Tag Archives: heritage

Trace Your Roots with DNA – Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak & Ann Turner

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Trace Your Roots with DNA

Using Genetic Tests to Explore Your Family Tree

Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak & Ann Turner

Genre: Life Sciences

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: October 27, 2004

Publisher: Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC


Written by two of the country's top genealogists, this is the first book to explain how new and groundbreaking genetic testing can help you research your ancestry According to American Demographics, 113 million Americans have begun to trace their roots, making genealogy the second most popular hobby in the country (after gardening). Enthusiasts clamor for new information from dozens of subscription-based websites, email newsletters, and magazines devoted to the subject. For these eager roots-seekers looking to take their searches to the next level, DNA testing is the answer. After a brief introduction to genealogy and genetics fundamentals, the authors explain the types of available testing, what kind of information the tests can provide, how to interpret the results, and how the tests work (it doesn't involve digging up your dead relatives). It's in expensive, easy to do, and the results are accurate: It's as simple as swabbing the inside of your cheek and popping a sample in the mail. Family lore has it that a branch of our family emigrated to Argentina and now I've found some people there with our name. Can testing tell us whether we're from the same family? My mother was adopted and doesn't know her ethnicity. Are there any tests available to help her learn about her heritage? I just discovered someone else with my highly unusual surname. How can we find out if we have a common ancestor? These are just a few of the types of genealogical scenarios readers can pursue. The authors reveal exactly what is possible-and what is not possible-with genetic testing. They include case studies of both famous historial mysteries and examples of ordinary folks whose exploration of genetic genealogy has enabled them to trace their roots.

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Trace Your Roots with DNA – Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak & Ann Turner

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Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman: Conservation Heroes of the American Heartland – Miriam Horn

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Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman: Conservation Heroes of the American Heartland

Miriam Horn

Genre: Nature

Price: $2.99

Publish Date: September 6, 2016

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Seller: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.


Now a feature-length documentary on the Discovery channel narrated by Tom Brokaw. “Lush, gorgeously written…A profoundly hopeful book.” —Tina Rosenberg, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award A Kirkus Best Book of 2016 Many of the men and women doing today’s most consequential environmental work—restoring America’s grasslands, wildlife, soil, rivers, wetlands, and oceans—would not call themselves environmentalists; they would be too uneasy with the connotations of that word. What drives them is their deep love of the land: the iconic terrain where explorers and cowboys, pioneers and riverboat captains forged the American identity. They feel a moral responsibility to preserve this heritage and natural wealth, to ensure that their families and communities will continue to thrive. Unfolding as a journey down the Mississippi River, Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman tells the stories of five representatives of this stewardship movement: a Montana rancher, a Kansas farmer, a Mississippi riverman, a Louisiana shrimper, and a Gulf fisherman. In exploring their work and family histories and the essential geographies they protect, Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman challenges pervasive and powerful myths about American and environmental values.

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Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman: Conservation Heroes of the American Heartland – Miriam Horn

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This is Trump’s chance to tank the solar industry

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

If President Trump were honest about which industries are the biggest job-creation powerhouses, it wouldn’t be the sluggish coal industry. It’s solar. More than twice the size of the wind industry and roughly five times bigger than the coal industry, solar accounted for one in every 50 jobs created in 2016, according to an annual census by the Solar Foundation. But Trump will soon have the chance to cut off U.S. solar from the cheap foreign panels that have led to the industry’s booming success the past few years.

The U.S. International Trade Commission on Friday decided 4-0 that foreign imports of solar panels and cells have damaged the business of two domestic solar manufactures, Suniva and SolarWorld. Now that the ITC has found injury, it will likely suggest a price floor or tariffs. The decision on whether to regulate these imports will ultimately fall to Trump, and evidence suggests he’s likely to do it. “I would place the odds of the president agreeing to some type of remedy at 90 percent,” an anonymous Trump administration official told the news site Axios.

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Suniva has already proposed a price floor of 78 cents per watt and a tariff that would more than double the current panel costs. Solar Energy Industries Association President Abigail Ross Hopper’s statement Friday warned that such a proposal could hobble the industry.

