Today's Liberal News

News Roundup: Manhattan D.A. looks to reduce incarcerations; CDC director causes new fury

In the news today: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is instituting new policies that will seek jail time only for the most serious offenses. That’s consistent with research showing that incarceration for minor crimes is both expensive and ineffective—but the city’s police commissioner is furious. A lawsuit accuses Facebook of abetting a murderous insurrectionist group with algorithms that effectively work as recruitment tools for those groups.

Glenn Beck announces he has COVID-19 while doing commercials for diet bars

Remember Glenn Beck? He’s still around and he’s still doing what he’s always done: grifting away. His modern look includes spectacles and a sort of Kentucky Fried Chicken Colonel Sanders look. Surprising no one, Beck’s evidence-free conspiracy theory stylings, now common on the right, are focused on all of the same tropes of misinformation, disinformation, and anti-vaxxer clickbait that allows for making money on his BlazeTV network.

‘My disabled life is worthy’: Hashtag Rochelle Walensky inspired with horrible interview

It’s hard to believe the media training Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, allegedly sought out from a Democratic consultant is paying off. The director, who started her position last January, has been criticized time and time again for ever-changing CDC guidance issued in light of the coronavirus pandemic and more poignantly how she communicates said guidance.

Trump has been laughing at Jan. 6 victims’ trauma, according to sources

To say Donald Trump is a cartoon villain ascribes far too much humanity and gravitas to this oleaginous heap of gently used circus peanuts. Most people can fully size him up after hearing him purple-nurple the Queen’s English with his gauche, ungrammatical boasts for a just a few minutes, but many Americans remain in thrall to his, shall we say, “unique” charms.

Sidney Poitier Gave More Than He Was Given

During his 1964 acceptance speech for the Academy Award for Best Actor, Sidney Poitier, slightly winded from his trek to the stage, breathily asserted, “Because it is a long journey to this moment, I am naturally indebted to countless numbers of people.” Poitier’s labored emphasis on the “long journey to this moment” underscored both the stamina of his onscreen appeal and his protracted route to acclaim that began with his 1950 film debut in No Way Out.

To Age

Illustrations by Miki LoweThe poet W. S. Merwin was—like many of us, perhaps—preoccupied with his own mortality. He wrote about it often, most famously in “For the Anniversary of My Death”: “Every year without knowing it I have passed the day / When the last fires will wave to me / And the silence will set out.” But plenty of his works that seem to deal with the end of life are really about aliveness.

How Fake Spies Ruin Real Intelligence

For fans of spy movies and television shows, a visit to CIA headquarters will be disappointing. The visitor center looks nothing like the high-tech offices of Jason Bourne and Carrie Mathison. Instead, the entry to America’s best-known intelligence agency has more of a shabby post-office feel. There are teller windows with bulletproof glass, soda machines, and an old-fashioned black landline phone mounted on the back wall.

Justice Reformers Need to Update Their Priors

For most of this century, America’s debate about policing took place against a backdrop of falling murder rates. But in 2020, the U.S. murder rate rose 30 percent from 2019. Now the earliest figures from 2021 are in––and in many cities murders are still rising.These are uncomfortable facts for those of us who argue against the “tough on crime” excesses of the 1980s and ’90s.

Sudan Protests Demand End to Military Rule: “No Negotiation, No Partnership, No Legitimacy”

We get an update from Sudan, where at least three pro-democracy protesters were killed by security forces on Thursday, bringing the death toll to at least 60 since the military coup on October 25. Thursday’s protest came four days following Abdalla Hamdok’s resignation as Sudan’s prime minister, after he was deposed in the October coup and then shortly restored to power by the military in November.

WHO Says Omicron Variant Is Not “Mild” as ER Doctor Describes New COVID Wave Overwhelming Hospitals

We look at the skyrocketing number of COVID infections. Coronavirus cases hit record highs this week, with global cases climbing 70% from last week to 9.5 million and the U.S. reporting a single-day record of 1 million new cases on Monday. In the U.S., the extraordinary volume of cases is filling up emergency rooms nationwide and exhausting healthcare workers, says emergency room physician Dr. Craig Spencer, who has been treating coronavirus patients since the pandemic began.

Reform the Insurrection Act: Former Pentagon Adviser Says Trump Almost Used It to Subvert Election

Former Pentagon adviser Ryan Goodman says former President Trump could have used the Insurrection Act to hold onto power during the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by his supporters. “There needs to be reform of the Insurrection Act,” says Goodman, who authored the report “Crisis of Command: The Pentagon, the President, and January 6” for Just Security, where he is co-editor.

U.S.’ oldest surviving WWII veteran, Lawrence Brooks, has died at the age of 112

On Wednesday, the United States’ oldest surviving World War II veteran died. Lawrence Brooks was 112 years old, according to the National WWII Museum. Brooks was the youngest of 15 children, born to sharecroppers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His family moved to Mississippi after the Great Depression. 

When Brooks was 31 years old, he was drafted into the Army “and spent World War II in the predominantly African American 91st Engineer Battalion.