COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER
JUNE 7, 2021
IS THE NATION A GOOD INFORMATION SITE, OR IS IT TOO HIGHLY BIASED? IF SO,
IN WHAT DIRECTION? ACCORDING TO ALLSIDES.COM, IT IS DEFINITELY LEFT-LEANING,
BUT PROUDLY SO. HERE ARE SOME SAMPLES OF THEIR STORIES.
https://www.allsides.com/news-source/nation-media-bias
The Nation media bias rating is Left.
The Nation has a Left media bias. The Nation describes itself on its
website as, "Principled. Progressive. The Nation speaks truth to power to
build a more just society ... [The Nation] empowers readers to fight for
justice and equality for all ... We argue that dissent is patriotic and we hold
the powerful to account, no matter their political persuasion."
The Nation has been dubbed "the most widely read weekly journal of
progressive political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis." [Source:
Wikipedia]
The Nation endorsed socialist Bernie Sanders for President in 2016.
Some summer 2018 headlines featured on The Nation included, "Judge
Kavanaugh: An Originalist With a New — and Terrifying — Interpretation of
Executive Power," "These 5 Trump Policies Are Leading Us Toward
Economic Chaos," "Trump's War on Children," and "The
Republican Congress Isn't Even Pretending to Do Its Job."
About The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the
United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described
as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, it is
published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.
Source: Wikipedia
Funding, Financing, and Ownership
Note: Funding and ownership is not taken into account when determining
AllSides Media Bias Ratings. While it's true ownership and financial interests
can affect what goes to print, our bias ratings are determined by assessing the
bias of content only. We provide financial and ownership information as an FYI to
our readers.
The Nation is sustained in part by a group of more than 30,000 donors
called Nation Builders, who donate funds to the periodical above and beyond
their annual subscription fees.
Updated November 23, 2020
Authors who have written for The Nation
John Nichols, Jimmy Tobias, Elie Mystal
This list is provided by our.news. It is a beta feature and may not
be 100% accurate.
PRESENTED HERE ARE TWO ARTICLES OF INTEREST FROM THE NATION. GO TO THE WEBSITE
TO VIEW MORE OF THEIR OFFERINGS.
Judge Kavanaugh: An Originalist With a New—and Terrifying—Interpretation of Executive Power
With an ultraconservative majority on the Supreme Court, it will be up to Congress to save our civil rights.
By Patricia J. Williams Twitter
JULY 13, 2018
PHOTOGRAPH -- Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh on Capitol Hill, July
12, 2018. (AP Photo / Cliff Owen)
Recently, a friend asked me why it matters whether Supreme Court nominees
are “liberal” or “conservative.” She understood those words to refer only to
party politics: “Aren’t legal questions confronting judges supposed to be above
politics?”
I could understand her confusion. The way many media pundits have been
discussing judicial ethics often conflates what is meant by
liberal-conservative in the jurisprudential realm with what it means in the
political realm.
My friend was quite right, of course, about the principle of separation of
powers: Laws are the result of political decisions made by legislatures, and
the judiciary construes and interprets the applications and limits of those
laws. Thus, in order to ensure impartial decision-making, a judge’s ethical
responsibility must be to place enacted law above his or her “personal
political beliefs”—indeed, it’s a mantra of judges during the approval process.
ARTICLE OF INTEREST -- House Democrats Call for Answers on US Involvement
in Brazil
But in practice, judges’ thinking is shaped by various jurisprudential
movements and philosophies of interpretation, some of which have become no less
contested and divided than party politics. Within the law there are theories
of reading, a bit like biblical interpretation. Think of the divide within
the Church of England: Nigerian bishops’ take on Anglicanism has tended toward
highly literal readings of particular Biblical passages, for example,
denouncing homosexuality as near-unpardonable sin. In contrast, retired
Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England Rowan Williams has argued
that “orthodoxy should be a tool, not an end in itself.”
RELATED ARTICLE -- The Nation, 10 QUESTIONS JUDGE KAVANAUGH SHOULD ANSWER,
Gregg Levine
Just so, some judges, like orthodox religionists, read the law literally,
strictly, with no allowance for connotation. Other judges read the law as
Williams might, “as a tool” not an end; they read for law’s meaning in
particular contexts, or based on what they deem a reasonable penumbra of
attendant meanings, or expand the meaning beyond its original meaning to
encompass situations not anticipated by the law’s authors or enactors at
the time originally written.
For example, when constitutional protections against search and seizure
were made law, there were no telephones or internet or satellite surveillance. How
then, do those technologies—of bugging or data collection—fit within the
meaning of privacy protections conceived long ago? Some jurists would say Congress
has to make specific new laws to cover anything that is not within the original
meaning of the original document as understood by the original legislators.
Justice Antonin Scalia, for example, maintained that the death penalty was
legal simply because at the time that the Eighth Amendment was passed,
execution was considered neither cruel nor unusual. Originalists tend not
to want to go beyond the meaning of the founding fathers unless Congress writes
specific laws to expand that original meaning. That’s what’s at issue at the
more conservative end of constitutional jurisprudence.
At the more liberal end, theories of reading tend to be looser, bending a
bit to allow what the original spirit of the law was meant to cover. It
asks what the authors or enactors of particular laws would or should have
done had they been confronted with this contemporary issue or that new
situation. (As in: Is or is not this new-fangled telegraph machine akin to
delivering messages via a high-speed pony express?) Their allowance for situational
ethics—i.e., interpreting a law contingent upon the service of justice—is
what is generally called liberal.
