Joel Mathis

Yes, this story could be better — for it to have some meaning, we'd get some insight as to why Tony Hovater became a Holocaust-denying Nazi sympathizer. But the critics go further, saying that the story "normalizes" Nazis. I dunno. Not sure how you can read this and think "gosh, that's normal": Or this: It's true, the story doesn't spend a lot of time screaming "this is bad!" But I suspect that's because the NYT editors know their audience probably doesn't include a lot of Nazi sympathizers, or even many folks who are Nazi agnostic.

Great Washington Post piece about Gene Gibbons, a lawyer with remarkable success in getting bad cops rehired by the same police departments that deemed them unfit for duty. The un-shocking thing? He's from Philadelphia. His origin story is a little bit unexpected, though. For Gibbons, an affable, barrel-chested man, the path to becoming an advocate for embattled police officers began when he was a teen growing up outside Philadelphia in the early 1980s.  Then 16, Gibbons was driving home in the family station wagon when a Philadelphia police officer pulled him over. Gibbons sat quietly while the officer ran his license. When he returned, the boy asked the officer why he had been stopped. Gibbons said the officer abruptly punched him in the face and told him to go home. “I was stewing mad,” he said. “The police had tremendous power.” So, naturally, he made a career of ... enabling those abuses of power. Huh. Anyway, there are lots of examples in the story of officers who had

Buzzfeed checks in with writers to find out which books they're most thankful for. First, I'm thankful to be back in the book-reading business in a serious way. I had a nasal reconstruction surgery this year that largely alleviated some sleep deprivation issued I'd had in recent years. I'm able to concentrate on an enjoy long-form reading again. Second: The book I'm thankful for this year is Alan Jacobs' " How to Think. " Here's what I wrote on Facebook after completing it: Finished reading Alan Jacobs' "How to Think" after two days. It's that good (and also that slim - about 160 pages). I want to sit with it a couple of days before writing about it more, but it gets at some thoughts I've had since the Trump Election and how I've tried - with varying degrees of success (and by "varying," I mean outright failure at times) - not to write off people with whom I have disagreements.  Mostly it boils down to: They

The Weekly Standard seems genuinely mystified . Bringing U.S. corporate taxation in line with that of our global peers will spur the sort of broad-based growth that the Obama administration’s central planners could never achieve and that will benefit middle-income families quite as much as “the wealthy.”  Ahem . The first question was straightforward. Would they agree that if the US passed a tax bill “similar to those currently moving through the House and Senate,” GDP would be “substantially higher a decade from now”? Of the 42 economists polled, only one thought the Republican bill would boost the economy. The plurality said it wouldn’t, and the remainder were uncertain or didn’t answer. Back to the Standard: But the House bill, at least, contains some needed simplification: It cuts the number of brackets from seven to four, abolishes the estate tax, and gets rid of arbitrary breaks for such things as medical expenses, student-loan interest, and rehabilitating a historic

Probably the first time I've ever agreed with Andrew McCarthy : Our public officials are supposed to be accountable and transparent, especially when they are expending public money. It is thus outrageous that Congress has made this cozy arrangement to sweep under the rug malfeasance by members of the club. There is no legal or policy reason to refrain from legislation that would out the lawmakers involved in misconduct settlements — regardless of the type of misconduct (I wouldn’t limit it to sexual episodes). 

Donald Trump's supporters really want the public not to think he's racist, Vox reports, but Trump himself isn't really helping the cause . Even before Wednesday morning, Trump’s blows to Lynch and Ball fit into an ongoing pattern of the president’s use of sports and the behavior of athletes of color as a battlefield for a culture war waged on behalf of his supporters. In Trump’s envisioning, black athletes are showing contempt for the country through displays of blatant disrespect and lack of explicit gratitude, a framing that his critics have called out for being little more than a thinly veiled racial dog whistle, one that is rooted in Trump’s troubled history on racial issues. Understand, it's not just that Trump criticizes black athletes. Remember, he's refused to condemn folks like David Duke or the Charlottesville white supremacist marchers — or done so in a belated, churlish, "fine folks on both sides" way. The combination of who he criticizes

I have a friend who says there's no such thing as "common sense gun control." Maybe if we just did the little things: Tens of thousands of people wanted by law enforcement officials have been removed this year from the FBI criminal background check database that prohibits fugitives from justice from buying guns.  The names were taken out after the FBI in February changed its legal interpretation of “fugitive from justice” to say it pertains only to wanted people who have crossed state lines.  What that means is that those fugitives who were previously prohibited under federal law from purchasing firearms can now buy them, unless barred for other reasons. So if you're accused of murder but haven't crossed state lines: Congratulations?

