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Obama: once out of office, I’m gonna stop being polite and start getting real

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has a great new interview with President Obama in Vanity Fair. In the wide-ranging interview, they discuss Abraham Lincoln, Obama’s biggest regrets from his time in office, and how a visit to the pyramids reminded Obama that cable news doesn’t really matter.

But perhaps the most intriguing bit was when, in a brief discussion of Obama’s plans for his post-presidency, Obama hinted that he planned to start speaking out more like an activist than a president.

There are “things,” he told Goodwin, “that in some ways I suspect I’m able to do better out of this office.” He elaborated that because of the “institutional constraints” of the presidency, “there are things I cannot say.”

He went on to essentially say he wanted to use his post-presidential bully pulpit more like an activist than a venerable elder statesman. “There are institutional obligations I have to carry out that are important for a president of the United States to carry out, but may not always align with what I think would move the ball down the field on the issues that I care most deeply about,” he said.

L.A.-based engineer Tim Murphy surprised his new wife Molly, who is battling depression, by leaving her a 15 point love note on their bedroom mirror, listing all the reasons he loves her.

9 in 10  Salvadorans have been denied asylum, and 8 in 10 Hondurans, Mexicans and Guatemalans have been denied.

The Justice Department, which oversees the immigration courts, hasn’t publicly released comprehensive numbers on these cases. But a spokesperson said DOJ analyzed a subset and found that judges denied asylum in about 60 percent of cases involving women and children from July 2014 through December 2015.

Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman-Hughes, 1972 and 2014

Atlanta Teen Who Wrote ‘White Boy Privilege’ Addresses Police Brutality in New Poem.

Fourteen-year-old Royce Mann’s slam poem “White Boy Privilege” went viral, and now the Atlanta teen is tackling another huge issue in the community with his latest work.

This kid deserves a standing ovation. I’m crying…