In 2015, Owen Labrie was convicted of misdemeanor sexual assault and child endangerment after raping a 15-year-old girl during a St. Paul’s School tradition called the “Senior Salute,” in which senior boys pressured younger girls for sex. He was sentenced to a year in jail, but remained largely free as he sought to…
Last July, 32-year-old Philando Castile bled out in his car after being shot by Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez. Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, recorded the brutality as her four-year-old daughter sat in the backseat. Yanez was charged with second degree manslaughter in November, and today, in court,…
After a week of violence, protests every where were heated this weekend with over 300 reported arrests, most of them in St. Paul and Baton Rouge.
For most of America, Columbus Day is coming up this Monday October 12, except in a handful of cities where the celebration of Christopher Columbus has been replaced by Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Because, you know, one can’t exactly discover a new place if nations of people were already living there for centuries.
So, speeches are over, the balloons have dropped, the Republicans have abandoned Minneapolis-St. Paul with almost as much alacrity as they once did New Orleans and it's time for another listicle of shit I wish I'd found a reason to write about before now.
Stop! It's Maverick time! Cindy will introduce the film to introduce her husband who will apparently talk forever and a day but I am such a dedicated blogger that I will mock the thing in its entirety while the energy brought to me by my bag of Twizzlers and my double cappuccino slowly dies, like the light in my eyes…
Not to scare anyone, but I'll be back shortly after 8:00 ET to liveblog tonight's Republican Convention speeches, which include takes on Republicanism from Mel Martinez, Tim Pawlenty, "Snowflake" Brownback, the inventor of color-coded fear Tom Ridge and their main man, John McCain. Feel free to use this thread as an…
Last weekend, McCain surrogate Carly Fiorina told women to stop allowing the Democrats to win their votes on the issue of abortion, saying, "The Democratic Party has done a disservice to women by trying to hold women hostage to the issue of Roe v. Wade." In Carly's world view (and in her speech last night), the issue…
Dear McCain Handlers, Please let Roberta McCain talk to reporters again. Not because she'll lose her son the Presidency — we think he might be able to do that himself — but because the campaign is more fun for everyone, including your candidate, when it's not all scripted and boring. It'll totally fit with your meme…
Sarah Palin is taking the stage tonight to give the most important speech of her political career. And if the shouting crowds (and my utter lack of a internet connection as I type this) are anything to go by, there's not going to be an Eagleton moment. Anyway, it seems like I'll apparently be posting this after it's…
The start of Ladies' Night at the RNC is here, and it's a CEO sideshow, with former eBay CEO Meg Whitman and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina speaking right off the bat to a half-empty convention center. I'm one of 3 people paying attention to the speeches, if the loud conversations and lack of working reporters are any…
Greta Van Susteren is one of Fox News' anchors and even after I kvelled all over Bill Hemmer last week, she was still willing to sit down for an interview. So I trekked over to the Fox News tent at the RNC yesterday to talk to Greta about all the gender issues going on in politics and the media. I was going to ask how…
Phyllis Schafly, she who led the fight to make sure that the rest of American womanity wouldn't have the benefits of a constitutional amendment giving us equal rights, has her granny panties all in a bunch because the McCain campaign canceled a scheduled appearance by Sarah Palin at Schafly's event yestserday.…
The thing about living in Washington is that you run into famous-for-DC people all the time because it's a relatively small place and everyone goes to the same 10 restaurants for work functions. Between that and being a lobbyist, I've met a lot of Republicans, big and small, and rarely are they ever less than…
The Republican National Convention hasn't even officially started and already it's being scaled back due to Republicans not wanting to look like insensitive assholes (again) when a hurricane hits the Gulf Coast. In the absence of hangovers, parties or Madonna concerts to discuss this week, Kay Steiger of Campus…