Maybe stay home this year? We returned to Kansas last year after eight years in Philadelphia, in part to be closer to our retirement-age parents. But one thing we discovered during our years in exile is that we don't mind the occasional holiday with just the three of us — me, my wife, and my son — to hang out. So we're skipping broader festivities this year. We'll go see everybody at Christmas, but this year's Thanksgiving is about putting on a low-maintenance stew in the Crock Pot, watching a bunch of movies, and simply hanging out. We love our families, let there be no doubt. But sometimes the best way to holiday is to hibernate.

Why can't liberals take yes for an answer? "We cannot loudly and publicly say, 'Where in the hell are the Republicans who are willing to call out Trump?' then boo them when they do so," writer/activist Shaun King said Tuesday on Twitter . "When people you don't like do the right thing, the important thing, even if they've been enemies before, that's progress."  We don't have to forget that John McCain is overly hawkish, or that Bob Corker wanted to be Trump's secretary of state, or that George W. Bush was a historically awful president. But right now, the priority for lefties should be to contain and eventually end Donald Trump's presidency. They shouldn't be so eager to turn away allies. Liberals must learn to take "yes" for an answer. Read it all! 

Sometimes, things come into your life through serendipity. How I ended up reading " A Prayer for Owen Meany " was this: After I graduated from college in 1995, I moved to Southeast Kansas to take a job at a small-town daily newspaper. One of my best friends from college, Brent Graber, was taking a gap year before grad school, so he moved in with me. That probably saved my life. I was so alone, otherwise. In any case, Brent enjoyed going to estate sales an picking up stuff cheap. And one time he picked up the "Owen" at such a sale. When we were at home in the evenings, he read passages to me, laughing with delight. So when he finished, I picked it up and read it. And was smitten. The first time I read "Owen Meany," I loved it because it was hilarious. The second time I read "Owen Meany," I loved it because it let me know in a keen way that faith and doubt, that sacredness and profanity, often coexist. The third time I read "

I spent parts of two days in a Douglas County District Court last week, undergoing the tedious process of jury selection for a criminal trial. I'm pretty sure I know why I got cut, and I'm still a little bothered by it. If you've never been through the jury selection process, it can be a pretty intense thing — the prosecuting and defense attorneys each have a crack at the jury pool, asking hours of questions designed to elicit your biases, and to send you home if your biases are too overt. Lots of personal information gets shared, sometimes tears are shed, and it's all a very intense way to spend time with a few dozen strangers. It's also, less obviously, a preparation for trial and the types of arguments that both sides will make. The lawyers, in picking a jury, are walking a tricky line: They want to get rid of overtly biased jurors so that they can conform to fair trial rules — but they also want to pick jurors who might be amenable to the arguments. So,

The first album I was ever intimate with was U2's "Rattle and Hum." By intimate, I don't mean "liked" or "loved." What I mean is this: The cassette tape was a constant presence in my stereo for the better part of a year in the late 1980s. I played it in the car, I played it in my room, I played it over and over and over again, singing along with — emulating — Bono's wails and snarls over and over again so much that even now, 30 years later, I can still perform much of the album if it suddenly appears on a sound system within earshot. Like Bono, I no longer hit the high notes quite so effortlessly, and the Gospel version of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" resonates now, in my forties, in ways it didn't when I was a teenager. But still. It may seem odd that "Rattle and Hum" inspired this passion in me; it was U2's prior album, "The Joshua Tree," that launched the band into the pan

