I mean, the article seems to do a pretty good job of answering the question in the headline. There isn’t strong evidence in the files (which have been released) that anyone else was involved in sex trafficking.

The lack of arrests in the U.S. contrasts to the fallout in the U.K., where investigators have pursued charges related to corruption, not sexual abuse, in their dealings with Epstein. Two former government officials — former Prince Andrew and ex-ambassador Peter Mandelson — were arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office.

I didn’t expect someone explicitly opposed to majority rule to call me an enemy of democracy…

As a matter of fact, I agree with you that there’s a difference between maximal democracy and good government. Sometimes it’s good to have a barrier between people’s whims and power, whether that barrier is anti-majoritarian procedure in Congress which is preventing Republicans from passing this law or a rule that prevents someone who didn’t go through the process of getting valid ID from voting.

There’s a difference between reinterpreting and simply considering a quote in context. “There” is the Strait of Hormuz and “it” is oil shipped through the strait.

He clearly meant defending the Strait of Hormuz specifically, not attacking Iran generally. Still a bad idea, but not what people are taking the quote to mean out of context.

It’s not enough to have fair elections - a democracy needs elections generally perceived as fair. It would have been better if the Republicans hadn’t created the widespread, false perception that voter fraud is common, but the fact of the matter is that they did and merely trying to convince the public that there is really no problem hasn’t worked so far. If 71% of the voters want to have to show proof of citizenship, and if most of the ones prevented from voting because of that are low-information voters likely to vote for Republicans anyway, I say let the Republicans shoot themselves in the foot.

I feel like Democrats shouldn’t have been fighting the Republicans on this. The law is popular, not entirely unreasonable, and potentially going to hurt Republicans rather than Democrats at the polls.

Why does the headline claim he said something that he didn’t in fact say?

He’s right. Even when starting a war was a mistake, you can’t just pretend that you didn’t. Stopping unilaterally isn’t necessarily the best course of action.

That’s not quite that what the said.

“We expect casualties with something like this,” the president said. “We have three, but we expect casualties - but in the end it’s going to be a great deal for the world.”

Not the phrasing I would have chosen, but it sounds like he means “a great deal of good” as in “We’ve done a great deal to help.”

With that said, any President has to weigh the costs and benefits in lives of military action - it would be crude to explicitly say that some number of soldiers’ lives is a favorable exchange for a military objective, but it’s essential to do that math in private.

It was because they needed an established ally in the middle east to help them control oil reserves, and to oppose socialist governments in Palestine they worried would align with the Soviets.

You say that as if it’s a bad thing - the Soviet Union was a hostile power and the USA needs oil.

The leaders were set to meet where the offices of the Iranian presidency, the supreme leader and Iran’s National Security Council are located.

Where the Iranians not even trying to avoid all getting killed at once? They must have thought that this was a bluff.

What’s the reasoning behind treating this as a scandal? Clearly participating in Epstein’s crimes would be blameworthy but simply doing business with someone who had been convicted of crimes seems fairly neutral to me - one might argue that a decent person should be so disgusted by the crimes that he would refuse to associate with the criminal in any way, but how is that supposed to work as a general principle if the criminal in question isn’t independently wealthy? Do sex offenders just never get to have jobs again?

Well, to be fair, I think I would vote for a racist pro-choice candidate before I would vote for a pro-life candidate, so it makes sense that a pro-life voter would have similar priorities.

I don’t see anything in there that substantially challenges the facts presented in the New York Times coverage being criticized.

The two aren’t mutually exclusive. Consider certain graffiti. The person tagging a building doesn’t think that he is improving it. Rather, he is showing that he has the power to put his name on places where other people don’t want it. In doing so, he asserts dominance. That’s what legacy is in a zero-sum mindset where success must mean someone else’s failure - a record of whom he defeated.

I don’t think the intent is to make the center look good - it’s to humiliate.

“Controversial” here seems like a basic statement of fact. One might think that she ought not to be controversial, but she is.

That’s not how it would work even for an ordinary person. This is an accusation about something rather far-fetched happening 35 years before the accusation was made, with no evidence for it except the accusation itself. It wouldn’t lead to criminal charges.

Any true Roman Empire appreciator would happily be devoured by lions for the amusement of Emperor Nero.

Please, don’t make me choose between Rome and libertarianism. I love them both too much.