McConnell Lines Up Behind Trump
Yuri Gripas / Reuters
View mobile site
The Washington Post via Getty Images On Tuesday, the musical Hamilton was nominated for a record 16 Tony awards. And three weeks ago, its creator and star, Lin-Manuel Miranda, won the Pulitzer Prize. And it's all, of course, richly deserved. But one angle of the saga of Hamilton, both on-stage and off, that has not been commented on is how it shows the value of time off. Alexander Hamilton wasn't just the subject of our country's first sex scandal. He was perhaps also our first fully documented case -- and the founding father -- of political burnout. And one of the biggest takeaways from the musical, for me, is this question: If the hard-driving Hamilton had given himself the time he needed to recharge, how much better -- and longer -- would he have been able to serve the adopted country he loved so much?
ASSOCIATED PRESS
What happens next will test the character for all of us - Republican, Democrat, and Independent. It will determine whether we move forward as one nation or splinter at the hands of one man's narcissism and divisiveness.
JEWEL SAMAD via Getty Images
Happy first day of a half year of living with the possibility (however remote we have to believe it to be in order to stay sane) that Donald Trump - this crass and crude boor, this bloodthirsty psychopath, this Brobdingnagian narcissist, this proudly misogynistic ignoramus, this pus-filled boil of hate, this odious short-fingered vulgarian - could be the 45th President of the United States.
Shockingly –- given his outrageous, race-baiting and even violence-tinged rhetoric –- Trump is not that far behind in the horse race as the “fall” campaign informally begins. Nor does the Electoral College map look that impossible for him.
The Washington Post via Getty Images
Now that Governor Kasich is suspending his campaign, will the party come together and enthusiastically support its standard-barer?
Mike Blake / Reuters
The racists and bigots of America have always been out there. There have always been hideous trolls on the Internet. But now they are emboldened in a big way by the bellicose Donald Trump. He's opened Pandora's box, and nobody can shut it.
As it turns out, you have been as sideswiped, as sucker-punched, as drop-kicked as the rest of us. We feel for you. And there can be no overstatement about it. Your party has done the unthinkable: It's made Donald Trump's ascendency to the GOP nomination for the president of the United States.
Kamil Krzaczynski / Reuters
Are we seriously asking why young people don't like the contrived politicians who are awash in donor money, privilege, and connections? That's obvious. What's not obvious is how older generations got so used to that pulp.
The Washington Post via Getty Images
It is now official. Seventeen candidates ran for the Republican presidential nomination, and the sixteenth of these just suspended his campaign. This leaves Donald Trump as the last man standing.
In today's climate of renewed economic anxiety, many are prompted to jettison this tradition of pragmatic liberal education. In search of short cuts to vocational success, they undermine students' ability to respond to changes in the economy by preparing them only for what is valued right now.
Jupiterimages via Getty Images
Prejudice's real roots are far less immediately accessible than we think they are, so it's time to stop having such brash reactions to injustice and start having deep, elevated conversations about it.
Today in the United States, racial economic inequality persists because of the failure of will to invest in people of color, who continue to pay the price for a 21st century economy built off of the white supremacy of the 19th and 20th centuries. It
Big Cheese Photo via Getty Images
It's tempting for everyone else to feel morally superior to the oligarchs sucking us dry. But the truth is, the negative psychological traits that come with having money exist to a degree in the middle class too.
La_Corivo via Getty Images
Often we are acknowledged for mothering our living children and not for how we mother our children who have passed.
Siegfried Modola / Reuters
Wildlife trafficking is a global problem, with implications that extend far beyond the populations of animals killed for their hair, hides, teeth, and horns. If we're going to be successful in stemming this epidemic, the United States must play a leading role in eliminating our own demand for illegal products.
Jeff Kravitz via Getty Images
To the surprise of many, the pop star is still standing and riding a streak of three straight #1 hits.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
It may seem odd to picture the demise of the flagship brand of the world's largest beer company. But Anheuser-Busch - the U.S.-based unit of AB InBev - is following in the footsteps that led to the irrelevance of a host of other once-dominant companies - Eastman Kodak, Woolworth's Department Stores, Bethlehem Steel and Blockbuster Video, to name a few.
sshepard via Getty Images
"Still grading?" I asked my colleague, a professor at a Georgia college, as she carefully viewed her laptop a few weeks ago. "I'm finished with that," she told me. "Now I'm pricing bulletproof vests." She had good reason to do so.
Damir Sagolj / Reuters
The U.S. government has given small amounts of money to address the human victims of Agent Orange/dioxin. Much of the money has not reached the Agent Orange victims who need it so much, and the amounts allocated cannot make much of a dent in addressing the tremendous human suffering.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Webster's Dictionary defines decoupling as "eliminating the interrelationship" between two processes. But the interrelationship between CO2 emissions and economic growth has certainly not been eliminated.
MAHMOUD TAHA via Getty Images
Concerns over the potential for terrorist groups to obtain MANPADS from U.S.-supplied insurgents have been greatly heightened by incidents in which terrorist groups captured U.S.-supplied weaponry in Syria.
Ashlee Gadd
The thing about adulthood that I never understood until now was the mind-numbing monotony of it all. The grown-up life I fantasized about when I was a child did not include things like buying tires for the car or re-caulking the tub or rolling the garbage cans down to the curb in the pouring rain. You can't escape adulthood; it's everywhere.
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
For all those with Malias in their lives or, perhaps more importantly, those who can't do a year like this, let's stop calling it a "gap year" once and for all. It belittles the work students put into these years of their lives and it marginalizes those without the privileges to be able to work for a year for less than a living wage.
No, your whining about religious persecution because you have to bake a cake for a gay wedding doesn't make you the Martin Luther King, Jr. of a new conservative religious civil rights movement.
Such discourse may be unpleasant and off-putting, but campus community members should use their own voices to respond, not call for disciplinary action and the silencing of others.
maljalen via Getty Images
As you read this, chances are you've already used one today. Lightweight, durable, and convenient, plastic bags have become a staple of commerce -- so ubiquitous that most cashiers and shopkeepers usually don't even ask if you really need one.
Edgard Garrido / Reuters
Migratory monarch butterflies, which flock to the mountains of central Mexico every winter, are severely endangered because of herbicides, extreme weather and climate change. Now, a Mexican mining company with a terrible environmental record plans to reopen a mine in the heart of a protected monarch reserve.
Bloomberg via Getty Images
Senator Cruz, it was frightening for a conductor to see what happened in your misjudged pregnant pauses. What works from the pulpit and the orchestra pit does not always work on the stump.
Scott Olson via Getty Images
All we know for sure is that Ted Cruz dropping out of the Republican race has changed the Democratic race almost as profoundly as the Republican one.
RonTech2000 via Getty Images
"It was like when they broadcast 'The War of The Worlds'" explained Ernie Butler of Edmonton, "The prospect of Cruz wrapping his tentacles around the weakest among us is too much to bear," said Butler as he scampered into the darkness clutching a sleeping bag and sack of hastily-made sandwiches.
paula sierra via Getty Images
What's clear is that strong animal cruelty laws and dedicated enforcement go hand in hand with the elevation of public attitudes about the seriousness of these crimes. Each inspires and activates the other, and both are necessary to effectively tackle this problem.
