Jess Lahitou

Americans deserve to vote without being unwittingly “nudged,” “tweaked,” or otherwise manipulated by those with the most power and most incentive to do so. Ergo, any candidate from Silicon Valley needs to be treated with an excess of skepticism.

To her own admitted surprise, Fessler discovered that meaningless, detached hookups were emphatically not bringing any kind of bliss to college women.

With Twitter awash in letters of goodbyes, 140-word final messages from “collateral damage,” my heart broke last night. That doesn’t mean anything, and neither does this: I want to say I’m sorry to Syria.

Most Likely To Succeed: Carly Fiorina. One word: Yowza! On top of being the only candidate to move up from Fox’s conciliation debate to CNN’s main stage, Carly Fiorina kicked absolute butt. She went after Donald Trump, Chris Christie, every prominent Democrat, not to mention political pandering to women. Pundits agree: Fiorina won it.

This is the first time I’ve seen a sitting president “spin” a clear military defeat to save his own ego, and use a bereft and heartbroken wife in order to get away with it. Disgust is not the right word. Horror, maybe. Disbelief and revulsion crashing into each other.

A few weeks ago, I thought we might actually celebrate the end of the 2016 election.

The year ahead promises to be a whopper of political intrigue, events, and (probably) scandal. Here are the top stories to watch as we head into the hype that comes but once every four years: A presidential election.

As the headline article (“Anxiety, Depression and the American Adolescent”) points out, depression has been replaced with anxiety as the leading mental health struggle of today’s adolescent. The one possible cause that stood out to me most was the impact of social media. With smartphone in hand, teens can be reading harmless texts, or – as was the case for one young female interviewed – they could be viewing disturbing Instagram posts, or reading about distant tragedies, or scrolling through hateful Facebook comments. Maybe even comments about them.

It's finally Friday, which means it's time to have a little fun.

We talk about having debate-watching parties, popping popcorn, making bets… it’s all a little weird, and probably not good for democracy.