I read it was the woman who was a Citibank exec. (?)

I, too, am a little alarmed when I find strings of comments down on AA. I got sober in a major city, and cannot imagine how I would have gotten through without it. (I have been sober now for 26 years.) To address some negative comments I see here: First of all, it is free, and there were meetings almost literally…

Carrie Fisher published Postcards from the Edge just as I was struggling with early sobriety in the late eighties. She captured the loopy, bordering-on-surreal insanity of early recovery so brilliantly, and did so with unfailing keen humor and insight. In many ways, her writings on recovery were more grounding than…

I inferred he never had physical “tapes” — that he saw the recordings online via a private password, which has lapsed, and he no longer has access to them.

So weird the PO felt a need to qualify the word “consumed” at all. Why wouldn’t “She consumed alcohol,” be adequate? Nothing about that statement implies “not voluntarily.” It seems transparently designed to mitigate the circumstances of the assault.

I like the faux-PC constructed term “gender-based violence.” Wouldn’t want to offend any rapists by using the word “rape!”

This woman has done a hateful, despicable thing, and deserves full punishment, but it is unjust to conflate the fact that she is mentally ill, unemployable, and relies on Social Security as a causation in her moral failings. Yes, it is darkly ironic that many right-wing voters do not understand the contradiction…

I am convinced he literally did not know what the word “precedent” is.

I wondered about that, because of how remarkably off the ranking is. Grant was aggressively active in reconstruction and anti-slavery works in the south. He was not good on Native American relations — as Custer’s Last Stand in a war against the Sioux nation was under his watch — but he was pretty solidly against…

Wow. Side subject: Putting U.S. Grant at #1 is really suspect for this method of ranking. While he may have been impaired by alcohol, at the end of his life he wrote a memoir that is widely considered a masterpiece. It was published by Mark Twain, who praised it as on level with Caesar’s Commentaries, and the sales…

Right. “Innocent until proven guilty” is a legal standard, not an investigative one, which applies to the proceedings in court, not the investigation of the crime. It means a person cannot be found guilty and punished by the state until a case has been tried or otherwise adjudicated. It means the prosecutor has the…

Once I deplaned onto the tarmac in a wintery place from a People Express flight (People Express was a no-frills, incredibly low-cost service in the ‘80's — eg, NY to Chicago $29), and the flight crew began pummeling the passengers with snowballs. Typical.

A generational note: While it is new to have incisive political commentary in a traditional fashion and style magazine marketed strictly for teen girls, when I was a teen we were reading Hunter S. Thompson in Rolling Stone (for example), so I don’t buy that previous teen generations were bereft of political…

Just checked the great Tom Lehrer’s very entertaining Wikipedia entry — he is still with us at the age of 86!

He also looks remarkably like Diana’s brother, also a ginger.

It is also important to bear in mind that most police officers are not adequately trained in dealing with people with mental illness, and frequently escalate the situations by yelling at the person in an aggressive, confrontational, authoritarian way the person is unable to process or understand, let alone comply…

I see this idea repeated — that degrees from selective schools aren’t all that impressive because some students are given legacy admissions due to family connections - and I think it is kind of BS, personally, and, yes, kind of anti-intellectual: as if there is no such thing as a superior or more demanding education.…

It was all in the music.

I believe it is out of compassion for Frank’s wife.

R. Farrow seems surprisingly un-cocky to me, considering he went to college at 11, graduated at 15, had a Yale law degree at 21, was a Rhodes scholar, and actually DOES know quite a lot. I know “intellectual elites” are not fashionable these days, but come on: that’s amazing.