“Analysts say Suniva’s remedy proposal will double the price of solar, destroy two-thirds of demand, erode billions of dollars in investment and unnecessarily force 88,000 Americans to lose their jobs in 2018,” Hopper said. “An improper remedy will devastate the burgeoning American solar economy and ultimately harm America’s manufacturers and 36,000 people currently engaged in solar manufacturing that don’t make cells and panels.”

And according to Greentech Media, a tariff on imported panels wouldn’t necessarily lead to more domestic manufacturing:

If President Trump approves a new trade remedy for “injury” from imported solar products, it will likely take effect in January 2018. The solar industry is then expected to file a complaint with the WTO — which is what opponents did when the American steel industry brought a Section 201 nearly 17 years ago. The WTO could take another two years to rule on the case. And if the Suniva/SolarWorld 201 petition is found to be in conflict with the WTO — like in the steel case — the WTO will reject it.

The problem is, this two-and-a-half-year period probably doesn’t provide enough runway to make a U.S. facility feasible. A company that invests considerable capital in a U.S. factory, only to find the country reopened to imports by the time it’s finished, would be at a disadvantage compared to others that don’t bother.

It’s not just environmentalists and advocacy groups that oppose stemming the flow of cheap imported panels. Most of the U.S. solar industry lined up against Suniva and SolarWorld, after seeing the costs of installed solar per watt decline dramatically the past 10 years. About 98 percent of the industry now relies on these imports, “with more than a third of them from China,” where production costs are cheaper, reports InsideClimate News. These cheaper costs have made solar competitive with fossil fuels, in some cases even outcompeting conventional sources. That’s what solar installers say is responsible for the boom in utility-scale solar plants and rooftop solar.

A number of conservative and industry-aligned groups like Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council also came out against tariffs on solar imports.

“The tariffs requested by Suniva and SolarWorld will make solar products and services in America more expensive and less competitive by removing inexpensive, often imported choices from other solar companies and their customers,” writes Heritage trade policy analyst Katie Tubb. If Trump does decide to crack down on the imported panels, it would be a rare instance of him flouting Heritage’s recommendations.

“This decision gives President Trump and his fossil fuel allies a blank check to crush the solar revolution that we are experiencing in the United States,” said Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, in a statement. “President Trump should not use this decision as an excuse to kill the solar industry under the guise of domestic manufacturing.”

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This is Trump’s chance to tank the solar industry

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Why Is Mick Mulvaney Complaining About CBO’s Score of the Republican Health Care Bill?

Mother Jones

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Republicans have a problem. The party of fiscal discipline and a balanced budget really, really wants to pass a tax cut for the rich that will blow up the deficit. Unfortunately, Senate PAYGO rules don’t allow this,1 and Democrats can filibuster any attempt to change those rules.

But there’s a metaphysical issue embedded here: how can you know—really know—that a bill will increase the deficit? That’s like seeing into the future! What godlike intelligence could possibly do that? It’s impossible!

Nonetheless, in our fallen state this task has been given to the Congressional Budget Office. And they have an annoying tendency to produce results that Republicans don’t like. So Trump’s budget chief, Mick Mulvaney, is making the case that we should get rid of the CBO entirely:

“I would do my own studies here at OMB…And other folks would do their studies from the outside. And those would come with their natural biases. The Heritage Foundation comes in and says it’s going to cost a lot. Brookings comes in or the Center for American Progress says the benefits would be great.

….Asked what would happen in a scenario in which, say, a Democratic administration says a bill costs $500 billion and Heritage Foundation puts out a report saying the same bill would cost trillions, Mulvaney responded, “Then they would do it and if it works, they would get re-elected and if it doesn’t, they don’t. And that was the way it worked before the Congressional Budget Office.”

In other words, there would be no rules at all. You’d just do whatever you wanted, and if you get reelected it must mean you were right. This is a fascinating ontological approach to budget estimation.

