Elizabeth Warren Is Hillary Clinton’s Nightmare

Noam Scheiber envisions a scenario in which Sen. Elizabeth Warren threatens the inevitability of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016:

Which brings us to the probable face of the insurgency. In addition to being strongly identified with the party’s populist wing, any candidate who challenged Clinton would need several key assets. The candidate would almost certainly have to be a woman, given Democrats’ desire to make history again. She would have to amass huge piles of money with relatively little effort. Above all, she would have to awaken in Democratic voters an almost evangelical passion. As it happens, there is precisely such a person. Her name is Elizabeth Warren.

Published: Nov 10, 2013
Length: 21 minutes (5,441 words)

Should This Inmate Get a State-Financed Sex Change Operation?

Michelle Kosilek, a transgender woman in prison for the 1990 murder of her wife, is fighting for the right to have the state provide sexual-reassignment surgery. Kosilek’s battle touches on what is covered under the Eighth Amendment:

We enter into a kind of compact with the people we incarcerate. Much as we might like to put them out of mind—behind 20-foot-tall, quarter-mile-long, immaculate walls erected in the middle of nowhere—we are, by the act of imprisoning them, bound more closely to them than ever. They are entirely dependent on us for food, clothing, shelter. Is it right that we brandish that dependence over them like a threat? Is it ethical for us to treat some legitimate medical conditions but not others? What does society owe to the worst among us? “Eighth Amendment protections are not forfeited by one’s prior acts,” wrote future Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in 1979. Yet there is a point at which even progressive legal scholars hesitate to champion those protections. Dolovich teaches her law students about a bank robber in California who received a heart transplant in 2008 while serving a 14-year sentence. The cost of the operation, including follow-up care, was more than a million dollars. The fact that the bank robber got the heart meant that someone else, someone law-abiding, didn’t.

Published: Oct 31, 2013
Length: 21 minutes (5,285 words)

Syria’s News Smugglers

Who’s really covering Syria—and who’s funding them? Shaer meets the citizen journalists and upstart news organizations reporting on the civil war, and raises questions about what’s motivating their work:

"One of the reporters changed the channel on a nearby television to CNN. ‘Every Western media organization had an agenda,’ said Mohammed. ‘CNN is always talking about ISIS, Al Nusra, Islamists, Al Qaeda. But they never talk about humanitarian aid.’

“Earlier, when I had asked Mohammed what he wished to see in Syria, he had answered quickly: ‘A modern Islamic state.’ But when I pointed out that Nashet also had an agenda, the room grew hushed and tense. ‘CIA,’ a reporter sitting behind me whispered accusingly. Sami motioned me to leave. Outside, he remarked, ‘You can’t have that kind of place if you don’t have a backer with a big agenda.’”

Published: Oct 21, 2013
Length: 15 minutes (3,892 words)

The Andrew Wylie Rules

The renowned literary agent on his hatred of Amazon, commercial fiction, and the future of book publishing:

"I didn’t think that [in 2010] the publishing community had properly assessed—particularly in regard to its obligations to writers—what an equitable arrangement would look like.

"And I felt that publishers had made a huge mistake, because they were pressured by Apple and Amazon to make concessions that they shouldn’t have made.

“These distribution issues come and go. It wasn’t so long ago that Barnes and Noble was this monster publishing leatherette classics, threatening to put backlists out of print. Amazon will go, and Apple will go, and it’ll all go.”

Published: Oct 8, 2013
Length: 9 minutes (2,336 words)

How Doug Band Drove a Wedge Through the Clinton Dynasty

How the world of politics works. MacGillis tells the story of Doug Band, who rose up to become one of President Clinton’s most trusted advisers, until his own business interests got in the way:

“Of course, it was only natural that Band would tap his existing network. What is striking is the extent to which Teneo’s business model depends on his relationship with Clinton. Band’s former White House colleague says Teneo is essentially a p.r. firm that is able to charge above-market rates because it persuades executives that Band and the ties he brings are an essential service. ‘If they were paying $25,000 or $40,000 a month for p.r., then $100,000 a month, from the eyes of the CEO, … it’s not going to crush him,’ says the former colleague. (According to The New York Times, Teneo’s monthly fees can be as high as $250,000.) The longtime Clinton associate says that Band’s pitch to clients was that he was ‘able to fly around [with Clinton] and decide who flies around with him. … The whole thing is resting on his access.'”

Published: Sep 24, 2013
Length: 36 minutes (9,007 words)

The Last Days of Big Law: You Can’t Imagine the Terror When the Money Dries Up

The story that will make you reconsider law school. Scheiber goes deep inside a big Chicago law firm, Mayer Brown, to examine the problems plaguing the legal profession—including consolidation, cost-cutting, layoffs, infighting, and further degradation of quality of life:

“Bob Helman realized the firm would go under if his partners sat around waiting for business to walk in the door. Hereafter, he decreed, each partner’s compensation would depend heavily on the amount of business he or she drummed up.

