The Long, Lawless Ride of Sheriff Joe Arpaio
In Arizona’s Maricopa County, 80-year-old Joe Arpaio has made a name for himself “for being not just the toughest but the most corrupt and abusive sheriff in America.” He’s now being sued by the Justice Department for civil rights violations against Latinos:
“Arpaio began focusing on illegal immigration about six years ago, after he watched an ambitious politician named Andrew Thomas get elected chief prosecutor of Maricopa County by promising to crack down on illegal immigrants. In 2006, shortly before the Department of Homeland Security empowered local law-enforcement agencies to act as an arm of the federal immigration effort, Arpaio created a Human Smuggling Unit – and used Thomas’ somewhat twisted interpretation of the law to focus not on busting coyotes and other smugglers, but on going after the smuggled.
“The move may have been indefensible from a legal standpoint, but it was political gold: Arpaio quickly ramped up his arrest numbers, bringing him a round of fresh media attention. The sheriff made a splash by setting up roadblocks to detain any drivers who looked like they could be in the U.S. illegally – a virtual license to racially profile Hispanics. Reports of pull-overs justified by little or no discernible traffic violations were soon widespread: Latinos in the northeastern part of the county, one study shows, were nine times more likely to be pulled over for the same infractions as other drivers. Arpaio’s men, the Justice Department alleges, relied on factors ‘such as whether passengers look “disheveled” or do not speak English.’ Some stops were justified after the fact: A group of Latinos who were photographed sitting in a car, neatly dressed, were described in the police report as appearing ‘dirty,’ the ostensible rationale for the pull-over. Testifying on the stand on July 24th in a federal trial over his department’s blatant record of racial profiling, Arpaio himself acknowledged that he once called the crackdown a ‘pure program to go after the illegals and not the crime first.'”
Amy Winehouse: 1983 – 2011
Remembering the singer’s last days, her struggle with substance abuse, and her extraordinary talent:
“[Mark] Ronson recognized the huge-voiced singer with a bad-girl look as part of a tradition stretching back to the Sixties. ‘The Shangri-Las had that kind of attitude: young girls from Queens in motorcycle jackets,’ he told ROLLING STONE at the time. ‘Amy looks fucking cool, and she’s brutally honest in her songs. It’s been so long since anybody in the pop world has come out and admitted their flaws, because everyone’s trying so hard to project perfection. But Amy will say, like, “Yeah, I got drunk and fell down. So what?” She’s not into self-infatuation and she doesn’t chase fame. She’s lucky that she’s that good, because she doesn’t have to.'”
Rachel Maddow’s Quiet War
On what drives the MSNBC star, and how she’s attempted to move her show beyond partisan shouting:
“Back in 2008, shortly after Phil Griffin called Maddow and told her he was giving her a prime-time television show of her own, she inherited the staff of Verdict With Dan Abrams, a show that embodied the gimmicky emptiness Maddow detests. The Sunday night before her first show, her executive producer, Bill Wolff, threw a launch party at his apartment and invited the entire Verdict staff. When everyone was sufficiently liquored up, Maddow gave a speech. ‘The point was to get everyone excited,’ Wolff recalls. ‘”OK, go get ’em, let’s go do this.”‘ What Maddow told them, instead, was that they needed to forget everything they had ever learned – that this show would be completely different from the one they’d been working on, that they must forget all of the skills they’d spent their careers building.
“‘That is crystallized in my memory,’ says Susan Mikula, Maddow’s partner of 13 years, who attended the party. ‘Everyone was pale. It could not have been more of a bummer. Or more quiet.’
“Maddow knew she had blown it. ‘I think Day One I was a bummer,’ she says. ‘Forget everything you’ve learned! Which implicitly says everything you’ve learned doesn’t matter to me.'”
