Day’s End and Night Watch

by Ed Kilgore
Politics

I knew Shaun White didn’t win a medal yesterday, but I still stayed up past my bedtime to watch the USA get skunked in the men’s halfpipe. It was a lesson in imagined suspense.

Here are some final items for this day:

* Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s Jim Galloway discusses the political implications of the current winter storm in Georgia, particularly for Gov. Nathan Deal.

* Proposed new IRS regulations on non-profit engagement in political activities drawing fire from the left as well as the right. More about that later this week.

* Former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin convicted on 20 of 21 counts in trial for bribe-taking and kickbacks.

* At Ten Miles Square, Keith Humphreys calls for major effort to crack down on prescription painkiller abuse, which is likely to lead to future heroin epidemic.

* At College Guide, Anya Kamenetz interviews danah boyd, author of It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens.

And in non-political news:

* TV comedy pioneer Sid Caesar dies at 91.

That’s it for Hump Day. Since we seem to have drifted into a musical theme about being awake when others sleep, let’s close with Talking Heads performing “Stay Up Late.”

Selah.

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Ed Kilgore

Ed Kilgore, a Monthly contributing editor, is a columnist for the Daily Intelligencer, New York magazine’s politics blog, and the managing editor for the Democratic Strategist.