Philip Seymour Hoffman found dead in his New York apartment, an apparent drug overdose. He was 46.
If you’re a Prime subscriber and you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, definitely take some weekend time to read Sahil Kapur’s great history of the death of the filibuster, Requiem for the Filibuster (sub req).
While news comes this morning that the abortion rate has reached a 30-year low in America, it’s worth looking at how abortion is (mis)represented on TV and in movies.
In case you missed it over the weekend, a former employee of BridgeGate figure David Wildstein tries to make sense of Chris Christie’s weird email tirade over the weekend. And my explanation of why, whether he or the pundits realize it yet, Christie’s already toast for 2016.
If Republicans need any more evidence to see why they need to get out of the way of or onto the immigration reform train before it’s too late, they need only look to that annual rite of sports-lovin’, corporate, Americany fest of Americaness, the Super Bowl (and, oh yeah, concussions), which conservatives now routinely end up protesting because of one commercial or another that either features people who don’t only speak English, aren’t white enough, boink the wrong people or are cheering for the future of America in a way that might somehow, someway redound as praise to something Barack Obama may have had something to do with. The latest example is conservative outrage over last night’s multicultural ad from Coca Cola, the well-known subversive force in American life.
A member of Chris Christie’s State Trooper security detail tried to drop Christie’s name to get out of a shoplifting arrest last month in Pennsylvania. It didn’t work. “We don’t do that,” said Tilden, PA. Chief of Police William McEllroy.
The always-spot-on Bernard Avishai on Scarlett Johansson’s apologism form SodaStream: “How many of them had the ‘equal right’ to walk into a Jerusalem bank and open an account, let alone borrow the money to open a business to deliver SodaStream products to Israeli stores?”
Sahil Kapur reports that they’re afraid — very afraid — of immigration reform for one reason: “I think 2014 is a slam dunk to us otherwise and this would really piss off the base.”
Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) apparently doesn’t think much of the possibility of former American Idol star Clay Aiken running against her: “As we know he doesn’t always fare all that well. He was runner up.”
Thanks also to Ian Millhiser’s take on the two contests below:
So today was the deadline for more subpoenaed documents to be handed over to the New Jersey lawmakers investigating the Chris Christie bridge scandal. Many of the people and organizations that got subpoenas were granted delays, but those that weren’t apparently turned over at least some documents by this afternoon. None are expected to be released today, but hopefully we’ll be seeing some soon.