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A Tough Address for the President
It was a rough week for the president. IRS. Benghazi. The AP. Even the run-up to his graduation speech at Morehouse College turned into a fight.
“It has been a tough week for President Obama but Atlanta and Morehouse is ready to show our president much love,’’ said the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, which was where the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. once delivered his Sunday sermons.
Morehouse College's graduating class of 2002 sings its school song during commencement ceremonies on May 19, 2002 in Atlanta. (Erik S. Lesser/Getty)
On Sunday morning, Rev. Warnock will offer a prayer at the commencement at the all-black Morehouse College (from which he and Dr. King both graduated). Then will come the president, fresh on the heels of one of the worst weeks of his presidency, hounded by controversies about the IRS singling out Tea Partiers, long-standing questions over the 2012 Benghazi attacks, and revelations involving the Justice Department’s seizure of phone records from the Associate Press.
Angelina’s Brutal Operation
From severed blood vessels to painful scars, doctors reveal what’s really involved in a double mastectomy. By Lizzie Crocker.
There's nothing sexy about a double mastectomy. A day after Angelina Jolie announced she'd had one, her doctor revealed a more detailed account about the actress's operations, including a painful "nipple delay" procedure. So far, it seems, Jolie is recovering well, and her nipples are intact. But it wasn't—and isn't going to be—easy.
We spoke with doctors about the brutal reality of these procedures, and the questions that linger even after a success is pronounced.
JOHN MACDOUGALL
Struggling Kids, Broken System
Less than half of American children and adolescents with mental disorders are getting the treatment they need, according to a comprehensive new CDC report, the first of its kind. Eliza Shapiro reports.
In the months after Adam Lanza killed 20 schoolchildren and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, politicians and civilians alike seemed able to agree only that the nation’s mental-health system was in need of thorough examination and reform.
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An early major piece of that puzzle was released Thursday by the federal Centers for Disease Control, in the form of a comprehensive report about mental disorders in American children and adolescents, culled from years of data collection.
Why Drones Creep Us Out
The public hates drones. We worry that they will invade our privacy. But what about all the other machines that are invading our privacy already?
The congressional hearing on domestic drone use scheduled to happen today is the second in three months. Four states have already passed laws curtailing the use of drones by law enforcement, and 32 other states are actively considering it. The speed and intensity—and remarkable bipartisanship—of the response to domestic drones are the latest signs that the technology occupies a uniquely sensitive spot in the public imagination.
An X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System demonstrator flies over the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, May 14, 2013. George H.W. Bush is the first aircraft carrier to successfully catapult-launch an unmanned aircraft from its flight deck. (Timothy Walter/U.S. Navy,via Getty)
Just look at the public outrage over rumors that the Los Angeles Police Department was using a drone to search for Christopher Dorner. No one cared that they were using helicopters with heat-sensing technology, dogs, and surveillance cameras to give them a leg up, but the idea of a drone was appalling. Or look at the people who demanded that Amazon stop selling a toy drone, when the rest of the toy aisle looks like a plastic arsenal. Even New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, when telling people to get used to the idea of drone surveillance, acknowledges that they’re “scary.”
Wanna Dump Your Parents?
Will Smith’s son is joking about legally emancipating himself from his parents. Eliza Shapiro on the child stars who actually did it—and why it’s a terrible idea for everyone else.
Will Smith’s son may be able to joke about legally emancipating himself from his famous parents, but for the majority of kids, there’s nothing funny about it.
Jaden Smith, who co-stars with his father in the upcoming film After Earth, made headlines this week for suggesting that he wanted to divorce his mom and dad so he could have his own home. He was quick to clarify later that he wasn’t actually considering making it official. “I’m not going anywhere,” he told Ellen DeGeneres.
Will Smith and Jaden Smith. (Chiang Ying-ying/AP)
Mary Kennedy’s Suicide Mystery
A year after Richardson’s suicide, family and friends bitterly feud: was she plagued by mental illness or tormented by her husband, Robert Kennedy? Nancy Collins reports on new details.
