The Chefs Reinventing the Midwestern Supper Club by Ligaya Mishan

Prompted by a Brooklyn restaurant that took its decor from a Northern Wisconsin supper club that shut down, this New York Times article is a wildly enjoyable survey of the colorful culinary legacy of my home state. This type of retrospective is normally a pure nostalgia trip, but Ligaya Mishan comes at the topic of bygone supper club culture with an anthropological curiosity that leads to mildly perplexed marveling at the particulars. The approach makes for a brightly entertaining read.

William Barr’s Wild Misreading of the First Amendment by Jeffrey Toobin

It’s staggering to consider the sheer amount of infractions against the foundational norms of the U.S. government perpetrated by the very people currently charged with protecting them. I’m loathe to cry out about one of the newer transgressions not receiving enough coverage, by which the complainer only means the collective outrage isn’t properly aligned with their own. But it’s extremely difficult to keep myself from tromping down that well-worn path in the case of the current attorney general’s recent remarks built around the fantasy that Christians are a cruelly persecuted class in the current culture, including the flagrant misrepresentation of historical truths. So I’ll instead let this fine piece of aghast analysis, written by Jeffrey Toobin and published by The New Yorker, take the place of the sputtering diatribe I’d surely lapse into.