No. But I think Atrios is missing something with this : The obsession of our pundit class with elite college generally, and specifically the idea that lefty college kids are the greatest threat to free speech ever known to man, is completely bizarre. I know that sometimes well-meaning college kids can be dumb. They are 19! They also don't have any power. Sure everybody can have a bit of power over someone or something for a moment, but structurally...college kids have no power. Even Harvard kids. The $30 billion endowment has power. Our pundits punched hippies when they were in college (show me where the hippie hurt you, Jon) and they can't stop punching them now. It's so weird. I suppose I'm one of the hippie punchers in this scenario. But here's the thing: College is a place one goes to learn habits of mind and habits of how to act on the ideas of what your mind generates. The students in college will, in not too long, be the folks running our offices and our

I understand that late night talk shows are more overtly political — liberal, really — than they were two or three years ago. Still, I find it kind of odd that there seems to be a real push for both "balance" and comprehensiveness of coverage, mostly from the right. This is becoming a regular thing: Discussions of balance and story choice make sense where the news media — especially media that presents itself as attempting objectivity —are concerned. But these are comedy shows, and most comedy has a point of view. Do they owe the audience (or a portion of the audience) to address certain topics? This isn't a defense of Harvey Weinstein. I just think this "make jokes about Harvey" push from the right is based on expectations that folks on the right don't get to have. Fair and balanced is for news — maybe — but it's a silly, unrealistic expectation for a comedy routine.

Great piece by the New York Times about Harvey Weinstein's decades-long pattern of sexual harassment, but the Times makes one editorial choice I find weird and even a little upsetting. It uses this picture with the story: It's worth noting, of course, that Weinstein is connected to and moves among powerful figures. Yet this photo feels ... unnecessary. It's not the picture of Clinton with him that bothers me. It's the picture of Clinton laying her hands on Weinstein, who we are learning in this story is a serial sexual harasser . The combination of the two factors makes the picture look like something that it's not. I'm not one to obsess about the Times and its treatment of Clinton. I think her emails and Clinton Foundation practices were fair game for inquiry - and hell, I supported her during the primary season. This feels unnecessary, though. A little bit like piling on. Ick.

I believe that guns are tools made for the explicit purpose of killing. I think that sometimes, unfortunately, killing is necessary. I think that even when necessary, killing is morally fraught and not to be entered into lightly. I think the act of owning a gun is a signal to the world you have determined you can trustworthily decide when killing is correct. I think that’s … kind of extraordinary. I think I do not possess that sensibility myself. I think that even if I wanted to make gun ownership illegal, it would be impossible to do, politically, in America. I think I grew up in Kansas, around good people who possessed guns safely and with respect for life. I think I lived eight years in Philadelphia, around good people who feared for their lives because of guns. So. I think that firearms education - like the hunter safety classes of my Kansas youth - should be available wherever access to guns is available. Which is to say, just about everywhere. I think that the right to bear a

It seems to me that when liberals draw on particularized knowledge (say, of science) to make the case for certain policies (say, regarding climate change), they're accused of pointy-headedness, tyranny by bureaucracy, and general elitism. When conservatives draw on particularized knowledge - such as with guns - they're more "in touch with the people" and keepin' it real. This, coincidentally, lets them try to shut down conversations about gun regulations because folks on the left lack a certain expertise regarding the details of the issue.  A bit of an epistemic closure problem I'm not sure how to resolve, except to note the hypocrisy.  Anyway, one doesn't have to have particularized knowledge of guns or how they work, specifically, to note that just one man killed 59 people and wounded more than 500 more in just a matter of minutes the other night, nor to sense that perhaps something's amiss in our governance that apparently gathering the tools

Two pieces in the aftermath of the Las Vegas aftermath that I want to highlight, because they're so gentle and humane without being wishy-washy. The first is from David French at National Review . His conservatism - his social conservatism, especially - is not mine. But I very much appreciate how he decided to respond to Jimmy Kimmel's response to Las Vegas: Not with demonizing or mockery, like so many conservatives did, but with a dose of understanding. The title of the post is "Jimmy Kimmel is sincerely wrong about guns," and that may tell you as much as anything about the tone. French: Humanity has struggled to neutralize evil men for millennia. For millennia, we have failed. It doesn’t mean that we don’t continue to try. It doesn’t mean that we close ourselves off to innovative solutions and new ideas. It does mean, however, that even the best of intentions and the most genuine of monologues have to be exposed to the cold light of law, reason, and facts. Sin

Mighta had my tongue in cheek on this one, but the underlying point is real: One reason Republicans don't like immigration is that it makes new Democrats. So.... If you want this GOP-held Congress to pass a "Dream Act" that saves you from deportation and maybe even provides a pathway to citizenship for you, try this: Promise to vote Republican.  No, really.  Republicans believe that immigrants are destined to become Democrats. And when there's a choice between being fair to minorities or winning elections, Republicans go with winning elections every time.

Rhymes with "shmistery": Yes, history is always watching the White House. But given the disruption Trump caused by being elected, and his inability to let a week go by without distraction and controversy, it seems likely that this administration will get the treatment more than most — that, like the Nixon administration, which practically created its own cottage industry in publishing, it will be dissected by historians, journalists, and writers for decades to come.  There will be heroes and villains in those stories. And surely, lots of people working for President Trump have already decided that they don't want to be seen as the villains. So how can they prevent it?

New Jersey high school disbands football team - The Washington Post : 'via Blog this'

Twitter is never going to suspend the Twitter account of POTUS , ever, ever, ever.

I'm off Twitter, but President Trump's tweets remain ubiquitous. Doesn't that mean Trump willingly had, as an advisor, a man he considers a ripoff artist?

Channel 6 in Lawrence, Kansas airs its last newscast tonight . Once upon a time, I had the privilege of trying to become a TV reporter while still writing for print; I spent my 30th birthday ad-libbing crazy stuff on live TV because the city commission election results were very, very, very late coming in. And some of you may remember the time I went to Columbia MO dressed in KU gear to get on-camera reaction in advance of a "Border War" basketball game. You hear me say journalism will never love you. It won't. I thought at the time we were building something new, something that might survive the then-nascent turmoil of the business. Wrong. So many things I've tried to build during my career have disappeared. Poof. And I cannot lie: That hurts. A lot. My ego wants a legacy, and it's hard to leave a legacy in institutions that no longer exist. But what would I have done differently? Truth is, I enjoyed the hell out of being a jackass on Channel 6. I loved being a b

The culture wars are all Trump has left : Trump can't pass a health-care bill (at least so far). Getting a tax cut looks like it might be tricky. The wall he promised looks no closer to reality than it did six months ago. There are real questions these days about whether Republicans are capable of governance.  In that climate, all Trump and the Republicans will have left are identity politics and the culture wars. It's why Trump — after promising to be a president who would protect LGBTQ rights — came out against them. It's why he spent a Tuesday night speech describing the crimes of illegal immigrants in torture-porn detail .  And it's the reason conservatives are cheering the prospect of Kid Rock making a Senate run against Stabenow; policy, these days, matters to them much less than all the "real America" virtue signalling that the entertainer provides. For Trump Republicans, that posturing is all that seems to really matter.

For 20 years or more, I've been used to thinking of Jerry Moran as the "good cop" in a state full of bad cops. Some of that's personal: He's got a background among Kansas Mennonites , like I do, and I was predisposed to the tribe, I guess. When I'd encountered him in a professional setting, he was far more congenial than, say, Pat Roberts, whose good humor leaves a sour aftertaste. But after his vote today to proceed on a Senate healthcare bill that doesn't exis t, I must finally concede: He is a congenial coward. The Hamlet act he pulls is a way of luring moderates and the occasional liberal (guilty!) to his side even as he votes conservative when push comes to shove. This is possibly purely a fault of my own interpretation: Moran has never claimed to be anything but conservative. But his unwillingness to commit until very late on controversial issues — the characteristic that defines his political career — fooled me into thinking maybe it was possible

I've got a story to tell, one that's out there on the public record, but one that hasn't been much remarked upon. He lied. Did American democracy die? It takes place during the Obama-Romney campaign of 2012. During the campaign, Mitt Romney was proving reluctant — as Donald Trump was, after him — to release some pertinent personal financial information. So Sen. Harry Reid, then the leader of Democrats in the Senate, decided to make a big deal about it . Saying he had “no problem with somebody being really, really wealthy,” Reid sat up in his chair a bit before stirring the pot further. A month or so ago, he said, a person who had invested with Bain Capital called his office. “Harry, he didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years,” Reid recounted the person as saying. “He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain,” said Reid. “But obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look? I wrote at the time that "Reid