Today's Liberal News

“Hang Mike Pence!”: Jan. 6 Hearing Shows Trump Targeted VP, Knew Plan to Overturn Vote Was Illegal

We air highlights from the third public hearing of the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, which revealed that President Trump pressured Vice President Pence to overturn the 2020 election results even though he knew it was illegal. The hearing included testimony from Pence’s attorney, Greg Jacob, who said the plan’s main architect, attorney John Eastman, actively admitted his strategy violated the law, and yet continued anyway.

Punished for Exposing War Crimes? U.K. Approves Assange Extradition to U.S., Faces 175 Years in Prison

In a blow to press freedom, the United Kingdom has approved the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States to face espionage charges related to the publication of classified documents exposing U.S. war crimes. Home Secretary Priti Patel signed off on the transfer after the U.K. Supreme Court denied Assange’s appeals earlier this year, part of a years-long legal battle that rights groups have decried as an attack on journalism and free speech.

Ukraine update: Izyum may be a ‘distraction,’ but it’s one Russia can’t ignore

The Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Kherson area is continuing, but as Ukrainian forces advances into positions that Russia has fortified and reinforced, they’re running into an issue. It’s not that need to send them 1,000 new artillery, a million more rocket launchers, and whatever else is being demanded on social media today. It’s the problem every army has: advancing into a prepared defensive position is extremely difficult.

In two sentences, Lindsey Graham explains the difference between Republicans and Democrats

There are few reasons to admire Sen. Lindsey Graham. Actually, that’s not quite right. There are no reasons to admire Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Still, every now and then, just by accident, Graham gets something exactly right, and at the “Faith and Freedom Coalition” meeting held this week in Nashville, Graham managed to do something that might even seem amazing. In just two sentences, Graham deftly defined the difference between Democrats and Republicans.

What happens after you survive a mass shooting?

On Yom Kippur 2019, I survived a white nationalist mass shooting in Halle, Germany.

Halle, with its squat stone castle, spiked medieval church, and cobblestone market square, sits along the river Saale. During the second World War, prisoners from a Nazi concentration camp built combat aircraft at the Siebel plant, just miles away from where the neo-Nazi attacked us.

After the shooting, I became a co-plantiff in the trial against the shooter.

Souvenirs From a Civilization That Kills Its Children

Photographs by Andres GonzalezIn the halls of schools where students have learned about the archaeological remains of failed civilizations, they have unwittingly shed the wreckage of their own. The visual artist and author Andres Gonzalez spent six years dutifully photographing the debris of a society in a specific form of decline: the letters, cards, notes, mementos, keepsakes, toys, talismans, objects, and ephemera that accumulate following a school shooting.

Byron, Shelley, and Now Zelensky

In the early 19th century, the European world had just defeated an imperialist tyrant, Napoleon Bonaparte, only to find the continent’s recently conquered monarchs quickly back in force. Intent on preventing another Napoleon from emerging on their own turf, the monarchies promptly cracked down on dissidents, on peaceful demonstrations, on the forming of unions, on the oppositional press.

The End of the Asset Economy

Here’s a bit of esoterica I think about from time to time: Mark Zuckerberg has a mortgage.Or at least, he had one. A decade ago, the Facebook founder refinanced his loan on a $6 million Palo Alto mansion. He was worth $16 billion at the time, meaning he could have bought that house and a hundred more outright, no mortgage necessary. But First Republic Bank offered him an adjustable-rate loan with an initial interest rate of just 1.

Where Russia’s Declinist Rage Isn’t Enough

The novel Jamilia tells the story of a free-spirited woman trapped in a passionless marriage who is suddenly awakened by the arrival of a mournful, lonely outsider who touches something in her soul. Set in Kyrgyzstan, it achieved a degree of fame in the West after it was praised by the French poet Louis Aragon as “the most beautiful love story in the world.

Ukraine update: Reports of further progress around Kherson with new weapons on the scene

It has now been two full months since Russian forces completely withdrew from the areas around Kyiv, Sumy, and Chernihiv. In the process, Russia left behind an amazing collection of ruined vehicles, a maddening series of ruined villages, and sickening evidence of massive war crimes. 

In the time since what the media had treated as Russia’s unstoppable “convoys” turned around and rolled back to Belarus, Russia has made significant gains in eastern Ukraine.

News Roundup: Republicans across the country make it clear: Children’s safety is not their concern

Welcome back to another Friday! Remember how all of those children and all of those Black folks were murdered with legal high-powered weapons over the past couple of weeks? Remember how the Republican Party jumped past thoughts and prayers and into saying everything is political and something about how we didn’t ban planes after 9/11? Those Senate Republicans are now scuttling the compromised gun safety bill that they agreed to. Yes.