My wife and I are Jews. I was born in St. Louis. She was born in Haifa, though she’s lived in the United States since she was a toddler. Both of us have lived very American lives. One hundred and fifty years ago all our ancestors were living in the same arc of land from the Baltic down to the Crimean Peninsula, in some mix of Russia, sub-national Poland, Germany and Austria. But then a little more than a century ago the stories diverge. Read More
New Obama budget cracks down on key Romney tax avoidance tricks.
Brian Beutler on the key factual issue that will likely determine whether that McConnell campaign strategy session was legally recorded.
TPM Reader DL shares an echo of the destruction …
Your piece really got to me. Death on the scale of the Holocaust is so overwhelming — so unfathomable that we have trouble processing the reality of it. I am also Jewish and was raised with a kind of cultural paranoia that I’ve always tried to tamp down — basically to maintain my mental health. My father was first generation and his parents survived the pogroms so it was fresh to them. But I was born in America. I wanted to feel safe and belong in this culture and the carrying the Holocaust memory was an anger I fought against.
“I’ve never wavered in my support for civil rights or the Civil RIghts Act.” -Rand Paul. That’s just not even close to true.
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) April 10, 2013
I think Rand Paul’s going to have a real problem backing up this statement.
It turns out the Rand Paul/Howard University event was considerably more epic than I understood from initial accounts. Paul basically gave the same ‘Hey, the GOP is the party of Lincoln and Civil Rights and black folk don’t know truth’ speech you hear at CPAC and somehow it didn’t go over well with the Howard University crowd. Just read.