The Atlantic: Politics

President Obama tours the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in Oklahoma in July 2015. Kevin Lamarque / Reuters President Obama has issued executive actions to ban the use of solitary confinement for juvenile offenders in federal prisons across the country.

Officers stand outside the Supreme Court in Washington on January 22. Susan Walsh / AP The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday in Montgomery v. Alabama that its ban on mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders also applied retroactively, making more than 2,000 inmates nationwide eligible for resentencing or the possibility of eventual freedom.

Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards at a 2013 rally in Austin. Eric Gay / AP In a surprise turn, a grand jury in Texas that was convened to investigate allegations that Planned Parenthood illegally sold fetal tissue decided instead to indict activists who made sting videos to criticize the organization.

Senator Bernie Sanders watches as President Obama signs the Veterans’ Access to Care through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act of 2014.

That’s how one commenter describes the latest landscape from Jefferson Grid:

Jimmy Carter waves to a crowd in Atlanta in 1974 where he announced that he would be running for president. BJ / AP There is a long history of surprise candidates doing well in the Iowa caucuses and defeating the “inevitable” nominees.More | Talk | Read It Later | Share

Jeffrey Phelps / AP Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has tapped into voters’ resentment of the Republican establishment. But his aggressive rhetoric has also revealed the pervasiveness of a class-based divide between the media and many Americans.

Children sled on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol during a snow storm in Washington March 5, 2015. Joshua Roberts / Reuters Washington, D.C., was hit by a severe winter storm this weekend.More | Talk | Read It Later | Share

A reader writes in with another perspective on the moral or cognitive dissonance of abortion, posing a new question: If you do everything in your power to prevent a pregnancy and it happens anyway, does that change the moral dynamics of getting an abortion?More | Talk | Read It Later | Share

Richard Nixon, outdoorsman (Wikimedia) Yesterday I noted the contrast between Ted Cruz’s steady emergence as the GOP’s non-Trump possibility of the day, and the flat-out dislike so many of his own Republican party members seem to have for him.