Arizona police are investigating a tragic, perplexing attack that detectives say was unprovoked: 68-year-old Joan Sirhan was leaving her daughter’s house after a visit with her grandchildren when she was fatally attacked on Thursday. The suspect, Jay Henderson, appears to have posted threats of violence against Sirhan on Facebook that same night.

In a statement, Apache Junction police told The Arizona Republic that Sirhan was attacked around 5:30 p.m. at an apartment complex. That same evening, a Facebook account that appears to belong to Henderson posted cryptic but alarming messages, including “Got the bitch.”

“Short skinny red head witch burn her alive,” another post from the page adds. A final message includes an address close to the area police listed as the scene of the crime before adding, “I’ll be out side who’s ready.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has raised the stakes for 2020, as if they needed raising. 

Donald Trump is urging senate Republicans to move “without delay” to replace her, and I find myself in the rare and uncomfortable position of agreeing. 

Republicans must nominate and confirm a conservative to the Supreme Court. I say this as a conservative who has frequently criticized Trump’s disregard for democratic norms and institutions. Accepting Trump was always a devil’s bargain—one that I wasn’t willing to make. But if conservatives are going to suffer the downside of this deal, we might as well at least benefit from the upside. And this is one of the few potential upsides of a Trump presidency for Never Trump conservatives. 

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Homeostasis is that rare condition in which you are at perfect balance; you are in homeostatic balance when you are calm, alert, well-rested, free of stress, not hungry, not angry, and you are in good healthIn other words, homeostatic equilibrium is akin to catching lightning in a jar. But if you trade in that lightning jar of yours for a little aluminum can loaded with two ounces of Relax Shot drink from BGreat, you just might get a notch or two closer to that elusive homeostatic state. And you’ll definitely fall asleep faster, which is the next best thing to homeostasis anyway.

Each Relax Shot has 20 milligrams of full spectrum hemp extract (as opposed to the CBD isolate found in many similar products) along with lavender water, melatonin, acai berry extract, and a few other ingredients that work together to bring you nearer to that aforementioned state of chill. And seeing as I have tried a good dozen brands of edible CBD products at this point, I can say with confidence that this stuff works (and tastes) better than any similar product I know of.

But what is it doing, exactly? Simply put, it’s compensating for natural chemicals most of us lackThe human body has an endocannabinoid system with receptor sites all up and down the nervous system. Some of these receptors react to the cannabidiol (AKA CBD) in hemp to get you centered, an experience you might be missing out on if your body is not producing enough of those aforementioned natural chemicals on its own. 

Read more at The Daily Beast.

When Betsy West and Julie Cohen began putting together their 2018 Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary, RBG, they knew they would never get to fit in everything they’d learned about the accomplished Supreme Court Justice. For instance: They had to leave out anecdotes about the time she learned Swedish just to become an expert in the country’s civil procedure.

As the two explained to me in 2018 for a Vanity Fair story, Ginsburg got the book assignment as a young law professor and seized it so firmly that, as Cohen put it, she “became perhaps at the time… the leading—outside of Scandinavia—expert on Swedish civil procedure.” It wasn’t as colorful an anecdote as those that made it into the doc, which captured Ginsburg’s “feminist love story,” cultural meme-ification and planking regimen.

But Cohen said in 2018 that the anecdote gave “a sense of her level of determination when she gets an assignment.” And in the wake of Ginsburg’s death Friday at 87, West and Cohen have shared what she wanted her legacy to be.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

The city of Rochester, New York, was rocked early Saturday by a mass shooting at a house party that left two young people dead and 14 wounded.

“This is truly a tragedy of epic proportions, if you ask me,” Acting Police Chief Mark Simmons said at a predawn press conference.

“Sixteen victims is unheard of. And for our community, who’s right now going through so much, to have to deal with this tragedy needlessly—for people who decide to act in a violent manner—is unfortunate and shameful.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September 18, 2020, at the age of 87.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

On Feb. 13, 2016, then-Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead in a ranch bedroom in Texas. It was 268 days before the November election and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was quick to quip that there would not be a replacement until the next president was chosen. 

On Friday evening, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died of complications from cancer 46 days before the presidential election. But McConnell has already made it clear that he sees no reason to wait for voters to weigh in on who should pick her replacement. The Kentucky Republican declared just hours after the death was announced: “President Donald Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”

McConnell’s monomaniacal focus on filling the courts with young conservatives will be tested in the next few months by a variety of factors. But the main one will be whether four Senate Republicans will prove unwilling to go along with confirming a replacement for Ginsburg after their party spent 237 days denying Judge Merrick Garland—President Barack Obama’s nominee for the Scalia seat—a hearing, let alone a vote. 

Read more at The Daily Beast.

In the wake of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death on Friday, tributes came pouring in from politicians, celebrities, and just about everybody in between. But one common theme seemed to be a bittersweet determination to honor RBG’s legacy at the polls on Election Day.

“This is it. It’s the fucking fight of our lives,” comedian Samantha Bee tweeted.

“Her rest is earned. It is our turn to fight,” actress Kerry Washington wrote.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

First of all, before we get to the politics: Thank heaven for Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She is truly one of the great 10 or 20 Americans of the last 40 years. Her work has made millions of people’s lives better. She has made this, just as the founders hoped great Americans would, a more perfect union. 

I would prefer to go on in that vein, but these dark, greasy men and these dark, greasy times have rendered the pivot to politics in the second paragraph necessary and urgent. And so we pivot: What now?

It’s obvious: Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump are going to try to name a replacement before the election. McConnell has already said he would—in May, while he was appearing at a Chamber of Commerce lunch in Paducah, a small city in western Kentucky. He was asked, how would you handle a Supreme Court vacancy, in 2020, while President Trump was seeking reelection? “Oh,” he said, “we’d fill it.” There’s video. Go look at the smirk on his face as he says it.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court justice, trailblazing feminist, and the closest thing to a folk hero the high court has ever seen, has died at the age of 87. The Supreme Court announced that she died Friday due to complications from metastatic pancreas cancer.

In a statement dictated to her granddaughter just days before her death, Ginsburg said, “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”

Tributes began pouring in instantly. The chief justice, John Roberts, said in a statement that the country had lost “a jurist of historic stature.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.