Today's Liberal News

Parents Are Tired of Waiting for Vaccines for Their Kids. So They’re Lying.

These days, the distance between ages 11 and 12 is more than a year. It is a chasm between danger and safety. Vaccines promise people 12 and older protection from COVID-19, but aren’t yet approved in the U.S. for younger children, and it isn’t clear exactly when they will be. Frustrated by the wait and desperate to protect their children, some parents are sneaking their 10- and 11-year-old kids across this chasm, and hoping not to get caught.

“Another World Is Possible”: How Occupy Wall Street Reshaped Politics & Kicked Off New Era of Protest

On the 10th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, we examine the legacy of the historic protests with three veterans of the movement: Nelini Stamp, now the director of strategy and partnerships at the Working Families Party; Jillian Johnson, a key organizer in Occupy Durham who now serves on the Durham City Council and is the city’s mayor pro tempore; and writer and filmmaker Astra Tayor, an organizer with the Debt Collective.

Forced Entry: NSO Group Spies Secretly Seized Control of Apple Devices by Exploiting Flaw in Code

Apple has released an emergency software update to fix a security flaw in its iPhones and other products researchers found was being exploited by the Israeli-based NSO Group to infect the devices with its Pegasus spyware. The security exploit exposes “widespread abuse that we have associated with NSO Group and other companies like it,” says Ronald Deibert, director of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which discovered the security flaw.

News Roundup: Insurrection echoes; public faith in Supreme Court is tanking

In the news today: A new pro-insurrectionist rally is planned for this Saturday, but it’s likely to be a bust. That doesn’t mean that the danger of domestic terrorism is diminishing, however. Meanwhile, Trump’s allies are launching new attacks on a top military official after a new book disclosed steps the military took to help ensure Trump couldn’t launch a rogue nuclear attack or start a new world war as he spiraled into post-election delusion.

Newsmax host freaks out after veteran points out Donald Trump was ‘fairly weak’ on Afghanistan

Joe Saboe is a 36-year-old Iraq war veteran. He started Team America by chance. The group has been described as “an impromptu network of veterans and citizen volunteers who came together to execute an ad hoc mission to get American citizens and Afghan allies safely out of Kabul before the American airlift ends.” With around 200 volunteers, Team America is one of many groups trying to coordinate and evacuate Afghan allies.

Disgraced Republican Speaker Hastert cuts settlement deal with one of the men he abused as a child

Disgraced former Republican Speaker of the House and convicted child molester Dennis Hastert has reportedly settled one of his ongoing legal issues surrounding his abuse of teenagers during his time as a wrestling coach at Yorkville High School, Illinois. The Associated Press reports that a “tentative out-of-court settlement” was reached between Hastert and one of the men he abused as a child regarding hush money Hastert had promised to pay back in 2010.

It’s no wonder police think it’s okay to joke about Black men dying: Courts keep protecting cops

In yet another example of police callousness and insensitivity, a Florida deputy has been fired after not only telling an inmate he looks like George Floyd, but asking him to say, “I can’t breathe,” words the Black father repeatedly told Minneapolis police before he was murdered. Deputy First Class Rodney Payne’s termination was unearthed on Wednesday when an internal affairs report was released to the Fort Myers News-Press.

It Has Come to Subscription Tacos

I like to think of America’s fast-food chains as a bunch of dysfunctional family members. McDonald’s is the golden boy, the kid who’s good at everything and won’t shut up about it. Burger King is the jealous younger brother. KFC is perhaps the cousin who still wears cargo shorts. And then, there’s Taco Bell: fast food’s problem child.The purveyor of fluorescent nacho cheese is just plain weird.

Sorry, a Coronavirus Infection Might Not Be Enough to Protect You

Immune cells can learn the vagaries of a particular infectious disease in two main ways. The first is bona fide infection, and it’s a lot like being schooled in a war zone, where any lesson in protection might come at a terrible cost. Vaccines, by contrast, safely introduce immune cells to only the harmless mimic of a microbe, the immunological equivalent of training guards to recognize invaders before they ever show their face.