Is James Comey a Leaker or a Whistleblower?
Former FBI Director James Comey arrives at the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on December 7, 2018.Alex Edelman/Zuma Yesterday the Justice Department’s Inspector General released a scathing report about James Comey’s leak of a report to the New York Times. I spent most of the day trying to figure out…
Pizza Costs 75 Cents Extra in California
David Lazarus complains this morning about sneaky fees: Take a close look at your receipt the next time you buy some tunes at Amoeba Music in Hollywood. You’ll see a 35-cent charge tacked on for “wages & benefits.” That’s not a state or local tax. It’s the company simply reaching a little deeper into your…
Brain Scans, Saliva Tests, and Baby Teeth: Inside the Massive, Government-Funded Effort to Understand How Kids’ Brains Develop
Mother Jones illustration/Getty When I first met 11-year-old Baron, his nose was deep in an open package of Fruit Snacks. He was drawing long breaths, like a torturous meditation, in an attempt to generate enough drool to fill a pinky-sized vial. When it was clear the gummies weren’t doing the trick, he tried staring at…
This Lawyer Is Bringing the Internet’s Worst Men to Heel
Mother Jones illustration; Natan Dvir Listen up, assholes. Carrie Goldberg is coming for you. Since founding her law firm in 2014, the defiant, trash-talking New York lawyer has built a reputation for going after sexual predators from Harvey Weinstein to anonymous trolls and purveyors of nonconsensual pornography. In her new book Nobody’s Victim: Fighting Psychos,…
There’s No Gay Gene. In Fact, There’s No Anything Gene.
The nation’s press is trying to atone today for the sins of its past: A few years ago a research team conducted a small study that located a few epigenetic markers that seemed to be associated with being gay. Not a single working geneticist—and I say this advisedly—not a single one suggested this was the…
Unsealed Documents Show How Purdue Pharma Created a “Pain Movement”
Drew Angerer/Getty For years, Purdue Pharma has maintained that it can’t be blamed for the overdose crisis that unfolded after its introduction of OxyContin—but a trove of new evidence suggests that the company was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the opioid epidemic. As early as 2000, Purdue collaborated with pain patient advocacy groups and…