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Former New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson is joining Harvard University as a visiting lecturer this coming school year, the university announced Thursday. Abramson will teach undergraduate courses on narrative nonfiction in the fall and spring semesters, the school said. Abramson, a 1976 Harvard graduate, said in a statement that she is excited to be returning to her alma mater. "Narrative non-fiction journalism is more important than ever," she said. "Its traditions and how it is changing in the digital transition are fascinating areas of study."

Yesterday, a man and a woman shot two police officers in a Las Vegas restaurant after saying, “this is a revolution.” Then they draped their bodies in a Gadsden flag. According to reports now coming in, the couple (who later killed themselves) appear to have been white supremacists and told neighbors they had gone to join the protests in support of anti-government rancher Cliven Bundy. It was one more incident of right-wing terrorism that, while not exactly an epidemic, has become enough of a trend to raise some troubling questions. What I’m about to say will raise some hackles, but...

The mother and father sit at the kitchen table in their Idaho farmhouse, watching their son on YouTube plead for his life. The Taliban captured 26-year-old Bowe Bergdahl almost three years ago, on June 30th, 2009, and since that day, his parents, Jani and Bob, have had no contact with him. Like the rest of the world, their lone glimpses of Bowe – the only American prisoner of war left in either Iraq or Afghanistan – have come through a series of propaganda videos, filmed while he's been in captivity. Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/americas-last-prisoner-of-war-20120607#ixzz34APXclT2 Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone...

WHEN it comes to dealing with the world’s climate and energy challenges I have a simple rule: change America, change the world. If America raises its clean energy standards, not only will others follow — others who have hid behind our inaction — we’ll also stimulate our industry to invent more of the clean air, clean power and energy efficiency systems, and move them down the cost curve faster, so U.S. companies will be leaders in this next great global industry and American consumers will be the first to benefit. That is why the new Environmental Protection Agency rules President...

Martin Luther’s emphasis on literacy helped make modern day journalism possible. Rise of the Corruption Story Unnatural Acts In America, we expect journalists to have some independence from government and other leading power centers. We are not surprised to glance at the morning newspaper or television news show and see exposure of wrongdoing. We assume that the press has a responsibility to print bad news as well as good. And yet, that which seems ordinary to us is unusual in the history of the world, and even in much of the world today. How did the unnatural act of independent...

Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was physically abused during his five years in Taliban captivity and is suffering from psychological trauma, a senior U.S. official told CNN on Friday. The information bolstered the White House argument that President Barack Obama needed to move quickly to secure Bergdahl's release in a May 31 exchange for five Taliban figures held at Guantanamo Bay.

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose last week, but the underlying trend continued to point to a firming labor market. While jobless claims have been choppy in recent weeks because of problems seasonally adjusting the data around moving holidays such as Easter and Passover, they have continued to suggest the jobs market was strengthening.

U.S. companies hired far fewer workers than expected in May, but an acceleration in services sector growth supported views the economy was regaining strength after sagging early this year. While other data on Wednesday suggested a widening trade gap could weigh on growth in the second quarter, a jump in imports pointed to a welcome pick-up in domestic demand.

Block Communications Inc. said it will lay off 136 people at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and 131 at the Blade of Toledo, a decision that will help cut costs at the two money-losing dailies where the company has been wrangling with unions for more than a year over concessions. [snip] Negotiations with the unions over a new contract have been ongoing for a year, with Block asking for wage and benefit concessions after years of losses. In March, members of the Newspaper Guild “celebrated” their 3,000th day without a raise with a pie party in the newsroom. Block told employees in...

The Wall Street Journal had a noteworthy piece on the VA scandal yesterday, one that helps turn the story into a life-and-death issue. Until now, the spotlight has been on veterans who grew sicker or died because of long waiting times that were, in some instances, covered up by government officials. But what about the care they receive in overtaxed hospitals? The Journal reported: “The Phoenix facility at the heart of the crisis at the Department of Veterans Affairs is among a number of VA hospitals that show significantly higher rates of mortality and dangerous infections than the agency's top-tier...

Ann B. Davis, aka Alice from “The Brady Bunch,” passed away this past weekend. This morning, MSNBC took a moment to remember her — by showing a picture of someone else:

One great big GOP/Fox News rebuke. That’s the early word on Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi explanation in her new book, “Hard Choices,” out on June 10. She’s “defiant,” not “defensive.” She blames her Ben-ghazi critics for exploiting the “tragedy over and over as a political tool” against her that has nothing to do with justice for the four Americans who died there. Since that’s an accurate summation of Republicans’ cynical agenda on Benghazi — and since an awful lot of Americans can see that clearly — I’d say those who think Ben-ghazi will sink Clinton in 2016, well, they better think...

When Barack Obama was a newbie president, there was no shortage of ambition or lack of confidence in the government he was about to lead. Government should be seen as a force for good, not evil. Sure, he told us, it needed to be "smarter and better," but that could—and would—happen under his watch. Instead, the President is living his own version of "Alice Through the Looking Glass": staring down a rabbit hole of government bureaucracy and inefficiency. The government he has studiously tried to grow, manage and change has become his own personal nemesis. All of which makes you...

... What is needed from Washington is not a heroic exertion of American military power but rather a sustained effort to engage with allies, isolate enemies, support free markets and democratic values and push these positive trends forward. The Obama administration is, in fact, deeply internationalist — building on alliances in Europe and Asia, working with institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations, isolating adversaries and strengthening the global order that has proved so beneficial to the United States and the world since 1945. ... A Democratic Advisory Council committee headed by Acheson called Eisenhower’s foreign...

Studies warning of an Antarctic ice sheet collapse. A wildfire season that could shatter records. Shellfish eaten away by oceans turned more acidic due to greenhouse gases. U.N. and U.S. reports stating that climate change is advancing more quickly. Everyone gets down about their work from time to time, but for environmentalists, they can sometimes quite literally be dealing with the end of the world as we know it. “It’s hard to stay perky when scientists conclude that tragedy, such as the loss of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, is inevitable,” says Denis Hayes, a veteran activist who co-founded Earth...

The scandal over a made-up study that badly disrupted traffic at the George Washington Bridge may not be New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's biggest problem after all. Less than a year after the charismatic governor was the toast of the Republican Party and a leading contender to run for the White House in 2016, the story was supposed to be about a New Jersey economy that he had managed to turn around and budget problems he had been able to solve. That narrative appears to be unraveling.

.... It’s unlikely Shinseki would exit today -- it just isn’t Obama’s style. But what we do know is that the president, potentially, has a feeding frenzy on his hands; even if all of its bureaucratic problems date back for decades. And it’s now turned into a local news story, in which news organizations are looking closely at their own VA hospitals. Perhaps more importantly, the story has resurrected all of the complaints about President Obama’s management style, especially during a crisis. He’s too methodical. He doesn’t get that mad. He seems to have found about this at the same...

Over the past few months, the new U.S. education standard known as the “Common Core” has attracted its fair share of negative attention by opponents.But Florida Republican State Rep. Charles Van Zant took the Common Core critique to a new level by claiming that the educational initiative promoted by the Obama administration will turn your children “homosexual.”Van Zant made the comments at an Orlando education conference back in March, but the video of his remarks went viral on Tuesday. Van Zant told his audience that the American Institutes for Research (AIR), that implements the Common Core in Florida, “will promote...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A federal judge threw out Oregon's same-sex marriage ban Monday, marking the 13th legal victory for gay marriage advocates since the U.S. Supreme Court last year overturned part of a federal ban.

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of The New York Times, released a statement Saturday afternoon detailing his decision to fire the newspaper’s executive editor, Jill Abramson. He was responding to a growing controversy over accusations by Ms. Abramson’s supporters that gender played a role in her dismissal. The decision to remove her, which was announced on Wednesday, “has been cast by many as an example of the unequal treatment of women in the workplace,” Mr. Sulzberger wrote. Instead, the statement said, it “was a situation involving a specific individual who, as we all do, has strengths and weaknesses.”