Salon

Fans of the “The Simpsons” are calling on the history-making animated series to do it once again — petitioning writers to turn Lisa the vegetarian into Lisa the vegan.

In 1995, when the groundbreaking animated sitcom aired the episode “Lisa the Vegetarian,” featuring Paul and Linda McCarthy, following the second graders’ conversion to vegetarianism, it humorously highlighted animal rights and environmental issues in way that helped fuel wider acceptance of the lifestyle. Now, thousands of fans are hoping “Simpsons” writers can recreate the magic for veganism.

While major anti-choice activists and politicians are rushing to microphones to disingenuously declare, contra Donald Trump, that they would never try to punish women for abortions, their true punitive and frankly creepy side is coming out in Missouri. State legislators there are threatening to arrest Mary Kogut, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, because she won’t turn over a list of names of women who got abortions to them. Kogut’s lawyers are citing federal law protecting patient privacy to keep this list out of the hands of Republican legislators.

Children in America are steadily getting more and more obese. The numbers are staggering. In 1980, 7 percent of American children aged 6-11 years were obese. By 2012, that figure more than doubled, to 18 percent. During the same period, adolescent obesity rose from 5 percent to nearly 21 percent.

Vivek Murthy, the U.S. Surgeon General, who has set his sights on tackling America’s obesity epidemic, has singled out the problem of childhood obesity in particular. Last October, he welcomed two dozen children from the I’m A Star Foundation to the nation’s capital to present nearly a year’s worth of research on the topic and ask their suggestions to combat it.

“Bernie or Bust!” That’s the defiant rallying cry of the Bernie Sanders hardcore, the pledge made by Sanders supporters that intend to vote for him and him alone in the general election – whether his name’s on the ballot or not. It’s not just a disaffected few making a stand either; these ‘Bernie or Busters’ don’t constitute a mere handful of the senator’s many devotees. In November, a reported 33% of Bernie Sanders supporters won’t give Hillary Clinton their vote if she wins the Democratic bid. That’s a sizable chunk of Dem voters – over 41% of them so far – saying it’s either Bernie Sanders for President, or nobody at all.

It’s a bold statement, especially as the alternative to the Democratic candidate in the general is now almost certain to be Donald Trump, aka the sexist, immigrant-bashing serial liar and current sixth-greatest threat to the global economy. Predictably, somehave been critical of the Bernie or Bust movement. By refusing to stump for HRC on Election Day, they say 33% of Sanders supporters increase the risk of Trump’s America. Just last weekend, Bill Maher admonished those of his fellow Sanders supporters that flat-out won’t ever vote Clinton. As Maher sees it, Bernie or Busters take issue with Clinton’s “insufficient purity” as a candidate. Arguably, there’s a bit more to it than that.

A pro-gun mother who was accidentaly shot by her 4-year-old son could face misdemeanor charges and up to 180 days in prison for allowing her child access to a firearm, The Associated Press reports.

Jamie Gilt, 31, of Florida, placed a loaded .45-caliber handgun in the front seat of her pickup truck, while riding with her son, Lane, on March 8, according to authorities. However, the gun, which was not in a holster and didn’t have a safety lock on, slid underneath the back seat and into the hands of the little boy, said Putnam County Sheriff’s Capt. Gator DeLoach.

Gilt’s son, who had recently learned how to unbuckle himself out of his child seat, saw the gun on the floor and picked it up, according to reports. He managed to shoot his mother in the back, with the bullet exiting through her chest and into the windshield. Lane was not harmed.

The drug war is an issue in this campaign, but it ought to be front and center. America’s war on drugs hasn’t worked – for anyone. It’s been a boon to the pharmaceutical companies, who don’t want the competition, and to the prison-industrial complex, who profit from locking up nonviolent offenders, but it’s been a disaster for everyone else.

The April cover story of Harper’s magazine explains not just how counterproductive the drug war has been but also, and perhaps more importantly, its racist roots. Written by Dan Baum, the article lays out the case for legalization, which is worth absorbing on its own. But it begins with a startling revelation from John Ehrlichman, one of Richard Nixon’s close aides and a Watergate co-conspirator.

Now that the outcome of the primary seems considerably less up in the air than it did a month ago, the fight Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign inspired between the Democratic Party’s self-styled populists and its wonks — Paul Krugman chief among them — has lost much of its urgency.

But that’s something of a mirage. Regardless of who wins this year’s primary (or the whole presidential campaign itself, for that matter) the fault lines within the Democratic coalition that were exposed during the back-and-forth are not going anywhere. And there’s little reason to suspect that when 2020 (or 2024) rolls around, the same disagreements over tactics and philosophy won’t rise up again.

In the wake of a terror attack that took the lives of at least 26 people and injured over 130 in Belgium this morning, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump called in to Fox News not to offer sympathy to the bereaved, but to warn viewers that if they don’t elect him in November, such tragedies will happen on American soil.

“I think it’s absolutely horrible,” Trump began. “I’ve been talking about this for a long time. Brussels was a beautiful place.”

Trump later told co-hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt, and Brian Kilmeade. It went from “zero crime,” but because of what he considers Belgium’s lax immigration policies, Brussels is now “a disaster city, it’s a total disaster, and we have to be very careful as to who we allow in this country.”