The new Mexican movie U.S. conservatives love…
“On the morning of June 2, 1929, a detachment of federales gunned down a middle-aged former army general outside a hacienda chapel in the Mexican state of Jalisco. Enrique Gorostieta was the commander of a Catholic peasant militia known as the Cristeros, which had been fighting the government of President Plutarco Calles for three years. In 1926, the fiercely anti-clerical Calles had moved to curtail the Catholic Church’s activities in Mexico, demanding the registration of the clergy and stripping the Church of the right to own property.”
Charlie Homans, “Two Thumbs Up”
Is JP Morgan too big to hedge?
“The idea takes Jamie Dimon’s logic—that he needs to be able to protect against the credit risk in his portfolio—and turns it on its head, since one of JP Morgan’s problems was that the trades it used for hedging were so large they moved the market. Everyone on Wall Street and in London could see what it was up to with this particular hedge and was able to punish it by taking the other side of the trade.”
Noam Scheiber, “Yet Another Problem With JP Morgan.”
Who is Mitt Romney’s most trusted adviser?
“Personal friends with such outsize influence are actually quite rare in presidential politics. Within recent administrations, only Valerie Jarrett really fits the profile. But, as it happens, Jarrett won’t be the only Valerie Jarrett–figure advising a presidential candidate this year. Mitt Romney has his own longtime-pal-cum-alter-ego, a 56-year-old ex-Bain Capital partner named Bob White.”
-Noam Scheiber, “The Partner: Meet Mitt Romney’s most trusted adviser.”
‘Girls’ is great, but what will Lena Dunham do next?
“Lena Dunham stars in, writes, and directs Girls (which airs it 30-minute episodes Sundays on HBO), and she bags another credit as “creator” of the show (though Judd Apatow is also backing it—if he can stand to see work that makes his movies look so ponderous). Dunham is the one who takes her clothes off most of the time, revealing her very ordinary, normal, and hardly ready-for-Playboy body, having sex and talking about it.”
-David Thomson, “‘Girls’ is great, but what will Lena Dunham do next?”
Will a longtime friend of Marco Rubio’s compromise his larger ambitions?
“He gave a well-received foreign policy speech at the Brookings Institution and appeared with Mitt Romney, by that point the all-but-certain nominee, at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. But, in the midst of this media blitz, there was one bit of news that didn’t quite fit: Politico reported that Rubio was planning to hold a fund-raiser at an upscale Capitol Hill restaurant for a Florida congressman named David Rivera.”
Eliza Gray, “Ties That Bind”
Did Mitt Romney misread “The Escape Artists?”
“Here’s the backstory: On Friday, Romney told a crowd in New Hampshire that he was reading my recent book on Obama and the economy. The book’s take-away, according to Romney, is that Obama deliberately slowed the recovery to focus on health care reform.”
Noam Scheiber, “My Day in Mitt Romney’s Book Club”
Good afternoon. The digital edition of our June 7 issue is now available online!
Read Alec MacGillis on what political upheaval in Ohio means for November, the Editors on saving America’s crumbling infrastructure, Eliza Gray on a longtime friend of Marco Rubio’s, Timothy Noah’s TRB column on conservative cliches, Leon Wieseltier on Syria, and much more…
June 7, 2012 | The New Republic
Will the law also evolve on gay marriage?
“President Obama’s announcement that he supports same-sex marriage may have had an immediate impact on political discourse, but the same can’t be said of its implications for constitutional jurisprudence. For those hoping for a forthright defense of constitutional protections for gay rights, Obama’s announcement seemed to raise more questions than it settled. “
Jeff Rosen, “Why the Law Will Eventually ‘Evolve” on Gay Marriage Just Like Obama Did”
Metrosexual Abraham Lincoln, Hipster Rutherford B. Hayes, Freegan Chester A. Arthur and more
When the New York Times reported that a Mitt Romney-affiliated Super PAC was considering attacking President Obama for falsely crafting the persona of a “black, metrosexual Abe Lincoln,” the obvious way to respond was with revulsion. The other way, however, was with delight. Insidious purposes no doubt motivated its creation, but the phrase “metrosexual Abe Lincoln” offers an anachronistic juxtaposition that’s very much worth contemplating. (“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth skinny jeans…”) Indeed, with so many other presidents to choose from, why stop at Lincoln? “
