Today's Liberal News

Daily Kos Elections 3Q 2021 Senate fundraising reports roundup

Quarterly fundraising reports for federal candidates covering the period from July 1 to Sept. 30 were due at the Federal Elections Commission on Oct. 15 at 12:00 AM ET. Below is our chart of fundraising numbers for every Senate incumbent up for reelection this cycle (excluding those who’ve said they’re retiring) and any notable announced or potential candidates.

As always, all numbers are in thousands.

Franklin Graham must answer for his bullying of domestic violence survivor Naghmeh Panahi

Content warning: Discussion of domestic violence.

For much of the second half of the Obama administration, Iranian-born pastor Saeed Abedini was the face of persecuted Christians around the world. He spent almost four years in an Iranian prison on trumped-up charges of endangering national security. In truth, he had been ensnared in the heavy-handed persecution that Christians in Iran have long faced under the mullahs.

The Self-Help That No One Needs Right Now

Nothing about The Body Keeps the Score screams “best seller.” Written by the psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, the book is a graphic account of his decades-long career treating survivors of traumatic experiences such as rape, incest, and war. Page after page, readers are asked to wrestle with van der Kolk’s theory that trauma can sever the connection between the mind, which wants to forget what happened, and the body, which can’t.

What Working For Colin Powell Taught Me

My favorite recollection of Colin Powell was the look he got when he was amused. He’d tilt his head up and look at you under the base of his glasses, smiling, and take joy in the moment. He had such a great capacity for merriment.Powell died today, at age 84, of complications of COVID-19, his family said.

The Volcanologist’s Paradox

On March 16, 2017, Mount Etna almost killed Boris Behncke. He was on the volcano’s snow-covered flanks, accompanying a film crew from the BBC. Serpents of lava were slithering out of a southeastern crater, but Behncke, a volcanologist at Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, felt no need to take his hard hat out of his bag. They were more than a mile away from the crater, seemingly far from harm’s reach.

As CIA Ramps Up Anti-China Actions, Why Doesn’t Congress Oppose Biden’s “New Cold War”?

We speak with Ethan Paul, a former reporter with the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong who is now with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. China’s military revealed last week that it had conducted beach landing and assault drills in the province across from Taiwan. This comes as the CIA has set up a new mission center focused solely on China. CIA Director William Burns has described China as “the most important geopolitical threat facing the United States.

Pediatrician Welcomes Imminent Approval of COVID Vaccine for Kids 5-11 Amid Opposition to Mask Mandates

The Biden administration is launching a national vaccination campaign for about 28 million children between the ages of 5 and 11. The vaccine will be two doses and one-third as potent as the one being given to people over the age of 12. An independent panel is set to offer a recommendation to the FDA that evaluates the safety and efficacy of the vaccines in late October. We’re joined by Dr.

“Racism Plays a Major Part”: Like in Flint, Lead Pipes Leave Benton Harbor, Michigan, with Toxic Water

Residents of Benton Harbor, Michigan, are calling for immediate action on replacing the city’s lead pipes, which have endangered their drinking water. Since 2018, tap water in the predominantly Black city has contained lead levels up to 60 times the federal limit. Yet government officials have only addressed the toxic contamination as an urgent crisis in recent days. Dr.

Human History Gets a Rewrite

Illustration by Rodrigo Corral. Sources: Hugh Sitton / Getty; Been There YB / Shutterstock
Many years ago, when I was a junior professor at Yale, I cold-called a colleague in the anthropology department for assistance with a project I was working on. I didn’t know anything about the guy; I just selected him because he was young, and therefore, I figured, more likely to agree to talk.Five minutes into our lunch, I realized that I was in the presence of a genius.

‘Maybe the Coronavirus Was Lower-Hanging Fruit’

Two years ago, approximately nobody on Earth had ever heard of mRNA vaccines. This was for the very good reason that no country had ever authorized one. As a scientific experiment, synthetic mRNA was more than 40 years old. As a product, it had yet to be born.Last year, mRNA technology powered the two fastest vaccine developments in history. Moderna famously prepared its COVID-vaccine recipe in about 48 hours.

News Roundup: Idaho GOP embraces antisemitism; ‘bogus’ academy highlights charter school mess

In the news today: The decay of the Republican Party into an anti-science, pro-hoax, violence-peddling, virus-promoting cult is a national issue, but that still doesn’t explain whatever’s been happening in Idaho. A man placed in solitary confinement for over a year is the first to use new law to sue over his treatment. And if you didn’t know the nation’s charter schools were a mess? The nation’s charter schools are a mess.

Introduction to fact-checking: What do you do when peer pressure challenges the truth?

Which of these lines of asterisks is longest?

Line One:  *********************************

Line Two:  ***************************************************

Line Three:  ******************
.

No one is watching you. No one has any idea which line you pick.

Knowing the answer under these circumstances is one thing.

Standing by your answer regardless of what others say is a completely different thing.

The Comfortable Crises of HBO’s Succession

As Season 3 of Succession begins, the mighty Logan Roy (played by Brian Cox) is in the crosshairs. His son Kendall (Jeremy Strong) has exposed the family patriarch’s involvement in covering up a litany of scandals at their company, Waystar Royco, calling him “a malignant presence, a bully, and a liar.” The impulsive decision could be fatal for the media conglomerate, potentially attracting the attention of the government and affecting every employee.

Revelations about bogus academy prove charter schools need better oversight

A lot of people in the Donald Trump administration had qualifications so questionable that they had us wondering, “What are they doing there?” That question was especially loud when it came to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. In case you don’t recall, DeVos had no background whatsoever in education and no real concept of what her department was supposed to do.