Tomgram: Engelhardt, Donald Trump Naked as a Jaybird

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The 47-Minute Presidency
The Reign of King Toot
By Tom Engelhardt

Recently, I did something rare in my life. Over a long weekend, I took a few days away and almost uniquely — I might even say miraculously — never saw Donald Trump’s face, since I didn’t watch TV and barely checked the news. They were admittedly terrible days in which 50 people were slaughtered read more

Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, Turning Our Backs on Nuremberg

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If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

The advent of sound recording deep-sixed this age-old thought experiment and offered a definitive answer: Yes!

I’ve got another one for you, though: if you water-torture someone at a secure military compound and no one is around to see it, is it a war crime?

Tricky, right?

Well, what if someone read more

Tomgram: William deBuys, 12 Ways to Make Sense of the Border Mess

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Who now remembers the classic 1956 sci-fi movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers? In it, alien spores drop to earth in… yes, California (undoubtedly not too far from the Mexican border)… and develop into seed pods that can replicate and then take over any nearby sleeping human being. What a nightmarish film. It certainly scared the hell out of 12-year-old read more

Tomgram: Karen Greenberg, Retiring the Statue of Liberty

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I remember him (barely) as a thin, bald, little old man with a white mustache and a cane. As I write this, I’m looking at a photo of him in 1947, holding the hand of little Tommy Engelhardt who had just turned three that very July day. They’re on a street somewhere in Brooklyn, New York, Tommy in shorts and a T-shirt and his grandfather, Moore (that wasn’t his original read more

Tomgram: Allegra Harpootlian, The School Shooters of the Planet

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Here’s something that should still stun anyone, but has had no discernible impact in this country. Between December 29, 2001, when B-52 and B-1B bombers killed more than 100 revelers in a village in Paktia Province, Afghanistan, and December 2013, when a drone slaughtered perhaps 15 read more