Today's Liberal News

Manchin suggests he is willing to ‘look at’ Senate filibuster reforms

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin made the rounds of the Sunday shows (four of them, in fact) for reasons we will not speculate on, but a bit of news did come out of it. On “Meet the Press,” while speaking to the unpainted plaster wall that is Chuck Todd, Manchin added as aside that while he still supports the Senate filibuster, he might be willing to look at rule changes to make filibustering a more “painful” process for would-be saboteurs. Perhaps.

What you should and should not do after getting your chance at COVID-19 vaccine

Congratulations! You have a fresh SpongeBob Band-Aid on your off arm; a dose of Pfizer, or Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson vaccine sunk deep into your muscle tissue; and the rabbit is … sorry, rabbits have nothing to do with this. However, if your first inclination is to climb onto a table in the middle of the nearest Applebee’s and belt out a chorus of “Climb Every Mountain,” there are several reasons why you really shouldn’t.

Tracking Biden’s promises to Black America: Those we wish he never made and ones we pray he’ll keep

President Joe Biden would not be where he is without Black voters. Fittingly, he’s made some pretty weighty promises in his plan for Black America. We’re keeping track of them all in a biweekly series.

Whereas we normally keep track of how the president’s actions match up with his campaign promises, as of late, it’s the promises themselves that are causing Biden problems.

The Differences Between the Vaccines Matter

Public-health officials are enthusiastic about the new, single-shot COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson, despite its having a somewhat lower efficacy at preventing symptomatic illness than other available options. Although clinical-trial data peg that rate at 72 percent in the United States, compared with 94 and 95 percent for the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, many experts say we shouldn’t fixate on those numbers.

The Supreme Court Might Kill Voting Rights—Quietly

At the center of any democracy is the right to vote. If people cannot vote, then they have no say in the laws that govern them and cannot be truly free and equal citizens. But the right to vote is not a machine that runs by itself; it is dependent on the work of laws and institutions.

Black Erasure

Nina Simone sang “[POC] is the color of my true love’s hair”
& they say [POC] don’t crack
& let us bless gumbo
quimbombó & [POC]-eyed peas
& [POC] weddings & broom jumps & Danez Smith
wrote “& even the [POC] guy’s profile reads ‘sorry,no [POC] guys’” & to flirt men have asked if I’m
[POC] where it counts  
& hey remember outcry over [POC] Rue
in The Hunger Games
[POC] Hermione [POC] James Bond
[POC] Spiderman & Mary Jan

Growing My Faith in the Face of Death

I have spent a good part of my life talking with people about the role of faith in the face of imminent death. Since I became an ordained Presbyterian minister in 1975, I have sat at countless bedsides, and occasionally even watched someone take their final breath. I recently wrote a small book, On Death, relating a lot of what I say to people in such times. But when, a little more than a month after that book was published, I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, I was still caught unprepared.