How to Read like a Writer

Aspiring writers are told -- with good reason -- to read everything they can get their hands on. Reading familiarizes you with the shape of the genre you want to write in and its conventions and clichés; it gives you ideas for new stories; it sharpens your sense of what is good writing and what isn't. It's true that if you read enough, you'll naturally absorb a great deal of what you need to know. But there may come times when you despair of your ability to ever do a certain thing right, whether it's characterization or combat, and in times like those, it can be useful to study what you read more intensively.

Bernie Sanders on Racial Physical Violence in the United States

PHYSICAL VIOLENCE

from his speech given in Portland OR

Crime PERPETRATED BY THE STATE

Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Rekia Boyd, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Samuel DuBose. We know their names. Each of them died unarmed at the hands of police officers or in police custody. The chants are growing louder. People are angry and they have a right to be angry. We should not fool ourselves into thinking that this violence only affects those whose names have appeared on TV or in the newspaper. African Americans are twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police.

Westpoint Terrorism Study: 400% rise in Rightwing Violence since 2007

POLICY CONSIDERATIONS IN COMBATING TERRORISM: DECISIONs regarding Right Wing risk and UNCERTAINTY 

Author(s): Michele L. Malvesti west point 

The Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point is pleased to announce a new release as part of its Occasional Paper Series entitled “Policy Considerations in Combating Terrorism: Decision-Making Under Conditions of Risk and Uncertainty,” by CTC Senior Fellow Michele L. Malvesti.

Debate Score Card

 The top 10 candidates vying for the Republican nomination for president gathered in Cleveland, Ohio, for the first debate of the 2016 election cycle. (The other seven candidates debated earlier in the evening.) The Fox News moderators had a challenging job, given the number of contenders competing for camera time and the unpredictable presence of the current front-runner, Donald Trump.

This is an important event and this run for office of President for 2016 is heavy with historic meaning. Fifty years from now, our great grand kids are going to learn in school about this period, and they will not be learning about the ISIS, or the Iran Deal or even Obama. What they will be focused on for this period of ten years is how Congress was allowed to operate in the manner they have -- and hopefully the laws we have passed ensuring it can not happen again.