ADVERTISEMENT -- CURRENT ISSUE -- View our current issue. If you like this
article, please give today to help fund The Nation’s work.
But while what I have just described is exclusively about juridical modes
of interpretation and construction, these semantic leanings also largely
reflect and overlap with the political world views that divide Republicans
and Democrats. As a very general matter, Republicans tend to advocate orthodoxies
of “law and order” and strict penological enforcements like the death penalty
that leave little room for context or forgiveness or changed values.
By the same token and again as a general matter, Democrats have, at least
in recent history, been more associated with more capacious or inclusive
meanings that expand notions of polity and citizenship beyond the category of
the “white male property holders” who were the original and only
enfranchised citizens allowed by the original Constitution.
Thus, while judicial ideology and political parties are technically separate
realms, there is a literal-versus-connotative, right-versus-left thread that is
strong and predictive, whether in the juridical or political realm.
What’s at stake right now is that Brett Kavanaugh, the man our president
has just nominated to the highest court in the land, isn’t a mid-range
“conservative” in the tradition of Anthony Kennedy; rather he’s an originalist,
of the Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia sort. And if the executive, in
nominating and endorsing originalism, joins power with a newly configured
Supreme Court of committed literalists—i.e., an insuperable majority of
ultraorthodox—and if this new alignment really proceeds to take the
Constitution back in time, it means that Congress is going to have to pass new
laws to explicitly keep in place our civil rights and social reforms,
particularly when it comes to race, gender, sexuality, labor, public
accommodation, immigration, and equal protection. I simply do not see a
Republican-dominated Congress prepared to step up to that plate.
It is not only the much-discussed right to abortion that is at issue. We
are going to see many, many important measures—regarding the rights of the
poor, of the working class, of women, of children, of LGBTQ, of the
environment, of whoever is currently deemed nonwhite—struck down by the high
court. And I fear there will be insufficient political will to bring
those measures back to life through legislation.
All of that said, what’s most troubling about Donald Trump’s nomination of
Judge Kavanaugh is not what I have described thus far. Rather, this
particular nominee has publicly stated that he thinks a president should not be
prosecuted either civilly or criminally. That doesn’t accord with any judicial
or political philosophy I’m familiar with. It’s terrifying. Kavanaugh seems
to endorse a more-Nixonian-than-Nixon theory of absolute executive power.
Such a proposition was not really taken seriously when Nixon attempted to
raise it during the time of Watergate. Yet now it seems entirely possible
that this theory could become reality if Trump were to assert it, for any
such a claim of immunity would undoubtedly have to go before the Supreme Court,
whose tremulous balance would be weighted irretrievably toward not just
conservative jurists but originalists. (Not all of this is Trump’s magic
either: The court’s looming ultraconservative majority has been the
decades-long work of political operatives and organizations like the Federalist
Society.)
In sum, it is very sinister that no matter what the Mueller investigation
may find about criminal activities before or during this presidency, our
Supreme Court might have sufficient power to say it simply doesn’t matter.
1 HOUSE DEMOCRATS CALL FOR ANSWERS ON US INVOLVEMENT IN BRAZIL
2 WHEN SENSITIVITY BECOMES CENSORSHIP
3 THE MISEDUCATION OF WHITE CHILDREN
4 DESPITE THE HEADLINES, THE GATES FOUNDATION HAS EVADED SCRUTINY
5 WHY I’M VOTING FOR MAYA WILEY FOR MAYOR
Patricia J. Williams TWITTER
Patricia J. Williams is University Professor of Law and Philosophy, and
Director of Law, Technology and Ethics at Northeastern University.
For Reprints and Permissions, click here.
WATCHING THE CONTINUING TREND OF WARMING WATER AROUND THE GLOBE IS USEFUL AS A GAUGE
FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENTISTS TO PLOT TEMPERATURE CHANGES IN THE ATMOSPHERE, AND
IT HAS RISEN TO A NEW HIGH IN 2020. A CHINESE STUDY MAKES A PLEA FOR COOPERATION
TO CUT EMISSIONS OF GREENHOUSE GASES.
Ocean temperatures breaking records
OUR STAFF REPORT
January 14, 2021
ISLAMABAD - Even with the COVID-19-related small dip in global carbon
emissions due to limited travel and other activities, the ocean
temperatures continued a trend of breaking records in 2020. A new study,
authored by 20 scientists from 13 institutes around the world, reported the
highest ocean temperatures since 1955 from surface level to a depth of 2,000
meters.
The report is published recently in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences and
concluded with a plea to the policymakers and others to consider the lasting
damage warmer oceans can cause as they attempt to mitigate the effects of
climate change.“
Over 90% of the excess heat due to global warming is absorbed by the
oceans, so ocean warming is a direct indicator of global warming — the warming we have measured paints a picture of long-term global
warming,” said Lijing Cheng, lead paper author and associate professor with
the International Center for Climate and Environmental Sciences at the
Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
Cheng is also affiliated with CAS’s Center for Ocean Mega-Science.
“However, due to the ocean’s delayed response to global warming, the trends
of ocean change will persist at least for several decades, so societies
need to adapt to the now unavoidable consequences of our unabated
warming. But there is still time to take action and reduce our emissions
of greenhouse gases.”
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