Kathleen Geier

This is my other favorite band playing at Lollapalooza this weekend, Tune-Yards. Apparently a bunch of bands were rained out yesterday — hopefully they weren’t one of them. I looked for a video of “Killa,” since that one is probably my favorite cut off their last album, Whokill. I couldn’t find a good quality one […]

Earlier this week, Tamar Lewin of the New York Times published an excellent story about a congressional report that was released earlier this week about for-profit colleges. I didn’t see this report, authored by a committee headed by Senator Tom Harkin, covered in any of the blogs I regularly visit so I wanted to be […]

Via Think Progress, Mitt Romney, on his Facebook page, is claiming that President Obama is running to the courts to prevent members of the military from voting in Ohio. Saith the Mittster: President Obama’s lawsuit claiming it is unconstitutional for Ohio to allow servicemen and women extended early voting privileges during the state’s early voting […]

Here are some interesting pieces for you to check out this Sunday morning: — In the New York Times, economist Robert H. Frank examines a fascinating experiment that sheds some light on a question that perennially divides those on the right and left: the role of luck vs. the role of skill when comes to […]

“If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me.” — Alice Roosevelt Longworth This year has seen the deaths of four prominent men — Christopher Hitchens, Andrew Breitbart, Andrew Cockburn, and, most recently, Gore Vidal — who all had wildly diverging political views, but one salient characteristic in common: their scathing, […]

Lollapalooza is here in my hometown of Chicago this weekend. As always, there are a ton of great bands on the lineup, but at the moment my favorite among them is the Dum Dum Girls. Frontwoman Kristin Gundred writes some damn fine pop songs, and on the two Dum Dum Girl albums that have been […]

Over at Salon, David Sirota reports from the frontlines of what Amanda Marcotte has amusingly dubbed “The Republican War on Vegetables.” Sirota notes that, in response to the worst drought since 1950, “food prices are expected to skyrocket, and eventually, water-dependent power plants may be forced to shut down.” In response to what amounts to […]

First, it was that business outlawing supersize sodas. Now, the New York Times’ KJ Dell’Antonia reports that a backlash is brewing against NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s choice-restricting new breastfeeding initiative. Dell’Antonia writes that the policy, dubbed “Latch On NYC,” is designed “to promote breastfeeding, rather than formula, to the city’s new mothers.” But it’s unclear exactly […]

On this sleepy Saturday in August we are having what is, by all appearances, a classic slow news weekend. But one news story of note is Cass Sunstein’s resignation as White House overseer of regulation. No reason was given for his departure. Sunstein’s tenure was controversial. Labor and consumer activists and liberals in general were […]

Can you tell that I’m sort of obsessed with the subject of inequality? As such, I was excited to learn from no less an expert on the subject than Larry Bartels about a book he calls “the best book in decades on political inequality.” The book is Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power […]