The Wednesday Curator – 12/10/14

December 9, 2014

Wednesday again! Here goes:

Conservative pundits might like Obama more if he really were a caudillo, by Matthew Yglesias for Vox on November 24, nails the hypocrisy attendant to calling President Obama a tyrant, a dictator, or a king. The Republican Party has, for a century or more, aligned itself with executive power, whether in the United States, Central America, or elsewhere. Alas, it seems evident that it’s only their executive power which they favor.

I read Eric Lipton’s major exposé, Energy Firms in Secretive Alliance with Attorneys General, in the December 7 Sunday New York Times. Attorneys general are elected officials, but they are elected to be the attorney for the state. They should not be policy

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Casablanca, Meet The New Republic!

December 6, 2014

Getting ready to leave Casablanca (one way or another, and with a companion to be named later), Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) makes a deal with Signor Ferrari (Sydney Greenstreet) to sell Rick’s Café Américain. Sam the piano player (Dooley Wilson) and others have to keep their jobs, however. The deal gets done, with Ferrari noting to Mr. Blaine that “Rick’s wouldn’t be Rick’s without them.”

I thought about that scene when I read Facebook Prince Purges The New Republic:  Inside the Destruction of a 100-Year-Old Magazine by Lloyd Grove for The Daily Beast. I also heard about the changes from my friend Sam Kleiner, who writes wrote for the magazine, and read Huge Shakeup at The New Republic: What

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