But what’s more fascinating is Mulvaney’s pretense that what he’s really upset about is the CBO’s score of the Republican health care bill:

Mulvaney was particularly critical of the CBO’s recent estimate that the House-passed healthcare bill would result in 23 million fewer people with health insurance. He argued that the CBO’s model assumed that the mandate requiring individuals obtain coverage has a lot more influence on people’s decisions than it does in real life.

“Did you see the methodology on that 23 million people getting kicked off their health insurance?” he said. “You recognize of course that they assume that people voluntarily get off of Medicaid? That’s just not defensible. It’s almost as if they went into it and said, ‘Okay, we need this score to look bad. How do we do it?'”

But CBO’s most recent estimate says the health care bill will reduce the deficit by about $100 billion. Mulvaney has no beef with this, nor any reason to be upset about the estimate of 23 million people losing insurance, since that’s the very thing that reduces costs enough to make the bill compliant with PAYGO rules. So why is Mulvaney kvetching about this?

In fact, Mulvaney doesn’t care a fig about AHCA. He’s just preparing the ground for an assault on the CBO when it comes time to score his cherished tax bill. A few years back Republicans finally badgered the CBO into accounting for the “dynamic” effects of tax cuts, but they’ve never been satisfied with CBO’s refusal to use the most fanciful dynamic models, which assume that tax cuts pay for themselves entirely. And CBO is obstinate about this even with a Republican in charge! What to do?

Answer: Get rid of the CBO. But Democrats would filibuster any attempt to do that. So what is Mulvaney up to? Just this: it turns out that the Senate Budget Committee isn’t actually required to use CBO estimates. They always have in the past, but that’s a custom, not a rule. They have the authority to make their own estimates, and all it takes to make them stick is a majority vote in the committee.2

Mulvaney is basically trying to start up a campaign to put some spine into the SBC’s Republican members to ignore the CBO and simply score the tax bill using a model that will pronounce it deficit-neutral. That’s what this is all about.

1The House has no PAYGO rules for tax cuts.

2There are also Byrd Rule problems with the tax cut bill, but Republicans already think they might have a way around those.

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Why Is Mick Mulvaney Complaining About CBO’s Score of the Republican Health Care Bill?

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BinC Watch: Trump Knows All the Best People

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump has based his entire campaign on the idea that the government is managed by idiots and will run better once he appoints smart people to head things up. The smartest, in fact! So who has he appointed so far? Let’s take a look:

VP search: Ben Carson, then Corey Lewandowski. Carson is the guy whose ignorance during the debates was so stupefying that even the Republican base rejected him. Lewandowski’s job is to follow Trump around wherever he goes.

Foreign policy: Keith Kellogg, Joseph Schmitz, George Papadopoulos, Walid Phares, and Carter Page. Huh? “I don’t know any of them,” said a former official in the George W. Bush State Department. “National security is hard to do well even with first-rate people. It’s almost impossible to do well with third-rate people.”

Muslim ban commission: Rudy Giuliani. Nuff said.

Tax plan: Larry Kudlow and Steve Moore. Kudlow is a CNBC talking head. Moore is the Heritage Foundation hack who wrote a column so riddled with errors that the Kansas City Star announced, “There will be no future Heritage pieces published that don’t get thorough factchecking.”

The best and the brightest! I can’t wait until the federal government is fully staffed with people of this caliber.

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BinC Watch: Trump Knows All the Best People

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Coral bleaching has swept 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef

in hot water

Coral bleaching has swept 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef

By on Apr 23, 2016comments

Cross-posted from

Climate CentralShare

We knew coral bleaching was a serious issue in the Great Barrier Reef, but the scope of just how widespread it was has been unclear — until now.

Extensive aerial surveys and dives have revealed that 93 percent of the world’s largest reef has been devastated by coral bleaching. The culprit has been record-warm water driven by El Niño and climate change that has cooked the life out of corals.

The unprecedented destruction brought leading reef scientist Terry Hughes, who runs the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, to tears.

“We’ve never seen anything like this scale of bleaching before. In the northern Great Barrier Reef, it’s like 10 cyclones have come ashore all at once,” Hughes said in a press release.

The Center conducted aerial surveys and dives at 911 sites spanning the full 1,430-mile length of the reef. They show the hardest hit areas are in the northern part of the reefs, which have also endured some of the hottest water temperatures for prolonged periods.

More than 80 percent of reefs surveyed there showed signs of severe bleaching. The southern end of the reef fared better, but overall the bleaching represents a massive blow to biodiversity at the UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Great Barrier Reef also faces pressure from ocean acidification and fishing impacts, ramping up concerns over how to protect one of the most unique ecosystems on the planet.

Beyond its beauty, the Great Barrier Reef also has a huge economic benefit on the Australian economy. It generates $4.45 billion in tourism revenue annually and supports nearly 70,000 jobs, according to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

The damage caused by this round of bleaching will be felt for decades, but it’s not the only reef around the globe to feel the heat of climate change. 2015 marked the third global coral bleaching event ever recorded. This one been the longest of the three as hot ocean temperatures fueled by El Niño and climate change have caused reefs to suffer across every ocean basin.

While every basin has been hit, some reefs and coral species have survived through the event. That has scientists trying to quickly understand why the survivors made it through. That knowledge could be crucial to ensure reefs continue to survive as oceans temperatures continue their inexorable rise and water becomes more acidic due to climate change.

“We can’t afford to sit by and watch climate change drive all the world’s coral reefs to extinctions by the end of the century,” Julia Baum, a reef researcher at the University of Victoria, said.

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Coral bleaching has swept 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef

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We’re About to Cause the Worst Coral Die-Off in History

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Scientists have confirmed the third-ever global bleaching of coral reefs is under way and warned it could see the biggest coral die-off in history.

Since 2014, a massive underwater heat wave, driven by climate change, has caused corals to lose their brilliance and die in every ocean. By the end of this year 38 percent of the world’s reefs will have been affected. About 5 percent will have died forever.

But with a very strong El Niño driving record global temperatures and a huge patch of hot water, known as “the Blob,” hanging obstinately in the north-western Pacific, things look far worse again for 2016.

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We’re About to Cause the Worst Coral Die-Off in History

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Highways Are Now Being Held Hostage to Lower Corporate Taxes

Mother Jones

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I somehow missed that this was a real thing, but apparently there are finally serious moves afoot to replenish the Highway Trust Fund. Will this happen by sensibly returning the gasoline tax to its old rate? Don’t be silly. Instead we’re going to do it in least sensible way possible:

A bipartisan proposal, to be introduced soon in Congress, would tax the estimated $2 trillion in foreign profits held by U.S. corporations in overseas accounts….The tax would generate tens of billions of dollars for the federal Highway Trust Fund, which will run out of money at the end of the month. Lawmakers have been in a desperate scramble to replenish the fund, which helps pay for new roads, bridges and other transportation infrastructure.

….Supporters said the plan would reduce incentives for companies to reincorporate overseas, a controversial tax-reducing tactic known as inversion that has drawn the ire of Democrats….”These proposals would right the ship, provide a potential funding source for transportation reauthorization and allow the United States to compete on a level playing field,” Sen. Chuck Schumer said.

Hold on. We’re going to take all those overseas profits that are currently untaxed, and levy a one-time tax on them in order to fund roads and bridges? Why would Republicans and the business community support this? Here’s why:

“In a perfect world, you wouldn’t tie tax reform to the Highway Trust Fund,” said Curtis S. Dubay, a tax expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation. But lawmakers see the need to find highway funding “as a forcing mechanism to get something done” on international taxes.

A “forcing mechanism”? Please go on:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Assn. of Manufacturers have said they opposed a forced repatriation of foreign earnings simply to replenish the Highway Trust Fund.

But including it as part of a shift from the current international tax system — a move that would reduce corporate tax bills over the long term — changes the equation, said Dorothy Coleman, who handles tax policy for the manufacturers group.

….Business groups want changes to the international tax system to be made as part of a broader overhaul that includes lowering the corporate tax rate for domestic earnings as well. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has indicated that he prefers a comprehensive tax overhaul.

Roger that. The business community is willing to support a small, one-time gimmick that will cost them around $200 billion or so—and free them to repatriate all their foreign earnings and bring that money back to the US—but only if it’s tied to a large, permanent corporate tax change that will save them far more in the long run. Suddenly it all makes sense.

The devil is in the details, of course, and those won’t be available for months. If the final bill is revenue neutral on corporate taxes, maybe this is a decent short-term dodge. If it cuts corporate taxes significantly, then not so much. Stay tuned.

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Highways Are Now Being Held Hostage to Lower Corporate Taxes

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Bad News for Those of You Who, Like Us, Drank Cheap Wine Each and Every Night of Your 20s

Mother Jones

Before you go out drinking tonight, a quick note on cheap wine: Yesterday, a class-action lawsuit was filed against 28 California wineries—including the creators of Trader Joes’ Charles Shaw (a.k.a. “Two-Buck Chuck”), Sutter Home’s, and Franzia, Beringer, and Cupcake—alleging that some varietals of their wines contain dangerously high levels of arsenic. According to the complaint, three independent laboratories tested the wines and found that some contained levels of arsenic “up to 500% or more than what is what is considered the maximum acceptable safe daily intake limit. Put differently, just a glass or two of these arsenic-contaminated wines a day over time could result in dangerous arsenic toxicity to the consumer.”

The origins of the lawsuit draw back to Kevin Hicks, a former wine distributor who started BeverageGrades, a Denver-based lab that analyzes wine. The lab tested 1,300 bottles of California wine, and found that about a quarter of them had higher levels of arsenic than the maximum limit that the Environmental Protection Agency allows in water. Hicks noticed a trend: As he told CBS, “The lower the price of wine on a per-liter basis, the higher the amount of arsenic.” Trader Joe’s Charles Shaw White Zinfandel came in at three times the EPA’s level, while Franzia’s White Grenache was five times higher. The lawsuit alleges that the contaminated wines are cheaper in part because their producers don’t “implement the proper methods and processes to reduce inorganic arsenic.”

A spokesperson for The Wine Group, one of the defendants, says that it’s not “accurate or responsible to use the water standard as the baseline,” as people drink more water than wine. But water is the only beverage with an arsenic baseline that is monitored by the US government, and the defendants stress that the chemical is toxic even in small doses, and is known to cause cancer and “contributes to a host of other debilitating/fatal diseases.”

Trader Joe’s told CBS that “the concerns raised in your inquiry are serious and are being treated as such. We are investigating the matter with several of our wine producing suppliers.” A spokesperson for Treasury Wine Estates, another defendant, said that its “brands are fully compliant with all relevant federal and state guidelines.”

Whether or not you should be worried about the allegations is up in the air, particularly as the lawsuit has yet to go before a judge or jury. But in the meantime, here’s a list of wines that are included in the lawsuit. (Note: Any wines without a specific year listed mean that the grapes don’t come from a single year.)

Acronym GR8RW Red Blend 2011
Almaden Heritage White Zinfandel
Almaden Heritage Moscato
Almaden Heritage White Zinfandel
Almaden Heritage Chardonnay
Almaden Mountain Burgundy
Almaden Mountain Rhine
Almaden Mountain Chablis
Arrow Creek Coastal Series Cabernet Sauvignon 2011
Bandit Pinot Grigio
Bandit Chardonnay
Bandit Cabernet Sauvignon
Bay Bridge Chardonnay
Beringer White Merlot 2011
Beringer White Zinfandel 2011
Beringer Red Moscato
Beringer Refreshingly Sweet Moscato
Charles Shaw White Zinfandel 2012
Colores del Sol Malbec 2010
Glen Ellen by Concannon’s Glen Ellen Reserve Pinot Grigio 2012
Concannon Selected Vineyards Pinot Noir 2011
Glen Ellen by Concannon’s Glen Ellen Reserve Merlot 2010
Cook Spumante
Corbett Canyon Pinot Grigio
Corbett Canyon Cabernet Sauvignon
Cupcake Malbec 2011
Fetzer Moscato 2010
Fetzer Pinot Grigio 2011
Fisheye Pinot Grigio 2012
Flipflop Pinot Grigio 2012
Flipflop Moscato
Flipflop Cabernet Sauvignon
Foxhorn White Zinfandel
Franzia Vintner Select White Grenache
Franzia Vintner Select White Zinfandel
Franzia Vintner Select White Merlot
Franzia Vintner Select Burgundy
Hawkstone Cabernet Sauvignon 2011
HRM Rex Goliath’s Moscato
Korbel Sweet Rose Sparkling Wine
Korbel Extra Dry Sparkling Wine
Menage a Trois Pinot Grigio 2011
Menage a Trois Moscato 2010
Menage a Trois White Blend 2011
Menage a Trois Chardonnay 2011
Menage a Trois Rose 2011
Menage a Trois Cabernet Sauvignon 2010
Menage a Trois California Red Wine 2011
Mogen David Concord
Mogen David Blackberry Wine
Oak Leaf White Zinfandel
Pomelo Sauvignon Blanc 2011
R Collection by Raymond’s Chardonnay 2012
Richards Wild Irish Rose Red Wine
Seaglass Sauvignon Blanc 2012
Simply Naked Moscato 2011
Smoking Loon Viognier 2011
Sutter Home Sauvignon Blanc 2010
Sutter Home Gewurztraminer 2011
Sutter Home Pink Moscato
Sutter Home Pinot Grigio 2011
Sutter Home Moscato
Sutter Home Chenin Blanc 2011
Sutter Home Sweet Red 2010
Sutter Home Riesling 2011
Sutter Home White Merlot 2011
Sutter Home Merlot 2011
Sutter Home White Zinfandel 2011
Sutter Home White Zinfandel 2012
Sutter Home Zinfandel 2010
Trapiche Malbec 2012
Tribuno Sweet Vermouth
Vendange Merlot
Vendange White Zinfandel
Wine Cube Moscato
Wine Cube Pink Moscato 2011
Wine Cube Pinot Grigio 2011
Wine Cube Pinot Grigio
Wine Cube Chardonnay 2011
Wine Cube Chardonnay
Wine Cube Red Sangria
Wine Cube Sauvignon Blanc 2011
Wine Cube Cabernet Sauvignon/Shiraz 2011

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Bad News for Those of You Who, Like Us, Drank Cheap Wine Each and Every Night of Your 20s

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The Washington Free Beacon Is Unapologetically Conservative. It’s Also Kind of Good.

Mother Jones

On July 21, 2013, Sen. Rand Paul reluctantly accepted the resignation of Jack Hunter, a.k.a. the “Southern Avenger.” Hunter had been one of the senator’s closest aides and had coauthored the Kentucky Republican’s 2011 book, The Tea Party Goes to Washington. But before that, a reporter revealed, he’d been a pro-secessionist shock jock who donned a Confederate-flag wrestling mask and annually toasted Abraham Lincoln’s assassin. Why, Paul was asked a few weeks later by a National Public Radio host, would he have worked with someone like Hunter? “Many of the things he wrote were stupid and I don’t agree with,” the presidential contender answered. “I do think, though, that he was unfairly treated by the media.”

The scoop that put Paul on the spot “and led him to blame the media” didn’t come from the New York Times, a Kentucky paper, or even a Democratic opposition researcher. Credit belonged to Alana Goodman, a reporter at the Washington Free Beacon, an avowedly conservative website that had launched just a year and a half earlier.

In its short history, the Free Beacon‘s tiny staff of fewer than two dozen journalists has pulled off an almost unprecedented feat: Amid a conservative movement that has often evinced something between disinterest and disdain for the work of investigative reporters, it has built genuine muckraking success.

In May 2014, reporter Lachlan Markay obtained a secret list of donors’ pledges to the progressive Democracy Alliance something akin to getting the Koch brothers’ political ledgers. A month later, Goodman posted previously unreleased audio of Hillary Clinton candidly discussing her vigorous defense, as a young court-appointed attorney, of an accused child rapist. In October, she uncovered Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor’s college thesis, in which he described school desegregation as a “figurative invasion.” Two weeks later, the Democrat lost his reelection race. Like the Southern Avenger expose, each of these stories was picked up by the mainstream media, a rare accomplishment for a conservative outlet. Taken together, the stories suggest that the Beacon may be poised to break out of the agitprop model of much conservative media to become a real player in hardcore news reporting.

The Beacon was initially inspired by ThinkProgress, the Center for American Progress’ blog, which fills liberals’ social-media feeds with quick-hit news and analysis. “There’s been a real gap between the left and right on reporting and the quality of the people engaged in those efforts, and we thought we could help,” says Michael Goldfarb, the Beacon‘s publisher. “Another objective was to have some fun going after people.”

Conservative outlets from Fox News to Breitbart and the Daily Caller also offer alternatives to the perceived liberal bias of the mainstream media. But they have mostly emphasized opinion and aggregation over breaking news. David Brock scored some scoops in the Clinton-era American Spectator, but right-leaning outlets’ record of hard reporting has since been spotty. While liberal sites like Talking Points Memo and the Huffington Post have been awarded the industry’s highest honors (a Polk Award and a Pulitzer Prize, respectively), their conservative competitors have been notable mostly for overhyping and clinging to stories like Benghazi, Solyndra, or the IRS’s targeting of right-wing groups, long after mainstream reporters have moved on.

And when the Beacon‘s contemporaries do try to break news, they often get it wrong: In 2012, the Daily Caller published a series of now thoroughly debunked reports that Sen. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, had consorted with prostitutes in the Dominican Republic. And then there’s conservative blogger Charles C. Johnson, who’s demonstrated a knack for flinging dirt but not a sense of proportion. (See “Citizen Troll,” page 46.) For years, Markay argues, many conservatives “thought all they needed to do was to point out bias” and satisfy a dedicated right-wing audience. The Beacon aims to pop that media bubble—to “break out of the insular conversation and report stuff that’s compelling enough that other people pick up on it.”

Part of the problem in producing smart conservative reporting, according to Goldfarb, is a lack of training grounds for right-leaning journalists. Becoming a reporter has “not been a real career path on the right,” says the former Weekly Standard writer and spokesman for Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. Take Rob Bluey, a mentor for many of DC’s young conservative political journalists and the editor of the Daily Signal, a news site launched by the Heritage Foundation in 2014. When he graduated from college in 2001, Bluey says, “My dream job was at the Washington Post.” But, he recalls, “I could probably count on one hand, maybe two, conservative places that had jobs for journalists. The circle was pretty tight.” He took a job with the Media Research Center, and then moved to Human Events. He next headed to Heritage, where in 2011 he hired Markay as the think tank’s first investigative reporter. A few conservatives have tried to establish reporting outlets over the decades, Bluey explains, but the institutional right has only recently started to appreciate the need to get beyond messaging. Now, he says, conservatives are playing catch-up.

The Beacon hasn’t always steered clear of stories that please the base but don’t really stand up. One article, noted The New Republic, reported that then-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner had called Obama’s 2013 budget “unsustainable”; he’d actually been talking about future health care costs. Another article claimed NPR had carried water for a donor by publishing a “series” of anti-nuclear articles; one of the two examples was a reposted article from Foreign Policy. And the Beacon isn’t above titillating for traffic. The site serves up regular “news” about bikini model Kate Upton along with short pieces that push conservatives’ buttons (“Daniel Halper Explains How the Clintons Are Like the Mafia”), usually without a reporter’s byline.

Nonetheless, the Beacon‘s goals have become increasingly ambitious. In August, Goldfarb and Matthew Continetti, the editor in chief, declared that the site would one day take “its rightful place alongside the New York Times and the Washington Post.” That goal may not be so reality-based—those papers together employ some 1,800 journalists—but the Beacon has already proved its reporters can write the kind of stories it takes to shake things up. Conservatives “have better opinion journalism,” Goldfarb says, “but that has not been sufficient to win the fights. You need facts, and facts are in short supply on the right.”

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The Washington Free Beacon Is Unapologetically Conservative. It’s Also Kind of Good.

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