It can't have been fun for the anthropologists when their discipline was singled out as a hive of political groupthink. In fact, they got very angry about the "Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences," commissioned by Vanderbilt and Washington University in St. Louis. What will happen in the 2026 midterms? Sign up for Margin of Victory The 10 scholars who authored the report, which was released in June, offered anthropology as an example of a field where "we see a widespread deterioration in scholarly standards ... together with a toxic intellectual climate in which reasonable dissent on politically charged topics is routinely suppressed and punished." For instance: The American Anthropological Association canceled a 2023 conference panel on the relevance of biological sex to anthropology.
The Democrats' disquieting quest for power at the cost of our democratic principles cannot credibly be denied or rebutted by inapt whataboutisms. During the 40 years from John Kennedy's inauguration in 1961, four Republicans served a total of 22 years as president and a like number of Democrats served for 18 years. Democrats dominated other elective offices, however, controlling the Senate for 28 years, the House for 34 years, and adjusting for time in office, governorships by 57% to 43%, and state legislatures by 73% to 27%. Then, the pendulum swung. For the last 25 years, Republicans (13 years) and Democrats (12 years) each elected two presidents, and Republicans gained control of the Senate for 13 years, the House for 17 years, governorships, 55% to 45%, and state legislatures, 59% to 41%
When late arriving ballots in the race for Los Angeles mayor turned dramatically against conservative Spencer Pratt last week, Donald Trump reacted with his usual subtlety. "They're cheating on the election," said the President, as it became clear Pratt would be knocked out of the runoff for the November general election. Democrats were quick to respond. California Attorney General Rob Bonta dismissed claims of vote fraud as "a figment of the imagination of Trump and others involved in that conspiracy theory." Bonta is right there's no direct evidence that fraud swayed the LA mayor's race. But California's notorious tardiness in counting votes has been almost universally ridiculed and has undermined public trust in elections.
Two decades ago, Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth thrust climate change into the global spotlight. read more
How can the American people know what to believe anymore? They're supposed to be able to turn to the New York Times and other legacy newspapers for impartial facts. Although that aspirational view was never as true as many of us supposed it to be, it's become scandalously untrue today. The Times this week played host to one of the most astonishing examples of journalistic malpractice in recent memory. It was perpetrated by Nicholas Kristof " a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist turned progressive columnist and aspiring Democratic politician. Hiding under the cloak of the Times' opinion section, Kristof ran a report alleging shocking and lurid claims of widespread, systemic sexual assault by Israeli prison guards against Palestinians. This would be horrifying if true, except we have little reason to believe it is
$1.7 million will buy a lot of hookers and blow.