Today's Liberal News

An Eerie Glow in the Sky Might Come From Mars’s Direction

Joshua Rhoades was standing near an abandoned farmhouse in rural Illinois on a windy night in early March, fiddling with his camera, when he noticed what he called “a faint, eerie, ethereal glow” above him. A pillar of light had illuminated the darkness, stretching from the horizon—a hint of sun, but it was nearly 8 p.m.

Australians Face Worst Flooding in Decades

Days of extreme rainfall have swamped large areas of Australia, especially in the state of New South Wales. Hundreds of people have been rescued, tens of thousands have been evacuated, and at least two deaths have been reported so far. As the weather system begins to move away, recovery efforts are now starting in some of the dozens of communities that were declared disaster zones. Collected below are images of the widespread damage caused by this once-in-a-generation flooding event.

How Australia Ended Regular Mass Shootings: Gun Reforms After 1996 Massacre Could Be Model for U.S.

As the United States struggles to make sense of two new mass shootings — in Atlanta, Georgia, and Boulder, Colorado — we look at one country that fought to change its culture of gun violence and succeeded. In April of 1996, a gunman opened fire on tourists in Port Arthur, Tasmania, killing 35 people and wounding 23 more. Just 12 days after the grisly attack and the public outcry it sparked, Australia announced new gun control measures.

How the NRA’s Radical Anti-Gun-Control Ideology Became GOP Dogma & Still Warps Debate

The massacre in a Boulder grocery store came just after a Colorado judge ruled in favor of the National Rifle Association’s challenge to the city’s ban on assault weapons, which was passed in 2018 after this type of weapon was used in the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida. Despite increasingly regular mass shootings, the NRA has pushed for expanded gun rights since the 1970s and insisted that more guns, not fewer, would prevent gun deaths.

Colorado Democrat Elected After Son Killed in 2012 Aurora Shooting: Congress Must Enact Gun Control

Following Monday’s massacre in Boulder, Colorado, we speak with Colorado state Representative Tom Sullivan, who entered politics after his son Alex was killed in the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting. He explains how the state’s painful history of mass shootings, going back to Columbine High School in 1999, shows even in places most affected by gun violence, it can be difficult to make lasting and effective change.

What If This Was the Last Year Your Loved One Was Lucid?

Margaret Licata has watched her husband’s dementia progress gradually over the past two decades—and now, during the pandemic, all at once.Joe Licata, 79, has frontotemporal dementia with aphasia, which means that he cannot speak or understand language. He began showing symptoms in his late 50s, when Margaret noticed a personality change: Joe would shrug off her attempts at conversation and seemed interested only in watching television.

Stars Now Understand That Their Destruction Is Our Entertainment

“Whatever they think happened is probably pretty far from what really did,” the director Michael Ratner recently said in an interview about his new four-part YouTube documentary, Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil, whose first two installments are now out. The “they” he refers to is the general public, and the “what” is the July 2018 incident that landed the now-28-year-old singer Demi Lovato in intensive care.

Why America’s Great Crime Decline Is Over

Americans are experiencing a crime wave unlike anything we’ve seen this century. After decades of decline, shootings have surged in the past few years. In 2020, gun deaths reached their highest point in U.S. history in the midst of a pandemic. In 2021, although researchers can’t yet say anything definite about overall crime, shooting incidents appear to be on the rise in many places.

“We Are Here Because You Are There”: Viet Thanh Nguyen on How U.S. Foreign Policy Creates Refugees

Pulitzer Prize-winning Vietnamese American writer Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses why he chooses to use the term “refugee” in his books, and speaks about his own experience as a refugee. His new novel tells the story of a man who arrives in France as a refugee from Vietnam, and explores the main character’s questioning of ideology and different visions of liberation.

Some states vaccinating essential workers, but in others ‘It’s like we’re being pushed to the side’

We called huge numbers of workers essential but didn’t raise their pay or respect their safety in the coronavirus pandemic, and it’s only now that most “essential” workers outside of health care are starting to get vaccinated. But that process is finally happening in more states, after just a few prioritized those workers in the early phases of the vaccine rollout.

Meatpacking workers are a key case.

Lauren Boebert sends tots and pears to Boulder … then sends email yelling ‘HELL NO’ to gun control

It initially looked like Marjorie Taylor Greene was winning the race for “dumbest freshman Republican” in a runaway. But in the space of a few hours yesterday, the other QAnon congresswoman, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, found a way to close the gap.

Shortly after the horrific mass shooting in Boulder, Boebert took to both her official and personal Twitter feeds to offer up the usual thoughts and prayers—er, tots and pears.