Stop Hating on the IRS
As Apple CEO Tim Cook deftly parried attacks on his company for avoiding paying billions in taxes before Congress Tuesday, we could be forgiven for heaving a collective sigh, part resignation and part resentment. Of course the big fish get away with tax shenanigans that the rest of us don’t. It’s one more reason to hate the IRS, after the agency’s targeting of Tea Party groups for intrusive questioning.
Gateway Episodes: Deadwood
Summer is right around the corner—the perfect time to catch up with a few of those shows everyone is always saying you should watch. But there are so many! How can you decide which to try? Pilot episodes have so much introductory work to do; they’re usually subpar compared with the great stuff to come. And the very best episodes of a series often demand too much knowledge of what came before.
Secrets and Scoops
In the wake of the story this week that the Justice Department scooped up two months’ worth of the phone records of reporters and editors at the Associated Press, University of Chicago law professor and Slate contributor Eric Posner and Slate senior editor Emily Bazelon have been arguing over whether this is an overreach by the Department of Justice and an intrusion on the newsgathering function of the press (Emily), or an entirely justified effort to find and prosecute a scurrilous government leaker who imperiled the country’s counterterrorism operation in Yemen (Eric). Here’s an edited version of their exchange:
The Barack Obama Is Richard Nixon Gabfest
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Obama’s War on Journalists
Attorney General Eric Holder has said that he doesn’t want the Obama administration’s leak prosecutions “to be his legacy.” But he has also trumpeted the cases—six and counting—in response to criticism from Senate Republicans. “We have tried more leak cases—brought more leak cases during the course of this administration than any other administration,” Holder said before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year.
Emily has written for or appeared on:
