The New Republic

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Today, Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin and veteran opposition leader under Vladimir Putin, and journalist Leonid Martynyuk did something that all journalists hate to do: report out the super-obvious but extremely succulent story.  READ MORE >>

Yesterday in Pakistan, members of the Taliban stopped three buses full of people, checked their IDs, and slaughtered the 22 Shias onboard. You can read about it here, courtesy of Salman Masood, on page A10 of this morning's New York Times. READ MORE >>

Editor’s Note: We’ll be running the article recommendations of our friends at TNR Reader each afternoon on The Plank, just in time to print out or save for your commute home. Enjoy! Who would be on the Olympic podiums if we looked at GDP, population, or team size? A team of statisticians breaks it down. The Guardian | 4 min (953 words) READ MORE >>

Rapacious capitalists ain't what they used to be. "Law? What do I care about the law?" the shipping and railroad tycoon Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt (1794-1877)  famously bellowed (in legend, if not in fact). "Hain't I got the power?" His son William (1821-1885) demonstrated a similar indifference to public opinion when he said, "The public be damned.... I don't take any stock in this silly nonsense about working for anybody's good but our own, because we are not." The banking tycoon J.P. Morgan (1837-1913) held the same view, and didn't hesitate to articulate it. READ MORE >>

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As you may have heard, Barack Obama got caught chatting with Dmitri Medvedev on a mike that he didn't realize was on. Here's what they said: READ MORE >>

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