In yesterday’s Duluth News-Tribune’s editorial page, the DNT’s regular ultra-conservative Sunday editorialist and reliable Trump administration defender Marc Thiessen made an interesting comment about his hero’s impeachment threat.

Before discussing the comment, I think that it is important to point out a few things about Thiessen that the DNT hasn’t mentioned.

Thiessen grew up on New York City’s East Side, the over-privileged son of two physicians. He went to an elite private high school, attended the equally elite Vassar College and then attended the Naval War College. Interestingly, he then worked for 5 years for Paul Manafort’s lobbying firm. After serving as a staffer for the notorious racist Senator from North Carolina, Jesse Helms, he worked in George W. Bush’s administration and then became a speechwriter for both Donald Rumsfeld and Bush. Thiessen is now a regular FOX News commentator anda “resident fellow” at both the conservative Hoover Institution and the American Enterprise Institute.

Last week, the Democratic leadership put an extension of the Patriot Act into a “continuing resolution” that averted a government shutdown. More than 95 percent of the Democrats in the House went along with it by voting for the resolution. Both co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Pramila Jayapal and Mark Pocan, voted yes. So did all 11 of the CPC’s vice chairs.

It didn’t have to be that way. House progressives could have thrown a monkey wrench into the Orwellian machinery. Instead, the cave-in was another bow to normalizing the U.S. government’s mass surveillance powers.

Sunday, November 24, 3-4pm
Streetlight Guild, 1367 E. Main St.
The Voice of Freedom: Civil Rights introduces audiences to the operatic art form by celebrating African-American cultural history through song. Universal in its emotional and musical appeal, this unique production will highlight gospel, jazz, and other works from the Civil Rights Movement. “The Voice of Freedom: Civil Rights” aims to share the African-American experience with audiences of all ages, races, and religions. This show is an abridged version of “The Journey: Civil Rights.” Concept + creation by Destiny Coleman, Director of Education + Artistic Administration for Opera Columbus.
Hosted by Opera Columbus and Streetlight Guild.

If you think you are seeing a lot of ads for sleep-related drugs lately you are right. Pharma is rolling out a banquet of "sleep disorders" like Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder, Advanced Sleep Phase Disorder, Non-24-hour Sleep-Wake Disorder, Irregular Sleep Wake Rhythm, Jet Lag Disorder and Shift Work Sleep Disorder. These are on top of the predecessor conditions of Chronic, Acute, Transient, Initial and Middle-Of-The-Night Insomnia, Early-Morning Wakening Disorder and Non-Restful Sleep Disorder.

The conditions constitute Pharma's global circadian rhythm sleep disorder market which wasvalued at $1.31 billion two years ago.

Borderline: A Chip Off of Dusan Makavejev’s Cinematic Block

Serbian co-writer/director Ivana Mladenović’s Ivana the Terrible is many things, but one thing it most definitely is not is a sequel to Sergei Eisenstein’s 1940s Ivan the Terrible, Parts I and II. The cinematic style of this funny semi-autobiographical film is interesting in that Ivana plays a version of herself, as do her mother, father, grandmother and others in a mostly nonprofessional cast. Ms. Mladenović also relates that most of the events depicted onscreen actually happened to her. So Terrible is a hybrid movie, combining elements of documentary and fiction filmmaking.

Onscreen (and I guess offscreen) Ivana is from Kladovo, a small town on the Serbian-Romanian border. She moves to Bucharest, where she studies filmmaking and becomes an actress and director. In doing so Ivana turns into a local celebrity, the most famous living person from her hometown. But suffering from some unknown, undiagnosed ailment, when she returns to where she grew up Ivana finds out, like Thomas Wolfe before her, that “You Can’t Go Home Again.”