We’ve had a few days to let the news settle, a lot of opinions, a lot of reporting. So what do you make of Jill Abramson’s firing and why do you think it happened? We’re discussing that now in this thread at The Hive (sub req.). Join us!
A federal judge Monday ruled that Utah must recognize the same-sex marriages conducted in the state before the Supreme Court issued a stay on the December ruling that struck down the state’s gay marriage ban. This comes a short time after another federal judge struck down Oregon’s same sex marriage ban on Monday.
I’ve been wondering about this for a while: I just noted this story about how a Connecticut teen invited Joe Biden to her prom and he replied by sending a corsage. But I’ve wondered for a while about the origins of what I’ll call the still-growing Joe Biden Legend.
Connecticut teen invites Biden to her prom; Biden replies with corsage.
Home Depot Founder and GOP fundraiser Ken Langone decides income inequality politics really is kind of like the rise of the Third Reich after all.
Over the weekend, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. published a statement denying that unequal pay or gender played a role in Jill Abramson’s firing and providing more details on what happened. Here’s the Times write-up of the statement. And here’s the statement itself. But weirdly, as far as I can tell, the Times does not itself link to the statement or, again as far as I can tell, have the statement on its own website. (I wrote most of this post on Saturday. It’s possible it’s since appeared somewhere on nytimes.com.)
That is weird.
Pop Quiz: Why is Mississippi next door to Louisiana? Because the politics there are almost as weird and dirty as they are in Louisiana. Also, both heartlands of American music. But that’s another story.
I’m inclined to say this is what happens when you’ve got a Tea Party candidate who dabbles in neo-confederate and supremacist politics. But boy is this one weird and dirty. Here are the key facts. Incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran’s wife has been in a nursing home for more than a decade. Precise details are sketchy but she appears to suffer from some form of advanced dementia and is in precarious health. The Tea Party candidate McDaniel has been dishing out an avalanche of oppo over recent days including a very weird article in Breitbart which in the guise of talking about spending on congressional trips was clearly intended to suggest that Cochran is having an affair.
If you buy a bullet proof vest, don’t test it by having someone shoot you.
Police Chief of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire: “I believe I did use the ‘N’ word in reference to the current occupant of the Whitehouse (sic),” Copeland wrote in an email to the resident, as quoted by WMUR. “For this, I do not apologize — he meets and exceeds my criteria for such.”
Wolfeboro has 6,300 residents, twenty of whom are African-American.
First, don’t miss this essay by Amanda Marcotte on Abramson’s rough defenestration. We’re always excited to have her in our pages.
Second, it may get lost in all the high-octane drama but in Ken Auletta’s second dispatch on Abramson’s dismissal, Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy, appears to concede explicitly a fairly clear case of wrongful termination.