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Where Things Stand: Garland Looks To DOJ’s Origins To Confront Today’s Right-Wing Extremism Crisis 
Merrick Garland is finally getting his day in court.
While the most eye roll-inducing moments thus far involve Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX), Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) daring to harp on the importance of an apolitical Department of Justice, Garland’s opening statement gave us a pretty clear sign of what to expect out of a Garland-run DOJ.
Since the earliest reports of the high efficacy of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines there’s been a significant asterisk attached to that good news. While the vaccines are extremely effective at preventing illness and death – close to full proof on the latter – it wasn’t clear whether they prevented the further spread of the disease. So a vaccine protects you from getting sick but possibly you could still spread the disease to others.
When I first heard about this possibility in an article by TPM’s Josh Kovensky I was baffled. How could that possibly be true, even logically speaking?
This issue is one of the deepest sources of confusion and inaccurate messaging tied to COVID vaccines.
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From TPM Reader WH …
I thought I’d share this short connection I have to the late Rush Limbaugh:
Around 2014 I got a part-time job as a “linguistic annotator”. The employer was a language-related research and development nonprofit. I worked on a DARPA project called “DEFT Anomaly”, an “automated, deep natural-language processing technology … for more efficiently processing text information and enabling understanding connections in text that might not be readily apparent to humans” … in other words, helping computers learn to pick up nuance and implicit meaning in text.
From TPM Reader BC …
Hearing the news that Rush died struck me a bit differently because we worked together at KFBK/KAER in Sacramento. I was there from 1983 to 1990. Just before Rush, KFBK had Morton Downey Jr. in that time slot, who soon self-immolated via a “joke” about “Chinamen”. Mort was the oiliest, sleaziest human I have ever known. But Rush succeeded, and in part because meanness was just ramping up in conservative circles in the 80’s, and because he knew which people to stomp on.
Where Things Stand: There’s A Lot To Learn About The Last Four Years
The Trump presidency was chock-full of scandal, slimy misdeeds, worrying and outright deadly events that we still don’t fully understand. It’s hard to keep each straight in hindsight. There’s so much we didn’t know or couldn’t confirm as the events were unfolding in front of us — from the details of the family separation policy to Trump’s conversations with Putin to the government’s response to natural disasters such as Hurricane Maria.
But slowly and surely we will begin to learn more about some of the Trump era’s worst offenses. Coming soon: an official accounting of the jarring details behind the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Rush and The Donald
After the news of Rush Limbaugh’s death broke Wednesday, there was an immediate challenge for those who loathed the man: how to respond to his death at age 70. Many simply celebrated, which is … paradoxically, very much in the spirit of the man. I can’t celebrate anyone’s passing. Death is too central to the human condition. It casts too great a pall of grief over too many people beyond the deceased. The part of this I got involved in is noting that Limbaugh was a very talented broadcaster. He was also funny, though often in cruel and malevolent ways. Maybe not funny to you. But funny. Besides catching clips of his latest outrage from TPM or Media Matters I hadn’t listened to Rush in decades. But during his early years I listened a lot. I also watched his short lived TV show. Basically a failure. A face for radio. He was uniquely talented in his medium. This isn’t praise. These are facts. And they’re worth repeating because while they are certainly not the most important things about Limbaugh’s role in American public life you can’t really understand that role without recognizing these parts of it.
I raise these facts because they have an import beyond Limbaugh.
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Where Things Stand: I Really Don’t Care, Do U?
There’s always a tweet.