I never quite bought it only because Mike Pence is a Class A Idiot - as in that was his reputation when he was just a Congresscritter from Indiana and I was stunned the GOP let him anywhere near a leadership role. Trump may have wanted someone to actually manage everything day to day (arguably why he had both Bannon…

You get a whole wardrobe from your host nation, a packet of goodies, and a particpant’s medal. But no trophy, dammit!

No quota. The USOC and some individual sports do seek to identify and develop talent from underrepresented communities, especially in the winter games. But that is more because you can find awesome talent for some pretty particular events like bobsled, luge, skeleton and speed skating if you cast a broader net. It…

You know who felt exactly like you do - like down to the words? The Supreme Court in 1896 when they endorsed state ordered segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson. While no one can legislate irrational feelings of hatred or bigotry, we can damn well insist that legislation and policy isn’t based on them, and do everything…

Great, hiring a spin doctor to direct policy. Generally we recommend hiring the PR people to sell it rather than the other way around on this sort of issue.

I suspect it is either a holdover from a form Title VII complaint they didn’t include because as at best an independent contractor a Title VII claim would be almost impossible (there was at least one Title VII reference in the complaint) or his lawyers just threw in everything they could (it is a complaint as PR…

A right to sue letter is required to bring certain cases in Federal court (Title VII and ADA - no idea why it would come up in a Title IX case since EEOC is about employment not education). It doesn’t mean much by itself- basically you have to give the EEOC 6 months to resolve the dispute, but if it takes longer than…

FMLA already mandates you can take leave. This would just turn your SS payments into something like a short term disability program - only at shittier lower rates.

Well, that makes sense since Homicide was built from Simon’s non-fiction book and direct observations of the cops involved while the Wire was more of an amped up version built from those very real observations.

That’s not supposed to be the case post ACA as mental health parity was made part of the Essential Health Benefits, but between a) ongoing stigma; b) lack of Medicaid expansion and c) lack of available resources in many cases it is sadly still true. The criminal justice system of course is interested mainly in…

Personally I’m much more pissed off at the 100 million potential voters who sat it out and are still sitting back acting like they don’t have a share in making this shit sandwich. I’d like to think the tales of ICE and the EPA being torched for the insurance money, Carson (and Trump ) filling HUD with unqualified…

I once again am shown not to be a true nerd, my PhD and love of all things trivia notwithstanding. Sadly the fact I got all 5 will not save me from a pummeling when I start talking about Median Voter Theory in public.

It depends on the deal. The studios always want an in perpetuity deal, and a lot of times authors with minimal leverage will agree -just like they agree to similar deals with publishing houses - but there’s no requirement that it be like that. If you have a good agent and a hot property they’ll have it be a staggered…

It may also just signal a shift in strategy. Especially in DC there is a whole white collar wing that is known as deal makers and another that is known as litigators. It sounds like he’s gone from one to the other - and while you may well need 4 lawyers to go through the government’s discovery and plot trial strategy,…

Just because you’ve been discharged doesn’t automatically get you out of a representation once you’ve made an appearance. The attorney’s obligation is to let the court know. It is pretty pro forma in civil cases, especially at the early stages - you file a notice of substituted counsel or withdrawal while assuring the…

Daytraders, beanie baby “investors,” stock manipulators, probably the tulip bulb market supporters - they are definitely all of a type. And that type is that they’ve found the secret of success that everyone else has missed in the history of human kind and have no broader perspective.

And if you do it long enough it can cripple your ability to write any other way. Not that I’m bitter about being told multiple projects were too clear, too explanatory or lacked enough dramatic tension. Not at all.

We don’t use it, dude. What we got from Latin is mainly for TV writers these days.

While the responses to this have documented an array of valuable stakeholder perspectives, I’m not sure we’ve fully mapped the metaproblem. Let’s conduct some snowball sampling before we assume we have a holistic understanding of the universe we are trying to address.

Since you are now officially moving the goalposts, I’m just going to assume you don’t have a citation for Obama saying - as this police officer claimed occurred in the very moment he chose to act - God spoke to him.