-2016 17:00 via salon.com
  That distant rumble you’re hearing from the Beltway is the sounds of pundits eagerly excavating as they dig up the campaign goal posts established for Hillary Clinton’s presidential run and reset them during the middle of the race.
  After months of suggesting her White House push was possibly doomed, that she couldn’t connect with voters, pundits are now conceding she will be her party’s nominee and that polling data and demographics currently give her a November advantage
  
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• Alabama’s frustrating half measure: Lawmakers to limit drug prosecutions during pregnancy

  08-05-2016 17:00 via salon.com
  
  This story was co-published with AL.com.
  Pregnant women and new mothers using legally prescribed medications may no longer face prosecution under an Alabama statute that is the nation’s harshest law against drug use during pregnancy.
  The Alabama House of Representatives passed a bill Tuesday to exempt women who use medically prescribed drugs from the state’s chemical endangerment law, which makes it a felony to expose a child to “a controlled substance, chemical substance, or
  
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• “Always keep the Sabbath yooge”: “SNL” brings Church Lady back to interrogate Ted Cruz and Donald Trump

  08-05-2016 16:59 via salon.com
  
  “Saturday Night Live” alum Dana Carvey returned for last night’s cold open and brought back an old favorite character, Church Lady, to opine on “the exciting presidential match-up between a godless liberal Democrat and Hillary Clinton.” After tsk-tsking at the “strumpets, street walkers and sluts” of the Met Gala, including digs at Madonna and Beyoncé, Carvey brought Ted Cruz (Taran Killam) on to claim that his whole disas
  
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• Don’t say Trump can’t win: Why the rush to forecast the general election in May is ridiculous

  08-05-2016 16:30 via salon.com
  
  Now that Donald Trump has clinched the Republican Party nomination for president, we as a nation need to ask ourselves some serious questions: What is the sickness in our nation’s soul that has placed this carrot-colored monstrosity so close to the most powerful office in the world, and what can we do to fix it? How many newscasters will kill themselves live on-air on Election Night if he wins? (I’m setting the line at three and taking the over.) What do we need to do to bury the Tru
  
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• “Republicans are not in any way serious about criminal justice reform or ending police brutality”: Michael Fortner on race, the Clintons and the crime bill

  08-05-2016 15:00 via salon.com
  
  Several weeks ago in Philadelphia, former president Bill Clinton confronted protesters who were critical of his 1994 Crime Bill and its role in the mass incarceration of African-Americans. That moment was part of a larger pattern. During the 2016 presidential primary campaign, Hillary and Bill Clinton have faced repeated protests from “Black Lives Matter” activists and others who are concerned about America’s prison-industrial complex, and the role that racism and classism play
  
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• Ovarian cancer and baby powder: Johnson & Johnson suffers massive new defeat

  08-05-2016 14:00 via salon.com
  
  Johnson & Johnson suffered a second straight legal defeat in defense of its signature talc products on Monday when it was ordered to pay $55 million in damages to a woman who blamed her ovarian cancer on the use of Johnson’s Baby Powder for feminine hygiene.
  After about 10 hours of deliberations, a state court jury in St. Louis, Mo., awarded $5 million in compensatory damages and $50 million in punitive damages to Gloria Ristesund, 62, of Sioux Falls, S.D. She was diagnosed with Stage
  
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• Will the Trump-Clinton Taco Bowl be the ugliest election ever? Maybe not—but it could be close

  08-05-2016 12:00 via salon.com
  
  Last week was a strangely gratifying one if you believe that politics is always a ruthless and dirty affair, and that it does no one any good to pretend otherwise. It was the week when Ted Cruz and John Kasich crashed into the unavoidable orange iceberg of Trump-ness from opposite directions. And it was the week when Donald Trump, now universally described as the “presumptive” Republican nominee (a pompous and thoroughly unnecessary coinage), launched his fall campaign with the infam
  
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• We can’t vote for either one: On world stage, Clinton and Trump present different, but serious, dangers

  08-05-2016 11:59 via salon.com
  As of this past week Americans voters have their choices in November—all three of them. I do not see them as nearly as clear or simple as a lot of people might have imagined even a little while ago. The exception is the third of these alternatives, the right to remain silent—a phrase ordinarily used in another context but perfectly correct in this one. This position seems to have just gotten a great deal clearer, if not simpler.
  In my read, the race between Donald Trump and Hillary C
  
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• History lesson for Paul Ryan: The Republicans have always been Donald Trump’s party

  08-05-2016 11:58 via salon.com
  
  Amid the chaos, sadness and jubilation of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee, one should remember that Trump isn’t that far from the ideology the party promoted well into the 20th century.  While the much maligned Republican “establishment” and their allies in the fourth estate are still struggling to deal with the reality of Trump as nominee, the conservative insurgents of the fifth estate are eagerly optimistic for a November showdown. Far from killing the Republican
  
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• “There’s nothing worse than a white liberal who thinks they’re doing the right thing”: Sherman Alexie on Hollywood diversity, “The Revenant” and why he’s “not the proper kind of Indian”

  08-05-2016 01:30 via salon.com
  
  It’s no secret that the publishing world does not focus enough on books by diverse authors—and it’s even more problematic when it comes to books for kids. The award-winning writer Sherman Alexie (author of “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” as well as 23 other books, and a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian who grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation) is about to release his first picture book for younger children next week. “Thunder Boy Jr.&
  
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• I’ve become my hoarder mother: How my kids turned me into a pathological packrat

  08-05-2016 01:00 via salon.com
  
  “Thanks for offering me your baby stuff,” my pregnant friend Emily said during Sunday brunch at our apartment. “Can I take it home today?”
  With 4- and 1-year-old daughters, and my baby-making business closed for good, I should have been eager to donate the motor swings, elastic-band pants, nursing pillows and pump bags. Instead, I stalled.
  “My back hurts too much to dig it up. How about next weekend?”
  I stuffed a bagel into my mouth, repulsed by my hanging on.
  
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• What moms get in return: The unexpected enlightenment of parenting while female

  08-05-2016 00:00 via salon.com
  
  This essay is excerpted and adapted from “Nurture the Wow: Finding Spirituality in the Frustration, Boredom, Tears, Poop, Desperation, Wonder and Radical Amazement of Parenting,” which is now available from Flatiron Books.
  A lot of things get thrown into a blender when we have kids – our logistics, our finances, our priorities, probably our sanity a little bit. And for most of us, our identity – our very sense of selfhood – also gets taken for a spin. You know? Sudd
  
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• Pentagon quietly sends troops to Yemen to fight al-Qaeda — which U.S. strengthened by backing destructive Saudi war

  08-05-2016 00:00 via salon.com
  
  The Obama administration has quietly deployed troops to help fight in Yemen over the past two weeks, with little public attention.
  Yemen now joins a series of other Middle Eastern countries in which U.S. troops are on the ground without declaration of war and approval from Congress, combating extremist groups that have benefited from U.S. policies.
  The military did not reveal until Friday, May 6, that it had sent troops to Yemen. The Pentagon refused to say what kind of forces it deployed or how
  
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