The Supreme Court's 2014 McCutcheon v FEC ruling eliminated aggregate caps on individual campaign donations, and this paved the way for the DNC and the Hillary Victory Fund to collaborate with 33 state-level Democratic parties to accept $10,000 donations from the millionaires and billionaires who back Clinton, kicking them back up to Hillary, allowing each couple to donate up to $1.32M to the Clinton campaign. Read the rest
This is a damned inspiring way to spend 90 minutes; Dawson's speech is a hell of a barn-burner that makes the connection between anti-establishment movements on the right and left (and points out they key difference: Trump will go to the White House to say, 'You're fired!' and Bernie will take office to say 'You're hired!'), Spike Lee makes an impassioned plea for people to talk to their parents about Clinton's actual track record on social justice issues, and Residente minces no words about someone who lauds Kissinger, the architect of Latin American genocide, as a foreign policy inspiration. Read the rest
Kim Metcalfe is a Democratic Party superdelegate from Alaska, a state whose party members pledged 81.6% of their support to Bernie Sanders.
Sanders won an unprecedented six out of seven primaries in a streak that culminated with astounding, lopsided victories on Saturday night. MSNBC "covered" it by airing a couple of reality TV shows about life in prison, while CNN preferred to cover some breaking news about Jesus, who has been dead for at least 2,000 years, and who would have felt the Bern anyway. Read the rest
Stephanie Cegielski was in the Trump campaign from the beginning, first serving as communications director of the Make America Great Again Super PAC, then shutting down the PAC "in order to position him as the quintessential non-politician." Read the rest
Hugh sends us this "beautifully made mashup video of the Republican candidates as Munsters." Read the rest
Jeff Greenspan and Andrew Tider are two artists who spent more than a year working with prisoners to identify CEOs who presided over terrible crimes without any personal penalties, and paired convicts with CEOs, commissioning portraits of the rich people whose impunity protected them from the inmates' fate. Read the rest
John Oliver continues to deliver the best comedy tech analysis in the business, with an epic rant/explainer that delves into Apple vs FBI and the new crypto wars with scathing wit and deep, technical truth that's made miraculously accessible to a general audience. Read the rest
After Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields was beaten up by one of Donald Trump's aides while covering a Florida campaign event, the company's senior management sided with Trump, ordering staff to cease communicating about their colleague's treatment. Read the rest
Donald Trump rallies are notoriously violent, as his supporters, security staff and even Secret Service detail beat up protesters and members of the press who get too close to violent incidents (Drumpf himself explicitly encourages his supporters to beat up protesters). Read the rest
Evan from Fight for the Future writes, "President Obama has said he's running the 'most transparent administration in history.' But new documents reveal that his administration secretly lobbied to kill transparency reform legislation that had broad bipartisan support and would have made it easier for journalists and citizens to file FOIA requests that help keep the government open and accountable." Read the rest
The Obama administration declared itself to be the "most transparent administration in history," but a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act reveals that Obama's Justice Department worked tirelessly behind the scenes to kill any chance of increased Freedom of Information Act access to governments at all levels, from lobbying Congress to kill FOIA reform to urging other administrative agencies to obstruct FOIA requests. Read the rest
After an exhaustive (and, no doubt, exhausting) survey of Trump's speeches and interviews with his supporters, Thomas Frank concludes that while Trump's outlandish statements get all the headlines, the most consistent theme in Trumpism is that trade deals have destroyed the prospects of American middle-class workers, and this view is, if anything, even more heterodox to the parties' establishments than Trump's dumb wall. Read the rest
Of course, they also ran two neutral ones during that period, so I suppose it all balances out -- it's not like he's raising more money, from more Americans, than any other candidate in history. Oh, wait. Read the rest
Phenomena like the Harlem Cryptoparty demonstrate the connection between racial justice and cryptography -- civil rights organizers remember that the FBI spied on and blackmailed Martin Luther King, sending him vile notes encouraging him to kill himself. Read the rest
Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson's Transmetropolitan is nearly 20 years old, and the science fiction story of a journalist who wages truth-war on scumbag politicians 200 years from now could not be more relevant than it is today. Read the rest
After mixed showings in the primaries and a sense that the Democratic Party's profoundly undemocratic "superdelegates" will hand Hillary the nomination no matter what, the press has all but declared Bernie Sanders out of the race. Read the rest
