Today's Liberal News

Monday Night Owls: President Biden should go on a hiring spree of federal workers

Night Owls is a themed open thread appearing at Daily Kos seven days a week.

Eleanor Eagen of the Revolving Door Project writes at The American Prospect—Why Recent American Governments Have Fumbled Crises. While our population has doubled in the past 70 years, the number of federal employees hasn’t increased (in case you wonder why our pandemic response has lagged).

In the nearly seven decades since 1952, the U.S. population has more than doubled.

Compassion or capital punishment? Survivors push for an end to execution

As assistant chief investigator in New Jersey’s Office of the Public Defender, Dina Windle knows the ins and outs of the criminal legal system. And a survivor of violence herself, she understands the parts of the system that most people fail to acknowledge—especially when it comes the death penalty and the lack of justice afforded to nearly everyone involved.

The Brazil Variant Is Exposing the World’s Vulnerability

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. Even in a year of horrendous suffering, what is unfolding in Brazil stands out. In the rainforest city of Manaus, home to 2 million people, bodies are reportedly being dropped into mass graves as quickly as they can be dug. Hospitals have run out of oxygen, and people with potentially treatable cases of COVID-19 are dying of asphyxia.

Photos: A Second Weekend of Protests in Russia

For a second weekend, tens of thousands of people in cities across Russia protested the jailing of the opposition leader, Alexei Navalny. An outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, Navalny was detained on January 17, after returning from Germany, where he had been recovering from a near-fatal poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. According to the Associated Press, more than 5,100 protesters were arrested yesterday—1,000 more than had been detained the previous week.

The Slow, Creeping Horror of The Salisbury Poisonings

AMC’s newest British import, the four-part drama The Salisbury Poisonings, is a dystopia with a bucolic English setting, and the disconnect between the two is where the show’s slow creep of horror begins. On an ordinary street, a man and a woman quietly convulse on a park bench. Later, workers in ghostly white hazmat suits swab hastily abandoned cups of tea for signs of contamination. Swans, one police officer reports, are “behaving strangely.

Is Far-Right QAnon Conspiracy Theorist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene the New Face of the GOP?

Republicans face increasing pressure to strip Georgia Congressmember Marjorie Taylor Greene of her post on the House Education Committee. Greene was elected in November 2020 and is a far-right conspiracy theorist who has promoted QAnon, supported the execution of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and claimed the school shootings in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, and Parkland, Florida, were staged — as was the September 11 attack on the Pentagon.

Inevitable Planetary Doom Has Been Exaggerated

It feels as if the world is on fire—and it is. In the last days of the Trump administration, U.S. government scientists announced that 2020 was one of the two hottest years in recorded history. The other hottest year was 2016: fittingly, the year that the United States elected Donald Trump president, a disaster for the environment as well as democratic norms.

Dear Therapist’s Guide to Love and Relationships

Editor’s Note: With Lori Gottlieb on book leave, Rebecca J. Rosen, the editor of Dear Therapist, begins another month as The Atlantic’s resident “Dear Therapist” archivist, pointing readers to some of Lori’s most beloved columns. Lori Gottlieb continues to work on her book, and I continue to bring you some “Dear Therapist” wisdom in her stead.