Yeah, 20 year old with no criminal history starts tatting up his face and then shoots a guy based off of something generated totally by his imagination? Welcome to schizotown.
I'm really curious as to whether his family or anyone tried to have him committed prior to all this. Sure, the signs were subtle, but they were there. Maybe those the kind of signs that don't stand out as much in the South.
And why the fuck is talkingpointsmemo talking about this guy like a regular member of a hate group instead of what he really is, just some rabid guy who made a sudden and vicious turn into mental illness? God, is it me or has Marshall's site gotten a lot worse over the years? I can barely stand to read much online anymore past this blog and the LA Times. Oh Upworthiness of the internet, die in a fire.
TPM is mostly horrible these days, yes. But I'm not convinced this guy doesn't know wizards.
I want to know more about how he's a figurative wizard.
I've gotta go with gswift on this one. This guy is obviously severely mentally ill.
TPM is really scraping the bottom of the barrel most of the time now. Like this. Why am I supposed to give a rat's ass what some random 12-year-old with a webcam says about politics?
At some point I think Marshall decided he wants to preside over a news empire, and it's been clickbait ever since. He still occasionally does a smart opinion post, which reminds me of what I liked about his blog, but even those are done in a pseudo-authoritative tone that's grating.
I hate to say it, but 10 gets it right.
For a long time the growing empire coexisted with an editor's blog that was more or less the same as it ever was, but at some point in the recent past JMM content went down to near zero, and what he posts is hardly worthwhile. Meanwhile, even aside from the clickbait BS, the quality of the articles varies wildly: I never know if I'm clicking through to an insightful 800 words on something interesting and wonky or 250 words that add nothing to a link about something insignificant.
At least this place hasn't changed.
Probably. I can't tell you bloggers apart.
Drum's a rock, man. His blogging is the same thoughtful, measured, generally well-considered beast it's always been. Even his cancer blogging! See:
I figure if there's ever been a time when I'm allowed to get slightly more maudlin than usual, this is it. (But just slightly. I have a reputation, after all.)
I'm just waiting to see if ogged gets asked to guestblog again.
Speaking of journalistic value added, ISTM almost all articles about summary judgment being denied are dispensable. In addition to not saying much about the eventual result, it's hard not to leave most people thinking something has actually happened. The exception, I suppose, is cases where summary judgment should be a given and its denial says scary things about the courts. Would actual lawyers agree, or am I missing something?
17: similarly, anything about legislation being introduced or even clearing committee. I used to be in charge of creating a weekly summary of political / regulatory developments related to my industry for senior executives. The volume of pure dross that gets reported by the trade press is unbelievable. I think half of it is attributable to Washington lobbying firms needing to keep their clients in a constant state of agitation, and the other half is industry newsletters needing column inches to fill out the page. I had an informal rule of never reporting on state legislation unless it had already passed both houses of the legislature, and I don't think I ever missed anything important as a result.
17: It really depends. Summary judgment denials don't tell you anything (well, anything much) about the facts, but they can tell you a lot about the law--so if the case is mainly about competing accounts of the state of the law (rather than "did the defendant do X?") it can be very significant. But you're certainly right that articles about SJ denials very commonly misunderstand what they're about and end up making claims that go far beyond what the decision actually means.
Yes, 20 is right. You really have to know more about the case to know how significant a denial of SJ is, but it can fairly frequently be of newsworthy significance.
I think there was a precipitous decline at TPM that coincided with the whole sponsored content contretemps. I'm not sure if what happened was readers who thought he'd had in mind something less drecky drifting off and therefore not needing to be cultivated going forward, or JMM becoming embittered - probably some of both.
Also agree re hiring decisions.