More of ‘What’s Your 9/11?’ … from TPM Reader MS …

I was a congressional intern working at the Capitol on 9/11, so not close enough to see actual carnage, but close enough to be scared. I remember briskly walking (people weren’t running) alongside members of Congress and staffers alike toward the Metro and seeing the plumes across the river. Not sure I even knew then that that was the Pentagon.

Read More

The Atlantic has a piece up grabbing on to the new but seemingly now almost ever-present discussion of ‘American Exceptionalism’ and saying that the phrase was actually invented by Joseph Stalin. Well, sorta. But not exactly. Read More

So it turns out there was almost a quarter billion more Koch dollars in last year’s campaign that we didn’t know about.

Apparently, no one was impressed with Vladimir Putin’s New York Times op-ed.

Full-size version.

Grover Norquist and other conservatives might get behind pot legalization … if it’s a vehicle for tax breaks.

Pennsylvania is reportedly about to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, after initial resistance from the state’s Republican governor.

Hillary Clinton’s spokesman did not like being asked about whether Anthony Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, was back at work.

Two response to ‘What’s Your 9/11?‘ … First from TPM Reader EF …

You mention that some people seem to feel that the right ‘owns’ 9/11, and that may contribute to their bristling at the annual commemorations. I think that’s close, but not quite it, at least not from my perspective. My memory is of a tremendous feeling of unity after 9/11 – I was living in MA at the time, and I had (and have) lots of family in NYC. In the wake of 9/11, and for the first and only time in my life I bought an American flag for my car, and I flew it in a spirit of defiance of terrorism and pride in my country. And I felt a bond with everyone else who had a flag on their car – there was a communal feeling that we all seemed to share.

Read More

At first I hesitated to write this post because it introduces as a meta conversation something that is all too real. Yesterday I was prepping for a TPM editorial retreat out on the North Shore of Long Island and did a series of tweets asking where people were, what they remembered about 9/11. And in a stream of tweets with recollections and comments of various sorts, I got this tweet in response …

I don’t know josh,this feels like link bait to me.While the day demands remembrance,most USA doesn’t want revisiting. Do better pls

Read More

We’re about to relaunch the TPM website on our new purpose-built publishing platform. On the surface, the visuals looks quite similar – this is not a redesign. The big changes at the first are in the platform that runs the site – changes that will allow us over time to build a host of new features and ways to bring you the news. The big changes at the outset are to TPMPrime – a host of new features and new page layouts with fewer ads for Prime members. (If you’re a Prime subscriber, log on to the new main site with your Prime username and password.) But even if you’re not a Prime member and have no intention of becoming one, we think you’ll like this a lot because the site is dramatically faster than the current TPM website.

Today we’re putting the new version of the site into public beta release. Here’s the link right here. We’re eager to hear what you think.