The Nation Feb-03-14

Hisssssssssss
 Re E.L. Doctorow’s “Our Virtual Hell,” his wonderful comment about the Internet [Dec. 23/30, 2013]: there is a way to fight back:
 Or, as Eve should have asked the serpent when he offered her the fruit of knowledge (lately known as the Internet), “Did you wash it?” Peter Weiss New York City _________________________ The Scourge of Gentrification
 Re Michelle Goldberg’s “Solving Gentrification” [Dec. 23/30]: zoning cannot fix what inadequate income taxation is causing, not only in New York. But I wish the best to Mayor
de Blasio anyway. Muser 
 _________________________ I know how it feels to suddenly be surrounded by crowds of new, young, ambitious, monied people who start describing my hometown to me in terms I’ve never heard before. Generations of experience and know-how are suddenly thrown out…

@KatrinaNation Productivity at
@thenation very low as many glued to screens watching Guv Christie say I’m sorry scores of times.
 @pourmecoffee
“Everything dies baby, that’s a fact, but maybe everything
that dies someday comes back.” —Drunk Chris Christie singing out loud in den
 @JessicaValenti You know your iPhone is hip to your feminist agenda when autocorrect keeps changing “favorite” to “abortive.”
 @brycecovert Unemployment rate for black people (11.9%) still more than twice that for white people (5.9%).
 @mychalsmith Don’t be the “we’re all the same race—human” guy. I
promise you, no one likes that guy.
 @EdgeofSports
Rest in Power Amiri Baraka.
 @LilianaSegura “There is no justice in America, but it is the fight for justice that sustains you.”
RIP Amiri Baraka
…

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie mounted what the New York Daily News aptly termed a “pathetic” defense amid the growing scandal arising from the abuses of power that gridlocked access lanes to the world’s busiest motor vehicle bridge. In the wake of his claim that he had been “betrayed”
by his closest aides, his campaign manager and his appointees, there were still some politicians and pundits who imagined Christie might be a presidential prospect. But as Thomas Kean, a former New Jersey governor and a Republican elder statesman who was once Christie’s mentor, said, “You look at [his governing style] and ask, do you really want that in your president?” 
 The ultimate answer will be no. Even before the September lane blockages in Fort Lee were recognized as an act…

In a move hailed as “groundbreaking” by school discipline reform advocates, the departments of Education and Justice recently issued new guidelines for disciplinary policies in a move designed to prevent racial discrimination against students.
 The guidelines are the product of an initiative between the two federal departments to address the school-to-prison pipeline, since school disciplinary measures are often disproportionately applied, with black students receiving harsher treatment than their white peers. 
 —Julianne Hing Colorlines.com…

The November 24 interim agreement between Iran and the P5+1 world powers, which moved into its implementation phase in January, could be blown apart if Congress, backed by hawks and the Israel lobby, enacts yet another Iran sanctions bill, the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act. 
 Like a scene from The Walking Dead, seventy-seven neoconservative pundits, analysts and former officials—almost all of them the same people who, as members of various committees and ad hoc think tanks, pushed for war against Iraq from the late 1990s to 2003—sent a letter to congressional leaders backing the reckless scheme. Among the signers: William Kristol of The Weekly Standard; former senator Joe Lieberman, Michael Rubin and Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute; former Pentagon official Douglas Feith; Fred Kagan, an architect of…

On December 12, in a decision formulated behind closed doors, the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation & Historic Preservation green-lighted the New York Public Library’s request to demolish seven levels of book stacks inside the main branch of the 42nd Street Library. But first, the corpse must be prepared for burial: before proceeding with the demolition, the NYPL was instructed to hire an archaeologist or historian to document, via photography and archival evidence, the stacks designed by Carrère and Hastings, which were hailed as marvels of engineering when they were unveiled in 1911.
 This is a wake-up call for New York’s new mayor, Bill de Blasio, who held a press conference on the steps of the NYPL on July 12 to declare his opposition to the Central Library…