Art Winslow

So much for my on-again, off-again impulse to re-subscribe to The Washington Post, which I've done more than once in the past couple of years. On balance, it would be only a matter of weeks before the next censorious act by its management caused me to re-cancel.

Alarm after FBI arrests US army veteran for ‘conspiracy’ over protest against Ice Legal experts say the charges against Afghanistan war veteran Bajun Mavalwalla II mark an escalation in the Trump administration’s crackdown on first amendment rights

The indictment was handed down 2 days after career prosecutor Richard Barker, the acting US atty for eastern Washington state, resigned. In a social post, Barker wrote “I am grateful that I never had to sign an indictment or file a brief that I didn’t believe in.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

What an atmospheric, ponderous poem by @janezwart.bsky.social.

A smart dissection of an Orwell essay that pins our political moment with precision, with human nature the underlying component of both his time and ours.

It's a rhetorical question that reveals a truth about today's media ecosystem (an echo system) -- things commonly get endlessly repeated without secondary attempts at verification. So, caveat lector.

Yet another example of how a corporate media conglomerate cannot privilege democratic needs over profit imperatives. It's almost as if this hyper-capitalist media system is incompatible with democracy, especially when the latter is threatened by authoritarian power.

Terrific essay. If you haven't read Nguyen's The Sympathizer, pick it up, and he mentions Bob Shacochis's excellent The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, well worth your time as well. Let the uneasy assertions of the essay sink in. He doesn't mention Twain, who was explicitly anti-jingoist.

I've enjoyed much of Outside's reporting over the years. This is not much different from what has happened to many print enterprises, but it's a process sad to witness.

Immigration Agents Detain Lawyer Representing Student Protester Amir Makled, a U.S. citizen, was detained by federal agents at an airport for 90 minutes.

The Trump administration is continuing its unconstitutional attack on attorneys it disagrees with—this time detaining an American attorney representing a pro-Palestinian student protester arrested at the University of Michigan last year.

O'Donnell articulates a sad but intuitively sensible perspective re Musk's claims: because they lack a shred of evidence, assume they are false unless proved true.

Opinion | Why DOGE is unconstitutional Trump is acting extra-constitutionally. Only Congress or the Supreme Court can stop him.

Why DOGE is unconstitutional

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Apparently the evangelicals have it all wrong. Stirring words here (eg, "We are becoming the voice on the 'Access Hollywood' tape...")

Thought this sticker was odd when I picked it up at the polls, but it pretty much matches the times now. Multiple ways to read it.

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How an arcane Treasury Department office is now ground zero in the war over federal spending | CNN Politics A few weeks before Donald Trump was sworn in as president, members of his transition team went to the Treasury Department to talk about the handover of power.

This CNN piece is the best I’ve seen, and includes info on actions before the inauguration. www.cnn.com/2025/01/31/p...

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"How do you build popular support for democratic institutions when the very mechanisms of public communications are increasingly controlled by anti-democratic forces?" A sobering reflection on where we find ourselves.

Paul Krugman on Leaving the New York Times The paper wanted to take away his newsletter or make him write less frequently, he says.

Krugman says the editors at the Times editorial page were increasingly trying to water down his columns and arguments www.cjr.org/analysis/pau...

Shareholder society as anachronism?

The writer Peter Matthiessen was among those convinced of Peltier's innocence. I published a piece of his contending that, part of his then-forthcoming book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, long ago but had since accepted that no redress for Peltier would ever come.

"Fear has its uses" is a nice turn there by Amis. At literary darts, you'd have to consider him a first-rate tosser.

Curiouser and curiouser...

No, The Savage Detectives and that's it, although 2666 seems to shake a finger at me every time I spy it on one of my shelves. (A lower one, since I don't like to be guilted.) Will check out By Night in Chile, though, as time allows (and it's a strict master, that one).

Opinion | After Chile’s Coup, My Regret Was That I Didn’t Die I believed my friend died because of me. Fifty years later, I learned the truth.

The Regret That Haunted Me for 50 Years www.nytimes.com/2025/01/06/o...

Don't dismiss this halfway through, thinking you've absorbed Dorfman's message, it corkscrews in a fascinating way. Beliefs are us, that's my takeaway.

Of mountains and molehills. A fine corrective to iterations of an overblown idea.

The 10 Best Books of 2024 According to Slate’s book critic.

slate.com/culture/2024...

Laura Miller's eclectic year-end best books list: read it for her astute, context-rich descriptions if nothing else, although I'm confident you will come away with a few ideas for your reading future.

What Can We Learn From the C.E.O. Shooting Suspect’s Goodreads History? Like many Americans of his background, his bookish aspirations were defined by what everybody else was reading, or thought they should be reading.

www.nytimes.com/2024/12/10/b...

I'm sure you wouldn't care to be pop-psy analyzed on the basis of your Goodreads profile, but A.O. Scott rather deftly avoids taking that full plunge when asked, developing an interesting answer.

You probably know the backdrop, but there's far more detail here about the LA Times ownership's efforts to "facilitate (Trump's) assault on democratic rule for craven reasons," in Litman's words of resignation.