Today's Liberal News

Diplomacy Alone Can’t Save Democracy

As Joe Biden convened his virtual Summit for Democracy this week, he warned that democratic erosion represents “the defining challenge of our time.” He isn’t wrong. Democracy is under siege, and this year has been marked by contested elections, coups, and autocratic brazenness. This was the fifth consecutive year in which the number of countries moving in the direction of authoritarianism outpaced those moving toward democracy.

Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story Is an Undeniable Triumph

Steven Spielberg has been making films that feel like musicals for his entire career. No, the fearsome shark of Jaws and dinosaurs of Jurassic Park didn’t belt out a tune, and heroes like Indiana Jones and Tintin weren’t dancing through their set pieces, but they might as well have been. Spielberg is an expert at the careful choreography of camera blocking; his gift for legibly communicating complicated sequences of movement on a massive scale is second to none.

“The Forever Prisoner”: Alex Gibney on Abu Zubaydah, Held in Guantánamo Without Charge Since 2006

We speak with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney on his new film, “The Forever Prisoner,” which follows the story of Guantánamo prisoner Abu Zubaydah, who was the first so-called high-value prisoner subjected to the CIA’s torture program and has been indefinitely imprisoned since 2006 without charge. Nearly two decades after the start of the U.S.

“Hold the Line”: Watch Filipina Journalist Maria Ressa’s Full Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

Filipina journalist Maria Ressa and Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov accepted the Nobel Peace Prize Friday for their “efforts to safeguard freedom of expression.” “There are so many more journalists persecuted in the shadows with neither exposure nor support, and governments are doubling down with impunity,” said Ressa in her acceptance speech at Friday’s Nobel ceremony, which we play in full.

“Terrible Step”: Press Freedom in Danger as U.K. Court Clears the Way for Julian Assange Extradition to U.S.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could soon face charges in the United States after a U.K. court ruled Friday in favor of the U.S. government’s appeal to extradite him. U.K. Judge Timothy Holroyde said he was satisfied with a pledge from the United States that Assange would not be held in a so-called ADX maximum-security prison in Colorado, despite a U.K.

Why Biden picked Powell

In the end, President Joe Biden did what many close to him expected: He took a longer-than-anticipated amount of time to arrive at a reasonable, moderate decision that thrilled few but carried limited risk.

What Is the Point of Boris Johnson?

By April 1968, Charles de Gaulle was bored. “None of this amuses me anymore,” the French president told his aide-de-camp, Admiral François Flohic. “There is no longer anything difficult or heroic to do.

Taylor Energy billionaire used oil spill cleanup to avoid taxes for over a decade

In 2004, Hurricane Ivan tore through the Gulf of Mexico. One of the worst disasters wrought by Ivan’s wrath was damage to an offshore oil rig, owned by Louisiana-based company Taylor Energy, which fell over—uncapping the well beneath. Crude oil began to fill the Gulf.

Taylor Energy first lied and said that only a few gallons of oil were leaking every day out of the broken well, while they worked to plug the holes created by Ivan and their rig.

‘Appropriate use of state’s constitutional power’: Court dismisses challenge to Illinois’ ICE ban

Two Illinois counties went straight to court after lawmakers passed into law legislation that effectively ends immigration detention in the state. Their plan was to deal the Illinois Way Forward Act a death blow, and continue reaping in millions from federal contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

But that legal effort by McHenry and Kankakee Counties has failed for now, because a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit.

Senate Democrats are determined to ‘restore the Senate,’ if only Manchin will let them

On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer notified Senate Democrats he is prioritizing an effort to “restore the Senate,” and do something about the filibuster in order to pass voting rights legislation. Politico has a bit more information on what “restore the Senate” means, and also why Schumer is so intent on trying to get the budget reconciliation for President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better (BBB) plan done before Christmas.

The 16 Best TV Shows of 2021

Last year, TV became essential. When the stages we used to go to—concert halls, movie theaters, sports arenas—closed amid the pandemic, the small screen became the only outlet for safe viewing entertainment. Things have begun to change this year: Artists are announcing tours, people have trickled back into cinemas, and even the Summer Olympics happened. (Sort of.)But TV, thankfully, hasn’t stopped keeping us enthralled.

We Know a Lot More About Omicron Now

Sign up for Derek’s newsletter here.The flood of Omicron news can be overwhelming. The endless data, anecdotes, and studies are hard enough to synthesize. But what makes the information even harder to parse is that so much evidence (i.e., what people are seeing) is intertwined with opinion (i.e., what people are hoping and fearing).

The Pandemic of the Vaccinated Is Here

Even before the arrival of Omicron, the winter months were going to be tough for parts of the United States. While COVID transmission rates in the South caught fire over the summer, the Northeast and Great Plains states were largely spared thanks to cyclical factors and high vaccination rates. But weather and the patterns of human life were bound to shift the disease burden northward for the holidays—and that was just with Delta.