“Was I surprised that Mary killed herself? No, because she threatened so often,” a friend recalls about Mary Richardson, the wife of Robert Kennedy Jr., who slipped her head through a hangman’s noose a year ago today at the age of 52. “A few days before she died, a friend who had dinner with Mary and the kids said, ‘She seems to be doing great. And I just looked at her. ‘You don’t get it. Mary is ill, not getting the right care, it’s ending. I pray that I’m wrong but this is going to play out one of two ways: She’ll kill Bobby or herself, and the greater fear, will she be alone or drive off a cliff with the kids in the car?’ ”
“There’s no blame to be laid here,” adds someone familiar with the Kennedy divorce case. “This is not about what Bobby Kennedy nor Mary Richardson did or did not do. She was a beautiful, charming, enthusiastic, devoted, loving mother, but Mary had serious demons that she could not get under control.”
O.J. Wants Redemption
Five years after his sentencing for robbery, an almost unrecognizable Simpson took the stand Wednesday in a bid for a retrial. Christine Pelisek reports on his long-shot strategy—blaming the lawyer.
How the mighty have fallen.
O.J. Simpson, who was once a pro football star and Heisman Trophy winner turned actor, famously beat murder charges in 1995 when he was acquitted of killing ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. On Wednesday, he appeared in court wearing a blue prison jumpsuit and looking significantly heavier, almost unrecognizably so, playing the part of a poor sap hoodwinked by his lawyer.
The Government’s Media Meddling
From the AP subpoena to the Pentagon Papers, Caitlin Dickson highlights five key cases of press intrusion.
Two days into what’s shaping up to be the most scandal-filled week of Barack Obama’s presidency, news broke that “the most transparent administration in history” was responsible for secretly obtaining two months’ worth of Associated Press telephone records, presumably in search of the source for a story on a foiled 2012 terror plot in Yemen. The news of the backdoor subpoenas has reignited a push for a media shield law that would keep journalists from having to give up their sources—federal legislation that was introduced to the Senate in 2009 but never came to a vote. The debate over whether government has the right to interfere in the press’s news-gathering process is as old as both institutions themselves, and this most recent instance brings to mind some of the most prominent cases of government meddling in the media.
AP
John Nugent, Held Hostage in the Capitol
Boston Feels the Pain
When travel writer Paul Theroux returned to his hometown after the marathon bombing, he found the mood of the city transformed, unified by a trauma, which he has seen elsewhere in the world.
For several decades, starting in the early 1970s, I traveled regularly from London, where I lived as a resident alien, to Boston, where I grew up, and each time it was like a tumble through the Looking Glass. Boston was so mild, so confident, still the joyous and even innocent city of my youth. The noteworthy Boston tragedies, vividly recalled by my father—the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 (21 killed), the Cocoanut Grove nightclub inferno of 1942 (492 killed)—were over, and such infernalities seemed unrepeatable.
A message written on a banner seen during a vigil on the Boston Common on April 16. (Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images)
Arriving in Boston was like landing upon the bosom of serenity from the derangement of a war zone. Britain at that time was in the grip of a bombing campaign by well-funded and feuding nationalists in Ulster, who were driven by spite, folklorism, and religious bigotry and were tribalistic in their antique grudges, absurd in their speechifying.
Our Bea Arthur Boob Scandal
It was an innocent story about the art market, that happened to include a nude image of everyone’s favorite Golden Girl. Facebook disagreed. Brian Ries on an unjust ban.
In the end, I was done in by Bea Arthur’s boobs.
As the social media editor for The Daily Beast, I have posted countless potentially offensive stories on our Facebook page, from the sexual proclivities of porn stars to purported cannibalism in Syria. But not until we linked to a piece about the Golden Girl’s breasts did Facebook shut us down.
For a crime that wasn’t a crime. For a so-called offensive image that was an actual piece of art valued at roughly $2 million.
IRS Targeting Not Illegal
Just to clarify, the IRS didn't break any laws by targeting certain political groups. But just because something's legal doesn't mean it's acceptable. The Treasury Department Inspector General said the IRS actions were 'inappropriate' and 'contrary to Treasury regulations.'
U.S. News
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A Tough Address for the President
It was a rough week for the president. IRS. Benghazi. The AP.... More
-
Angelina’s Brutal Operation
From severed blood vessels to painful scars, doctors reveal what’s really involved in a... More
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Struggling Kids, Broken System
Less than half of American children and adolescents with mental disorders are getting the... More