“Helman’s plan may have worked too well. Ever since it went into effect, partners have competed aggressively not just against lawyers at other firms, but against one another. Chicago partners would fly into New York to poach clients from their Manhattanite counterparts, holding clandestine meetings in which they would pitch themselves as less expensive and a mere two-hour plane ride away.7 When the New Yorkers invariably caught wind of these plots, they would remind clients that they were far more efficient than their Midwestern cousins. ‘What we would end up saying is … “Chicago will staff you with four partners on something we’d staff with one or two,”‘ recalls a former partner. ‘It’s crazy that I have to go in and have a conversation about it. Denigrating.'”

Books by Scheiber on Amazon

Published: Jul 22, 2013
Length: 28 minutes (7,164 words)

This Is How the NRA Ends

Despite recent setbacks, there’s reason to believe that the gun-control movement is growing, and holding politicians accountable for their ‘no’ votes:

“But then something unexpected happened. Some of the senators who’d voted ‘no’ faced furious voters back home. Even before Erica Lafferty, the daughter of murdered Sandy Hook Elementary principal Dawn Hochsprung, confronted New Hampshire Republican Kelly Ayotte at a particularly tense town hall, Ayotte’s disapproval rating in the state had jumped from 35 to 46 percent—half the respondents said her ‘no’ vote made them less likely to support her. In Pennsylvania, which has the second-highest concentration of NRA members in the country, the bill’s Republican co-sponsor, Pat Toomey, saw his approval reach a record high. One of the country’s best-known gun-rights advocates, Robert Levy, said the NRA’s ‘stonewalling of the background-check proposal was a mistake, both politically and substantively.'”

Published: May 28, 2013
Length: 20 minutes (5,239 words)

The Hell of American Day Care

An investigation into the abysmal state of child care in the United States:

“All too often, it takes an incident to force a closure. Last November, for instance, DFPS closed a center after a caregiver left a nine-month-old infant alone on a changing table without a belt. The baby fell onto a concrete floor, sustaining a serious skull injury. In addition to the caregiver, DFPS cited the director for failing to ‘contact the parents the next day when a “mushy” bump was observed on the infant’s head.’ I asked McGinnis how many of the area’s providers she’d trust with her own child. She answered promptly: ‘Twenty percent.'”

Published: Apr 15, 2013
Length: 23 minutes (5,884 words)

Richard Burton Was a Great Writer

A glimpse inside the actor’s personal diaries:

“So what sort of actor was he? On the one hand, he was tormented by the job. This is August 4, 1969: ‘I loathe loathe loathe acting. In studios. In England. I shudder at the thought of going to work with the same horror as a bank-clerk must loathe that stinking tube-journey every morning and the rush-hour madness at night. I loathe it, hate it, despise, despise, for Christ’s sake, it.’ That was the year he made Anne of the Thousand Days, on which he at least flirted with Geneviève Bujold, and the year in which Where Eagles Dare (an adventure film that has many enthusiasts) earned him around $7 million. Yet he could also rejoice in the way ‘Burton-and-Taylor’ had become their own film studio, able to do whatever they liked. In fourteen years under contract, he had enjoyed only Alexander the Great and Look Back in Anger.”

Published: Dec 20, 2012
Length: 11 minutes (2,836 words)

Growing Up Romney

A profile of Gov. Mitt Romney’s eldest son Tagg, and his family’s “myth of self-reliance”:

“Not long after graduating from Harvard Business School, he turned down offers from several prominent firms to join an obscure start-up called eGrad, whose meager resources gave it a kind of grunge aesthetic: secondhand furniture and heating so erratic he brought in blankets to keep warm. When Tagg wasn’t cold calling would-be corporate partners, he could sometimes be found packaging merchandise and mailing it. But making it on your own is never so clear-cut when you’re a Romney. Some of the biggest meetings he landed were with Staples, which his father had funded at Bain Capital, and General Motors, a company where his last name still carried weight.

“Tagg’s biography is littered with similar stories—short cuts he couldn’t have taken without his last name, obstacles that melted away before he was even aware of them. And yet, thanks to the Romney myth, he and his family believe that most of what he has achieved comes from old-fashioned industriousness, not older-fashioned status and wealth.

“Tagg’s blind spots, however, are largely forgivable. Everyone looks in the mirror on occasion and sees a taller, thinner, more virtuous version of himself. The problem is that Tagg’s blind spots are also Mitt’s. And Mitt’s peculiar version of reality doesn’t just drive him personally; it skews his politics and shapes his policies. It distorts his entire vision of how a president should govern.”

Published: Oct 19, 2012
Length: 17 minutes (4,294 words)