Slate Articles

Scandal 2.0

David Weigel — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 23:39:32 GMT

The single most important politician at Wednesday’s Tea Party rally against the Internal Revenue Service spoke for less than two minutes. He wasn’t drowned out by applause, either. Michigan Rep. Dave Camp was merely explaining how he was going to shoehorn the IRS scandal into the headlines and cable news chyrons again.

You Don’t Have the Right to Remain Silent

Brandon L. Garrett — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 22:05:09 GMT

On Monday, in a case called Salinas v. Texas that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves, the Supreme Court held that you remain silent at your peril. The court said that this is true even before you’re arrested, when the police are just informally asking questions. The court’s move to cut off the right to remain silent is wrong and also dangerous—because it encourages the kind of high-pressure questioning that can elicit false confessions.

The Whitey Bulger Trial

Seth Stevenson — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 21:32:44 GMT

For the third straight day, blubbery Boston mob enforcer John Martorano perches on the witness stand, befouling the courthouse with his presence. For the second straight day, defense attorney Hank Brennan attempts to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Martorano is a demonic sociopath.

The Unkindest Cut?

Troy Patterson — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 20:47:46 GMT

Please send your questions for publication to gentlemanscholarslate@gmail.com. (Questions may be edited.)

Wiretaps and Drones Aren’t Everything

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 20:40:00 GMT

When we think of the war on terrorism, we tend to think about drone strikes, SEAL raids, Marine counterinsurgency campaigns, Guantanamo Bay, and, more recently, data mining and surveillance by the NSA.

Wait, Am I That Baseball Dad?

John Dickerson — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 20:22:30 GMT

For most of my son’s baseball game, the man in the red folding chair sitting behind me had been just a voice on the hill. Now he was my enemy. His son was pitching. Mine was batting. When my son fouled off the first pitch, the father was gleeful. When the second pitch was called a ball, he questioned the umpire. After a called strike, he roared: “He can’t hit you.” Impressive—he was trying to intimidate a 10-year-old batter. I wanted my son to get a hit to shut him up, or maybe a line drive foul to do so more directly. In the end, my son lined out to the shortstop.

How to Fix the Organ Transplant Shortage

Sally Satel — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 20:08:42 GMT

The plight of Sarah Murnaghan made headlines over the past several weeks. The 10-year-old girl suffers from cystic fibrosis, a crippling respiratory ailment. She was dying, but she was deemed ineligible—then, after an uproar, eligible—for an adult lung transplant. She received a new set of lungs on June 12.

Why Don’t Cops Believe Rape Victims?

Rebecca Ruiz — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:12:41 GMT

When Tom Tremblay started working for the police department of Burlington, Vt., 30 years ago, he discovered that many of his fellow cops rarely believed a rape victim. This was true time after time, in dozens of cases. Tremblay could see why they were doubtful once he started interviewing the victims himself. The victims, most of them women, often had trouble recalling an attack or couldn’t give a chronological account of it. Some expressed no emotion. Others smiled or laughed as they described being assaulted. “Unlike any other crime I responded to in my career, there was always this thought that a rape report was a false report,” says Tremblay, who was an investigator in Burlington’s sex crimes unit. “I was always bothered by the fact there was this shroud of doubt.”

Bubba in the Holy Land

Dahlia Lithwick — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:49:17 GMT

JERUSALEM—Anyone who showed up today to hear Bill Clinton accept the Presidential Medal of Distinction, Israel’s highest honor, might have expected the firebrand orator, the fierce campaigner who so adeptly served as id to Barack Obama’s superego last fall. But the Clinton who spoke today, to a packed, largely English-speaking audience at Jerusalem's International Convention Center, was elegiac, almost wistful, something of a paradox at the opening session of a presidential conference with the theme “Facing Tomorrow.”

Which Is Safer: City Streets or Prison?

Brian Palmer — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:29:20 GMT

Paul Mannina, the Labor Department lawyer charged with assaulting a colleague using handcuffs and a stun gun, was found dead in his Washington, D.C., jail cell with his throat slashed on Tuesday. It’s not yet clear whether his death was a murder or suicide, but jail and prison murders are regularly in the news. A Missouri man was charged on Tuesday with strangling his cellmate, and a California jury is now considering the death penalty for a 2005 prison murder. Are you more likely to be murdered in jail or on the Washington city streets?