The Battle for the Soul of Occupy Wall Street
The Occupy movement is trying to figure out its future, and keep the momentum going:
“But Ross, too, soon found himself enchanted by the possibility of the movement. A trained economist, he decided to start an Alternative Banking working group, with the ambitious plan of setting up an Occupy Bank – built on a cooperative, credit-union model, but operating nationwide. ‘There’s a big Hyde Street retailer in Britain with huge profits, all shared amongst its workers,’ Ross notes. ‘Everyone gets eight weeks holiday a year, wonderful pension plans. But culturally, we’ve been told there’s only one model of a company, which is purely profit-driven, where the workers get paid the least possible. In fact, that’s not the best model for a sustainable economy, and there’s some evidence that shows if you treat your workers better and pay them more, particularly if you give them a stake, then they will perform better. It’s kind of obvious.’
“What’s also obvious is that this phase of Occupy, with talk of credit unions and occupying the SEC, while eminently worthy, is also kind of boring, especially when compared to the thrill of Occupy’s park phase. Some, though, are ready to move on. ‘It’s easy to go back to the park occupation and fetishize it, in a way,’ says Occupy Chicago’s Brian Bean. ‘I prefer not to run a mini-society – I want to run society.'”
America’s Last Prisoner of War
In 2009, Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl was captured in Afghanistan after deciding to walk off his base. A look at why he left, and the complications surrounding his rescue:
“Within an hour, two F-18s were circling overhead. Afghan forces passed along intelligence that a U.S. soldier had been captured by the Taliban. By that evening, two F-15s – call sign DUDE-21 – had joined the search. A few minutes later, according to files obtained by WikiLeaks, a radio transmission intercepted by U.S. forces stated that the Taliban had captured three civilians and one U.S. soldier. The battalion leading the manhunt entered and searched three compounds in the area, but found nothing significant to report.
“The next morning, more than 24 hours after Bowe had vanished, U.S. intelligence intercepted a conversation between two Taliban fighters:
“‘I SWEAR THAT I HAVE NOT HEARD ANYTHING YET. WHAT HAPPENED. IS THAT TRUE THAT THEY CAPTURED AN AMERICAN GUY?’
“‘YES THEY DID. HE IS ALIVE. THERE IS NO WHERE HE CAN GO (LOL)’ ‘IS HE STILL ALIVE?’
“‘YES HE IS ALIVE. BUT I DONT HAVE THE WHOLE STORY. DONT KNOW IF THEY WERE FIGHTING. ALL I KNOW IF THEY WERE FIGHTING. ALL I KNOW THAT THEY CAPTURE HIM ALIVE AND THEY ARE WITH HIM RIGHT NOW.'”
The Secret Life of Transgender Rocker Tom Gabel
The lead singer of Against Me!, married with a child, is now Laura Jane Grace. She speaks out about gender dysphoria, which left her uncomfortable in a male body for as long as she can remember:
“In retrospect, the lyrics are almost shockingly direct: If I could have chosen I would have been born a woman / My mother once told me she would have named me Laura / I would grow up to be strong and beautiful like her / One day I’d find an honest man to make my husband
“Gabel says he thought he was ‘completely outing himself’ with a lyric like that. He expected to be confronted – a part of him even craved it. But if anyone suspected anything, no one brought it up. ‘When we did that song, I was like, “What is that about?”‘ says Butch Vig, who produced Against Me!’s last two albums. ‘He just kind of laughed it off. He said, “I was stoned and dreaming about what life can be.”‘”
How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform
The many ways to dismantle a law: How the 2,300-page Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act has been attacked and weakened since its passage in 2010:
“The fate of Dodd-Frank over the past two years is an object lesson in the government’s inability to institute even the simplest and most obvious reforms, especially if those reforms happen to clash with powerful financial interests. From the moment it was signed into law, lobbyists and lawyers have fought regulators over every line in the rulemaking process. Congressmen and presidents may be able to get a law passed once in a while – but they can no longer make sure it stays passed. You win the modern financial-regulation game by filing the most motions, attending the most hearings, giving the most money to the most politicians and, above all, by keeping at it, day after day, year after fiscal year, until stealing is legal again. ‘It’s like a scorched-earth policy,’ says Michael Greenberger, a former regulator who was heavily involved with the drafting of Dodd-Frank. ‘It requires constant combat. And it never, ever ends.'”
