The Espionage Act should have been repealed decades ago… The Espionage Act—and the Sedition Act that was its primary enforcement mechanism and was signed into law by Wilson, that idiot, the following year—was born of fear and anger. It was directed almost entirely against people who were opposed to the country’s entry and participation in the slaughter of World War I—pacifists, Quakers, genuine radicals, actual (or alleged) Communists.

The danger, in the Assange case, is that it becomes a precedent for governments on the right or left to prosecute journalists they don’t like for reporting secrets. The Espionage Act is too broad, and where is the limiting principle? Congress could amend the Espionage Act to draw a brighter line around bad actors like Mr. Assange.

Whatever you think of Assange, his prosecution is a fraught one for press freedom. That much is clear from the indictment’s careful avoidance of the First Amendment elephant in the room, and the current Grand Jury contemplating more charges against Assange. It’s also fraught because the prosecution seems to be not really directed at deterring or punishing the actual hacking—for which Manning has done her time—but at punishing those who publish the government’s dirty secrets.

President Donald Trump has consistently proven himself to be different from all of his predecessors and all other leaders around the world, so the peace plan he is expected to announce soon should neither be doubted nor dismissed… it is clear that this plan, like the president, will be different from all of its predecessors. It is new and creative. It does not reward Palestinian rejectionism.

…the United States—if it’s unwilling to put serious pressure on Israel or take seriously Palestinian objections—is better off disengaging from an imaginary peace process, rather than lending legitimacy to Israel’s behavior or giving the illusion of progress without the substance. Otherwise we are all just wasting time, at least until a new president attempts to fundamentally rethink America’s sometimes well-intentioned but almost always tragic role in one of the world’s most enduring conflicts.

The Trump administration in effect claims it is reinventing international mediation. While the concept of a “biased mediator” has in some negotiations been used to obtain concessions from the party closer to the mediator, that is not what is happening here. The “concessions” that the Trump administration will ask of Israel are marginal. Above all they do not require Israel to end its military control over the land and people of Palestine.

As the beneficiary of simultaneous attacks by both President Donald Trump from the right and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from the left, former Vice President Joe Biden could not have orchestrated it better. The good fortune of being caught in the crossfire of the polarized partisans defines Biden for who he is—the real progressive…

The victory of a longtime establishment figure like Biden, however, would be a bitter disappointment to energized progressives, particularly younger voters, hoping to bring sweeping change to American public policy. And it’s becoming ever more obvious that the only way for either Warren or Sanders to get a clean shot at taking Biden head-on is for one of them to get out of the way.

Defining the word “progressive” is a lot like defining pornography—you just know it when you see it… In today’s Democratic primary field, everybody claims to see a progressive looking back at them in the mirror… Let’s discard “progressive,” and say where we stand instead.

…there was no denying the scope of her failure: The deal she had painstakingly negotiated with the European Union was overwhelmingly rejected by the British Parliament, again and again, and in the end she left the country more divided over Brexit than ever. The obligatory tributes poured in, recognizing that Mrs. May deserved at the least to be credited with extraordinary stoicism through all the setbacks, backstabbing and name-calling. But politics has little time for sympathy…

…as a new prime minister enters 10 Downing Street this summer, they are likely to find that Theresa May wasn’t the blockage that had to be removed to get things moving again, but rather an expression of the deeper political forces that still apply.

Brexit isn’t about to get any easier.

Now the future is murkier than ever. The Conservative Party owns Brexit and has been consumed by it. May’s legacy is a broken party in a broken Parliament in a badly broken country. Her party’s reputation for competence lies in tatters, and the only thing saving it at present is the public’s lack of enthusiasm for a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn. Theresa May discovered that the only thing worse than not doing Brexit was doing Brexit. She proved to be a sphinx without a riddle, and, despite her promises, she didn’t break the wheel—the wheel broke her.

The 1992 film revels in a lot of Orientalist stereotypes: Its mythos reeks of mystical exoticism, with Agrabah explicitly described as a “city of mystery.” [.]

Perhaps most crucially, the film renders its heroes, Aladdin and the Genie, as culturally American. Their wisecracking street-smarts, sheer cunning, and showy braggadocio are all coded as things that set them apart from the residents of Agrabah… In essence, it’s very easy to unthinkingly read Aladdin and the Genie as two Yankees in a land full of exotic Others.

Right off the bat, you can tell that Disney’s live-action “Aladdin” has avoided some of the missteps of the original animated film. The lyrics of the song “Arabian Nights,” which is sung in a prologue that frames the new film as a children’s fairy tale, have been changed from this description of the film’s Middle Eastern setting — “It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home” — to this: “It’s chaotic, but hey, it’s home.”

…dialogue and visuals suggest that Aladdin’s Agrabah may be based on an amalgamation of Southeast Asia and the Middle East. But is it a fair portrayal of those cultures? [.] The new Aladdin has also been plagued with criticisms since details of the film were first announced, and many of those comments claimed the filmmakers saw South Asian and Middle Eastern people as interchangeable.