1/ All righty, folks, let's sit down a moment, collect our breath and address the volcanic right-wing pants-crapping currently brought on by Biden's announcement of various vaccine mandates. For starters, good job, guys! You're doing that thing where you absolutely freak out... 2/ ...and throw around words like "tyranny" and "Marxism" and whatever else you found in the "Modern Conservative's Inaccurate Scare-Word-of-the-Day Calendar" you bought in the gift shop at Mar-a-Lago when you were there hoping to get a whiff of one of Donald Trump's farts.

1/ Mollie Tibbetts' funeral was today. It seemed to go a bit unnoticed, particularly by the many very concerned souls who pounced on the young woman's murder to raise holy hell about immigrants and to parrot Trump's sickening line about parents being "permanently separated." 2/ I imagine those very concerned souls took note of Mollie's funeral. I assume they read every word about the funeral, and learned that the family members who spoke described a positive, loving woman who cared for everyone. They certainly must have seen how her father told...

1/ If I may have a moment of your time...

I just wrapped up a five-part series of columns, reflections on a divided America in the age of Trump. I enjoyed writing them immensely. They're not the kind of columns that tend to grab attention online, more kind of essay-ish thingies. 2/ I tweeted links to them as they ran, but I'm going to put all five in this thread, in case anyone cares to read through them as a compiled series. I don't know if they offer any great revelations about anything, and some bits are just kind of silly.

1/ This will likely contain some adult language. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I held off on commenting on the Capital Gazette tragedy. The facts needed to come out. We don't know everything yet, but we know enough.

The killer had harassed journalists and editors at the paper. 2/ It had gone on for years. Recently there were threats of violence via social media.

How many of us have gotten those? Most, if not all. Some more than others. Some get stalked, latched onto by unhinged readers who become obsessive, vile. Sometimes they toe the line between...

1/ Here's a thread about journalism. Specifically about the reckless and absurd use of the term "fake news." I made a mistake in my column that was published Monday online and in Tuesday's print edition. It was the column about a lost dog, Finn, who was found after four days. 2/ In the column, I said the woman who found Finn worked part-time at an animal hospital in Chester, Ind. That was the mistake. The hospital is in Chesterton, Ind. I screwed up the name and didn't catch it when I was back-reading the column. Those of you who like me might say...

1/ We live in an age of staggering stupidity. That much is known. What seems to get overlooked is a widespread willingness to not only elevate dumb people but to pay them extremely well and treat them as though their dumb opinions have just a much as value as other opinions. 2/ I say this not as some self-declared genius. I don't consider myself to to be all that smart. But I'm confident in the things that I do know, and willing to learn about things I don't know so I can form an opinion that isn't dumb. I'm not perfect, at all.

1/ OK, so this Sam Nunberg stuff today is high comedy, and it shows, again, how deep into the Cavern of Idiocy our current president had to dig to find like-minded trolls who would work with him. Honestly, these are the most astonishingly dumb people I've ever witnessed. 2/ If you want to understand white privilege, consider the fact that all of these barely sentient mopes have managed to grift their way through life and become relatively successful without anyone noticing that they routinely get lost in corners and still lack object permanence.

1/ I know I shouldn't have done this. I know better. But I looked at the comments on today's column about the asylum-seeking Congolese mother and daughter separated by ICE. And for the first time in a long journalism career, it brought me to tears. This story was a gut-punch... 2/ ...to begin with. I started to break down talking about it today on the podcast @amyguth and I do. This is a 7-year-old child who has been ripped away from her mother for four damn months. For no reason. And I just can't find a way to fathom how anyone reads about that...

1/ While the #FakeNewsAwards fervor continues, let me highlight the horribleness of Trump's anti-press nonsense by telling you about what the reporters I work with here in Chicago do. Unlike columnists like myself who get to spout opinions, the remarkable and dedicated... 2/ ...women and men at the Chicago Tribune report the news of the day, chronicle the deaths of people who've made differences in the community, kneel down and take to grieving parents at crime scenes, stand and observe while meetings are held, ask powerful people questions...

1/ If you'll indulge me a somewhat lengthy thread...

My dad died last year, and the end of 2017 had me thinking a lot about that. So I wrote him a letter. I don't know if it's of value to anyone but me, but I'm sharing it on the off chance it is. 2/ Dear Dad:

I know you’ll think this is ridiculous. Writing a letter to a dead person is something you would’ve filed under “Complete Wastes of Time” or “Mystical Hocus-Pocus.” It kind of goes against all the atheistic pragmatism you preached, but that sensible stuff...

1/ So the new argument I'm getting from Trump supporters who read my columns is this: "Look at how well the economy is doing! Why don't you look at your 401k before criticizing the president!" Setting aside the questionable assumption that Trump has done anything to... 2/ ...significantly spur the economy, is that really what drives these people? You don't care about Trump's obvious unfitness for office or his constant degradation of the presidency, you just care about whether you're making money? I know the answer to this is yes, but that...