The Rise of the Killer Drones: How America Goes to War in Secret
How the U.S. drone program became central to the Obama administration’s counterterrorism efforts. The president has presided over 268 covert drone strikes, five times what George W. Bush ordered:
“But the implications of drones go far beyond a single combat unit or civilian agency. On a broader scale, the remote-control nature of unmanned missions enables politicians to wage war while claiming we’re not at war – as the United States is currently doing in Pakistan. What’s more, the Pentagon and the CIA can now launch military strikes or order assassinations without putting a single boot on the ground – and without worrying about a public backlash over U.S. soldiers coming home in body bags. The immediacy and secrecy of drones make it easier than ever for leaders to unleash America’s military might – and harder than ever to evaluate the consequences of such clandestine attacks.
“‘Drones have really become the counterterrorism weapon of choice for the Obama administration,’ says Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown law professor who helped establish a new Pentagon office devoted to legal and humanitarian policy. ‘What I don’t think has happened enough is taking a big step back and asking, “Are we creating more terrorists than we’re killing? Are we fostering militarism and extremism in the very places we’re trying to attack it?” A great deal about the drone strikes is still shrouded in secrecy. It’s very difficult to evaluate from the outside how serious of a threat the targeted people pose.'”
Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: Inside Dartmouth’s Hazing Abuses
A former Dartmouth College fraternity member speaks out about rampant hazing and alcohol abuse at the Ivy League school. But reforming the frat culture might be too much for just one whistleblower:
“On January 25th, Andrew Lohse took a major detour from the winning streak he’d been on for most of his life when, breaking with the Dartmouth code of omertà, he detailed some of the choicest bits of his college experience in an op-ed for the student paper The Dartmouth. ‘I was a member of a fraternity that asked pledges, in order to become a brother, to: swim in a kiddie pool of vomit, urine, fecal matter, semen and rotten food products; eat omelets made of vomit; chug cups of vinegar, which in one case caused a pledge to vomit blood; drink beer poured down fellow pledges’ ass cracks… among other abuses,’ he wrote. He accused Dartmouth’s storied Greek system – 17 fraternities, 11 sororities and three coed houses, to which roughly half of the student body belongs – of perpetuating a culture of ‘pervasive hazing, substance abuse and sexual assault,’ as well as an ‘intoxicating nihilism’ that dominates campus social life. ‘One of the things I’ve learned at Dartmouth – one thing that sets a psychological precedent for many Dartmouth men – is that good people can do awful things to one another for absolutely no reason,’ he said. ‘Fraternity life is at the core of the college’s human and cultural dysfunctions.’ Lohse concluded by recommending that Dartmouth overhaul its Greek system, and perhaps get rid of fraternities entirely.”
One Town’s War on Gay Teens
A Minnesota school district enacts a policy designed to stop teachers from discussing or acknowledging homosexuality. Gay students report bullying, but administrators do nothing. The result is a string of suicides that has shaken the community:
“Sam’s death lit the fuse of a suicide epidemic that would take the lives of nine local students in under two years, a rate so high that child psychologist Dan Reidenberg, executive director of the Minnesota-based Suicide Awareness Voices of Education, declared the Anoka-Hennepin school district the site of a ‘suicide cluster,’ adding that the crisis might hold an element of contagion; suicidal thoughts had become catchy, like a lethal virus. ‘Here you had a large number of suicides that are really closely connected, all within one school district, in a small amount of time,’ explains Reidenberg. ‘Kids started to feel that the normal response to stress was to take your life.’
“There was another common thread: Four of the nine dead were either gay or perceived as such by other kids, and were reportedly bullied.”