Yesterday, after a month of waiting, California governor Jerry Brown signed SB-822, Senator Scott Wiener's bill restoring net neutrality, into law. Co-sponsored with State Senate Majority Leader Kevin de León, and seen through the House by representatives Miguel Santiago and Rob ...read more
Donald Trump spent a good part of Monday ranting about how there's a conspiracy by "the other side" to destroy him and once again talked about firing Special Consul Robert Mueller. But, as Bob Cesca keeps pointing out, everything Trump does makes things worse for Trump and this ...read more
The Banter Long Read: When Trump became the Republican nominee, one of the (many) warnings the pragmatic left had for the Never Hillary purists was that a President Trump would be a nightmare for the black and Latino communities. With the selection of Jeff Sessions as America's ...read more
by Kate HarvestonAt a time when it seems the GOP can’t agree on anything, they also can’t agree on marijuana laws. With the cacophony of crises and scandals swirling around Washington, you would be correct to think that how Americans use pot should be a rather low-priority issue ...read more
During a speech at the National Sheriff's Association winter conference Monday morning, America's first Confederate Attorney General Jeff Sessions accidentally (or maybe not so accidentally) admitted out loud what the black community has been saying for decades (centuries?): ...read more
The Washington Post's Marc A. Thiessen is deeply confused. After a full year of Trump making America great again, why is he so unpopular? No, seriously, he really said this.Despite a year of achievements — including historic tax and regulatory reform, confirmation of conservative ...read more
When I wrote my article yesterday about voter suppression in Alabama, I was resigned that Yellowhammer State would elect Roy Moore - a racist, misogynistic, pedophile - to the Senate seat formerly held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. But as I read reports on Twitter about the ...read more
Paul Manafort is well and truly screwed and we might be, too. The FBI had such damning evidence against him that even during the 2016 election, a judge signed off on a warrant to wiretap Manafort's communications and that surveillance continued after Trump was sworn in as ...read more
The Banter Long Read: It's not a name currently in the news because abortion and Planned Parenthood haven't been brought up since the failure of the congressional Republicans to repeal Obamacare, but let's begin by talking about Margaret Sanger...To continue reading this MEMBERS ...read more
One of the reasons people hate politics is that truth is rarely a politician’s objective. Election and power are. –Cal Thomas.As a political writer, I’ve always found voluntary humiliation in the political world fascinating to witness. The men and women who enter politics are ...read more
As human beings, we all benefit from feeling that we have a voice, and knowing that we’re not alone in encountering both the pleasures and harsh realities of life. Shared experiences bring us closer together, help us identify problems, and can drive change. This holds especially ...read more
When we talk about the damage being inflicted on both the system and our political culture, this is what we're talking about..To continue reading this article, please go here.. A Banter Membership gets you access to the magazine and all our Members Only content. Your membership ...read more
After beating up on Jeff Sessions at the Senate testimony today, Sen. Kamala Harris took to twitter to continue roasting him for his maddening performance that consisted of him apparently not recalling or remembering anything.Harris also took exception to senators attempting to ...read more
In theory, Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III testified in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee thanks to allegations made by former FBI Director James Comey while recalling his experience being fired, admittedly by Trump, in an effort to end the ...read more
The Washington Post is not prone to Onion-style headlines but I still started to smile when I read what had to be a joke of some sort: A neo-Nazi with explosives and a framed photo of Timothy McVeigh is not a threat, judge rules. I started to read the article expecting a weird, ...read more
The trend of both liberal and conservative writers raining derision down on Trump for "scamming" his voters continues with Paul Krugman being the latest to blast Donald Trump for screwing over his voters:For journalists covering domestic policy, this past week poses some hard ...read more
In recent years many people across the political spectrum have come to realize that the so-called "war on drugs" has been a completely futile effort that has destroyed lives, broken apart families, and accomplished nothing other than filling prisons with many Americans who should ...read more
Someone needs to send Jeff Sessions a copy of George Clooney's opening monologue from the wonderful Alexander Payne film, The Descendants. My friends on the mainland think just because I live in Hawaii, I live in paradise. Like a permanent vacation. We're all just out here ...read more
I grew up hating marijuana and believing it was a dangerous drug that could ruin lives, make you lazy, and lead to other far more deadly intoxicants. It took me almost 30 years to finally understand that this was a complete crock of shit and I had been lied to in the most ...read more
Jeff Sessions is a racist. We know this. We know this because back in the days when Republicans hadn't surrendered all of their ethics and morality, even they said he was too racist to be a federal judge. This, of course, meant he was perfect to be President Bannon's Attorney ...read more
If you were to sit down and create a checklist of how to use American law enforcement to terrorize and tear apart minority communities, you'd be hard pressed to come up with a blueprint that looks substantially different from what Attorney General Jeff Sessions is doing. In ...read more
Jeff Sessions is moving all the pieces into place to kick the war on minority communities back into high gear:Law enforcement officials say that Sessions and [Stephen H.] Cook are preparing a plan to prosecute more drug and gun cases and pursue mandatory minimum sentences. The ...read more
As egomaniacs resting their fat, gilded asses on the seat of power are wont to do, Donald Trump waved his big boy pee-pee around last night by launching 50+ Tomahawk missiles into Syria in an effort to teach Syria a lesson about bombing Syrians that Donald Trump specifically and ...read more
During the confirmation hearing for Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III to become the attorney general for an administration that visibly rode into Washington on a wave of white nationalism and oppression, Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren fought the good fight and warned that ol' ...read more
I just got back from Los Angeles where we memorialized the too-short life of my friend, my colleague at The Daily Banter and my podcast partner, Chez. The event was just the sort of thing he would've killed to have been a part. It was held at a cool bar on Melrose -- his favorite ...read more
Lost in the daily deluge of scandal and incompetence from the Trump administration was this little nugget from embattled Attorney General Jeff Sessions: While talking to AM Hate Radio host Hugh Hewitt, Sessions said he might just be considering having an "outside counsel" ...read more
Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions is in a bit of hot water after it was revealed that he had met with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. during the presidential campaign. Sessions had previously stated under oath that he "did not have communications with the ...read more
Jeff Sessions is already living up to his promise as a white supremacist with two back to back moves that will embolden institutional racism like nothing we've seen since Jim Crow.On Monday, Jeff Sessions' Department of "Justice" announced it would no longer oppose Texas' ...read more
Donald Trump addressed the CPAC convention on Friday morning, where he boasted he was checking off his campaign promises, one by one, as they are completed. But there is one thing that looks like it is about to happen that received little attention during the campaign, and ...read more
During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised for months that he would be the "law and order" candidate. So it was no surprise when he nominated Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to head the Justice Department. Sessions' views on crime and punishment are similar to Trump's, ...read more
Donald Trump came into office following a campaign during which he spoke repeatedly of how dangerous and crime-ridden the United States has become. That description didn't match reality for most Americans, whose safety hasn't been at a higher level in years. Now Trump's new ...read more
If there is one thing that the disastrous Donald Trump presidency has shown us (besides what a bigot he is) it is the fact that Republicans are the biggest hypocrites in our nation. And this was once again proven this week when Acting Attorney General Sally Yates was fired for ...read more
Despite the growing body of hard scientific evidence showing Marijuana is not only not a dangerous drug, but potentially a game changing plant with extraordinary medicinal properties, political dinosaurs are still opposed to its legality in America. While Donald Trump has ...read more
The White House and congressional Republicans have inadvertently teamed up to make for one hell of a confusing week about what the government's policy is and what it should be vis-à-vis ISIS. The trouble began Tuesday morning when Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin ...read more