* With five months left to do anything, Obama is pushing nearly 4,000 new regulations through bureaucracy. * Obama's executive actions on guns will expand federal background checks. * See also: How federal background checks work. * The process of buying a gun in California, which has some of the harshest
The World Cup and its drunken fans are about to crash head-first into a repressive, restrictive society, where alcohol is illegal mostly everywhere.
* Hate won 2015. * DHS is preparing to deport "hundreds" of Central American families who fled violence this month. * At least 83 people deported by the Obama administration to Central America in 2014 were murdered. * Obama will soon announce executive actions on gun control. * Executions in Saudi Arabia reach
Why we like the music we do is a matter of personal history—and in at least one case, a profound experience of hearing David Bowie.
* The Coalfield Development Corporation brings affordable housing, employment, and mentoring to Appalachia. * People for Bikes lobbies for a five-fold increase in biking in America by 2025. * Five-step checklist for maximizing your year-end donations. * See also: Charity Navigator's guide to great gift-giving. * GiveDirectly lets you
* Failures of Obama—and Bush before him—have created, for the first time, an unabashedly liberal Democratic Party. * Democrats reluctant to embrace millennial black voters don’t understand the numbers behind the movement. * "Starting Saturday, tribes can claim jurisdiction over non-Native men who commit crimes of domestic violence.
* Grand jury decides not to indict anyone in the case of Sandra Bland. * CBS edits debate focus-group footage to exclude Muslim-American commentary critical of American militarism. * Are Shkreli’s antics—not far from Big Pharma’s usual practices—enough to bring the industry to heel? * T-shirts already
* New Star Wars film has biggest opening in movie history despite not opening in China yet. * In Spain, Podemos party surges as two formerly dominant parties both lose votes for the first time in Spanish democracy. * How Israel is trying to restore domestic safety—steps the Palestinians call vindictive and
* Writers, editors, and thinkers reflect on things that were and were not important in 2015. * Encyclopedia for much of what was discussed this past year in the District of Columbia. * Election to head of government is associated with a substantial increase in mortality risk. * DNC suspends Sanders campaign's
* The GOP's foreign policy divide comes down to whom Republicans blame—George W. Bush or Barack Obama—for the rise of ISIS. * Spending bill to lean left, tax bill to tilt right: how Congressional sausage gets made. * GOP uses bills to gut online privacy, which Dems considered “small
