Fascinating, sweeping new study showing how Fox News is perhaps the biggest force of organized and intentional distribution of ignorance in American society. We’re inured to how shocking this is.
In recent years, we’ve seen a topsy turvy battle over the expansion and restriction of early voting and other reforms intended to make it easier for people to vote and thus expand the number of people who vote. Democrats (favoring more voting) and Republicans (favoring less) each act out of a certain self-interest. But contrary to articles like this one that present this as a mere battling for partisan advantage, the two sides aren’t equal. In a democratic society, efforts to expand the franchise have an inherent political morality on their side. And sites like TPM have routinely and rightly condemned various state GOPs who have gone to great lengths since 2010 clawing back early voting opportunities (and pushing other voting restrictions) to reduce voting by the young, the poor and the non-white.
We’re hiring an Associate Editor to work out of our NYC headquarters overseeing LiveWire and breaking news. Listing after the jump …
I just wanted to thank you and let you know that this morning we hit 1000 new signups for TPMPrime. That’s 50% of our goal of 2000 signups over our six week drive. The second thousand is obviously a lot harder than the first. But we’re excited to have gotten to this milestone after one week. Join us.
(And yes, I’ll stop hassling you as much for a while now. You’re welcome.)
Cochran calls McDaniels an “extremist.” “It’d be dangerous to have somebody like him elected.”
TPM Reader TS chimes in on that embarrassing WaPo piece on marriage and sexual assault …
The “science” behind the WaPo piece on marriage is a massive misrepresentation of the study they cite. Essentially that study shows that women who are married but currently separated have (by a huge margin) the worst rates of IPV. Obviously the causality here could run either way with violence resulting in marital separation or separation resulting in violence, or the association could be caused by some common factor (e.g., a shitty husband). The key thing to understand is that these are all women who got married to a big strong man like good little girls. This is clearly shown in Figure 6.
Nothing certain yet. But Eric Cantor, House Majority Leader, appears to be in the process of losing his seat in the House tonight, going down to defeat in a primary barely anyone was watching.
7:41 PM: As of this moment, Cantor is losing to David Brat 56.9% to 43.1%, with 60.2% of the vote in. More notably, the folks who really know where the votes are, what counties to watch and so forth, are saying this is over.
I’ve seen enough, it’s over. Sitting Majority Leader of the House, Rep. Eric Cantor (R), has lost his primary to Prof. Dave Brat (R) #VA07
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) June 10, 2014
7:47 PM: It would be wrong to say that no one saw that Cantor had a real primary challenge on his hands. But virtually everyone was seeing this as a ‘how big a margin does he need’ type of race – one that was a test of his hold on the district and discontent on the right – rather than one anyone thought he could lose.
Cruz decides to go all in, finally officially renounces Canadian citizenship.
Here’s the message from Virginia: You either stand with Americans or you stand with the invaders.
— toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) June 11, 2014
So DC and the country wakes up today to the prospect of a GOP that wants to be a lot more militant and a lot more hostile to immigration reform and, let’s be honest, the 11 million people who ‘immigration’ reform is largely about. Think about that for a second. Sahil explains 6 ways Eric Cantor’s stunning and totally unexpected defeat changes Washington.