As you know, we relaunched TPMCafe earlier in the Fall. And there’s more relaunching to come.

Here are some of your recent favorites …

Let’s Call the Shutdown What It Is: Secession by Another Means by Bill Moyers

In Defense of Sarah Silverman by Shannon Kelley

Why Do Poor People ‘Waste’ Money on Luxury Goods? Tressie McMillan Cottom

A Programmer’s Perspective on HealthCare.og and the ACA Marketplaces by Paul Smith

Why Does Rush Limbaugh Hate Single Women So Much? by Jonathan Taplin

How to Fix the ‘College Women Need to Stop Drinking’ Narrative by Soraya Chemaly

If you’re not in the journalism world or from New York City you’ve probably never heard of him. But at the intersection of those two worlds, Peter Kaplan, was revered by many as something like a minor deity. He was the longtime editor of The New York Observer. And his style and the people he mentored have had a influence in contemporary media way out of proportion to the Observer’s pretty small circulation.

Here’s his obit in the Times. And here’s a lengthier piece on who he was and what he did from last year in The New Republic.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, says the Church has been “outmarketed” on gay marriage and sees legalization as essentially a fait accompli.

Florida Tea Party chief says the Florida GOP is being taken over by the “gay thugs.”

It’s a Holiday ritual, fights, stampedes, assaults erupting from the desperate, antic, mad dash for holiday savings on Black Friday. Depending on your point of view it’s sad, ridiculous, hilarious, occasionally tragic. But in culturo-literary terms I’ve come to see it as a sort of running of the bulls of Late Capitalism. So with that peroration, here’s our list of videos of some of the choicest confrontations so far.

Have more examples? Send them in and we’ll add them.

Inside the new arms race between techies and the NSA.