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“Orators are most vehement when their cause is weak,” noted Cicero.

submitted 6 hours ago • 0 comments

I’d love for Bertrand to respond to the aggressively vile Leavitt with this: Thou art so leaky, that we must leave thee to thy sinking, for thy dearest quit thee.” “Antony and Cleopatra”

submitted 6 hours ago • 1 comment

Leavitt crying “shame” is rich. Memo to Leavitt: “Were shame enough to shame thee, wert thou not shameless.” “Henry VI, Part 3”

submitted 6 hours ago • 0 comments

Re. the odious Leavitt: “Courtesy itself must convert to disdain if you come in her presence.” “Much Ado About Nothing”

submitted 6 hours ago • 0 comments

Exclusive: US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months, according to an early US intel assessment. The WH says the assessment is "flat-out wrong." www.cnn.com/2025/06/24/p...

submitted 2 days ago • 106 comments

“His temper, therefore, must be well observ'd…but, being moody, give him line and scope till that his passions, like a whale on ground, confound themselves with working.” “Henry IV, Part 2”

submitted 9 hours ago • 0 comments

“You shall mark many a duteous and knee-crooking knave that (doting on his own obsequious bondage) wears out his time much like his master’s ass for naught but provender, and when he’s old, cashiered.” “Othello”

submitted 9 hours ago • 0 comments

The Bard to Hegseth: “Sir, sir, thou art so leaky, that we must leave thee to thy sinking, for thy dearest quit thee.” “Antony and Cleopatra”

submitted 9 hours ago • 0 comments

“[Trump’s] big manly voice, turning again toward childish treble.” “As You Like It”

submitted 11 hours ago • 0 comments

“Karoline Leavitt went full North Korea in praise of Trump with one of her most absurdly obsequious performances yet.” Leavitt, Hegseth, Rubio, and others, in the words of Shakespeare, “In obsequious fondness crowd to his presence.”

submitted 13 hours ago • 0 comments

“Mere prattle, without practice, is all his soldiership.”

submitted 17 hours ago • 0 comments

Heir Ball: How the Cost of Youth Sports Is Changing the N.B.A. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

submitted 18 hours ago • 0 comments

“In obsequious fondness crowd to his presence.” “Measure for Measure”

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

“Let me lick thy shoe,” says Caliban Leavitt.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

On Orwell’s birthday, remember the words he might (or might not) have said: “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations.”

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Trump and Stephen Miller’s America: “In cruelty will I seek out my fame.” “Henry VI, Part 2”

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

More than ever now we miss the incomparable journalist George Orwell, born on this day in 1903. My essay on gibberish and journalism. www.culturaldaily.com/gibberish-jo...

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

After Trump is gone we will need a journalism reboot. With journalists, not stenographers, sideline “reporters,” and P.R. flunkies.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

“If all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth,” wrote the prescient George Orwell, born on this day in 1903, in “1984.”

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

George Orwell (born on this day in 1903) anticipating MAGA:

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

“His addiction was to courses vain, his companies unletter'd, rude and shallow, his hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports, and never noted in him any study...” “Henry V”

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

“Bear with my weakness. My old brain is troubled. Be not disturbed with my infirmity.” “The Tempest”

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Good (and infuriating) op-ed in NYT by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, who has spent years in Trump country rather than (as many journos do) just parachuting into a diner. The bad news: His supporters are aware that his policies hurt them. They don't care. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/09/o...

submitted 17 days ago • 10 comments

The Bove allegations should be treated as something akin to Watergate, or Iran Contra. The administration was attempting to do something they knew was illegal (anticipating the courts saying as much), and then trying to COVER IT UP. Only here instead of it being run out of the WH or NSC, it’s DOJ

submitted 2 days ago • 312 comments

“Bondi is the nation’s chief law enforcement official, not some pundit trying to score points on social media. When she engages in performative partisanship, acting more like a (terrible) political operative than an A.G., she doesn’t just damage her own reputation—she undermines her office.”

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

“The absence of a reflexive public endorsement of Trump’s warmaking is a positive development—and a sign, whether he knows it or not, that [Trump] remains on a very short political leash indeed.”

submitted 2 days ago • 4 comments

“Trump lied to the public” could be said of every day during his presidency.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

BREAKING: Emil Bove - whose judicial confirmation hearing is tomorrow - told lawyers to tell the courts to “fuck off” if they ordered the planes to El Salvador to turn around - per whistleblower Erez Reuveni. Gift article: www.nytimes.com/2025/06/24/u...

submitted 2 days ago • 880 comments

Touché.

submitted 3 days ago • 850 comments

If you need a mask to enforce the law, you don’t deserve a badge. Federal agents are snatching people off the streets—faces covered, names hidden. This isn’t safety. It’s secrecy. It’s not America. adamkinzinger.substack.com/p/why-are-fe...

submitted 2 days ago • 2089 comments

“Once again, we have to pretend that Trump is someone who might be telling the truth or is not just a small, venal man. If he wasn’t the president of United States, we would be ignoring all this. Because he is, we have to talk about it.”

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

“This is no answer, thou unfeeling man, to excuse the current of thy cruelty.” “The Merchant of Venice”

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

“I fear that Trump’s war with Iran will enable him to use these pretexts—terrorism, national emergency, and war—to further suppress dissent at home, narrow freedom of speech and expression, make warrantless searches and arrests of Americans, imprison opponents, and put more military on our streets.“

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Memo to Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries from Shakespeare: “You were wont to be a follower, but now you are a leader.”

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Will the Democrats ever stop playing not to lose against the “cruelty, the inhumanity, the racism [of the Trump administration]? And at a time when the Democratic base is really fed to the teeth with Democratic leaders who don’t fight, don’t even stand up for themselves.”

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Dear Media: We need journalism, not public relations.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

“The day after Trump joined Israel in bombing Iran’s nuclear installations, Netanyahu and his circle are counting on his political resurrection. Never mind the catastrophe of Gaza, with tens of thousands dead and worldwide condemnation, or Netanyahu’s assaults on democratic norms and institutions.”

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

With apologies to the Bard, Uneasy lies the cap that wears this head.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

The Bard to Trump: “Thou art the cap of all the fools alive.”

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

“Is his head worth a hat…?” “As You Like It”

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

“By this hat, then, he in the red face had it.” “The Merry Wives of Windsor”

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

“Forget about intelligence,” says Rubio. That neatly encapsulates the legacy of the ignorant Trump and his sycophantic administration.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Why are no headlines focusing on the unconstitutional and dictatorial nature of this action?

submitted 5 days ago • 1293 comments

New: Trump’s two-week window was a smokescreen. He had already decided to attack Iran when he said he was open to negotiating. Our report on tonight’s historic U.S. strikes. www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

submitted 5 days ago • 180 comments

During the war monger Trump’s speech last night I was reminded of a long interview I had with David Halberstam in 2005 I asked him if he had a pet peeve. He said this:

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

“Everyone, when there's war in the air, learns to live in a new element: falsehood. Everybody lies.” “Tiger at the Gates,” by Jean Giraudoux

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Trump Bombs Iran, and America Waits

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Alas, yes. Irredeemable and shamelessly craven Republicans. And impotent, rudderless Democrats.

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

The “prescription to reverse, or at least treat, the Great Rewiring of children’s lives. Four norms that parents, and society at large, should adopt: no smartphones before the age of 14; no social media until 16; phone-free schools; and far more unsupervised play and childhood independence.”

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments