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  The Republican National Convention closed Thursday night.

Tags: activism, alternet, articles, creator, democrats, election, environment, gender, politics, relationships

Lisa Graves The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) sent a message to hundreds of legislators across the country attacking the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), the creator of ALECexposed.org . Among other things ALEC claimed, “CMD is an attack-dog, not a watch-dog.” read more

Tags: alec, cmd, council, creator, democracy, exchange, exchange-council, legislative, media, progressive news, things

I haven’t read Joe Posnanski’s entire biography of Joe Paterno yet, but I was really struck by this section of the excerpt published in GQ : On Monday, the family tried to persuade Paterno to read the presentment. He objected that he already knew what was in there, but they told him there was no room left for illusion. D’Elia would remember telling him, “You realize that the people out there think you knew about this?

Tags: creator, credit, family, lgbt, media, opinion, president, science, security, sexual assault, war

I have to admit that, in a week full of absolute ridiculousness in politics, I’m feeling refreshed by the return of my favorite political joke of the cycle, Key & Peele ‘s skits about Luther, President Obama’s anger translator: Key and Peele Get More: Comedy Central , Funny Videos , Funny TV Shows It’s wonderfully cathartic to hear Luther spit “I did not realize that was an option,” about Romney’s refusal to release his tax returns in contrast to the mountain of disclosure President Obama’s been required to do in response to deeply specious claims about his citizenship. I don’t want to see Obama lose his cool during the election, even as I’m angry at the double standard that would condemn him as an angry black man. But Luther is my favorite fictional surrogate for the President, and Obama himself is a fan as well .

Tags: author, comedy, cool, creator, election, liberal, politics, science, videos

This doesn’t seem like an enormous surprise after the departures of Steve Carrell, who played clueless manager Michael Scott, and Mindy Kaling, who left to start her own sitcom on Fox, but it’s finally been announced: this season of The Office will be its last . And per the folks at TV Line, Greg Daniels is promising that in the final season, we’ll figure out who was shooting the documentary. I hope it turns out to be that Russian film director who built an entire closed society in which to shoot his movie and who apparently isn’t even close to done because otherwise, whoever is stuck with nine years of tape about people selling paper in Scranton is probably going to have a lot of explaining to do to whoever backed his or her movie project.

Tags: climate, creator, documentary, economy, facebook, lgbt, taxes, victims, war

This post contains spoilers through episode 9 of the second season of The Wire. The Wire tends to explore worlds that operate by separate sets of rules and principals, and the show focuses on the police in part because law enforcement is one of the primary points of contact between those disparate universes overlapping within the same city limits

Tags: author, creator, economy, facebook, feeds, knowledge, the wire, thinkprogress, war

American sprinters at the London Games will have the option of wearing new uniforms from Nike that the sportswear company claims are the “swiftest track apparel to date … [and] also the most sustainable.” The tracksuits, which include material from 13 recycled water bottles apiece, incorporate patterned patches on the fastest-moving parts of the body (note the dots on Angelo Taylor above). They are also covered in golf-ball-like dimples “to help reduce the aerodynamic drag of the athlete.” Nike claims, with great precision, that the dimpled uniforms shave up to 0.023 seconds off a 100-meter sprint time as compared to the company’s previous gear.

Tags: #sports, apocalypse, circus, creator, history, slate, slate-group, track-uniforms

Nina Shen Rastogi has a fantastic piece in Slate about race and Hollywood casting, specifically about what casting notices communicate about what producers and directors are looking for, and how agents, managers, and even actors’ assumptions about what roles are open to which people limit pools of people trying out for certain parts. I think that last part is particularly important, because while the predominance of older white men in the creator ranks certainly creates a bias towards better roles for men who look like them, in the absence of specific encouragement, it seems people tend to default to rather conservative assumptions about the opportunities available to them, and to their clients: We discussed a breakdown for the upcoming ABC series Nashville , which described a male role as being “Caucasian or mixed ethnicity.” I said that, to me, that seemed like a way of opening the door for an actor who was ethnic but not too ethnic.

Tags: action, author, breakdown, creator, funny, media-representation, security, slate

By Matthew Rothschild, May 18, 2012 She had to sue her department over sex discrimination. Now she’s going to be the police chief. read more

Tags: advertising, corruption, creator, events, javascript, matthew rothschild, media, peace, sexism, the progressive, war

By Elizabeth DiNovella, May 19, 2012 “I am tired of the implication that conservatives don’t want to help people,” says Stig Rahm, chairman of the GOP in Columbia County, Wisconsin. “That’s nonsense.” read more

Tags: books, creator, economy, elections, events, health, interview, latest top stories, peace, politics, war