Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina are serving two-year jail terms for hooliganism for their protest action, called a "punk prayer," in Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral in February 2012. The band's third convicted member, Yeakterina Samutsevich, who received a suspended sentence, is also subject to the amnesty bill, the lawyer said.

Putin did the right thing...  

"To be angry is to be alive. I'm an angry Jew. I love it. Anger is better than love. I think it is more pure," he said in an interview in 2001. "There's so much to be angry about, because people are ripped off, the election went to the wrong person, the good guys usually lose and society sucks."

To back that anger, Goldstein put his wallet where his mouth was, spending millions of dollars on First Amendment lawsuits, hundreds of thousands running unsuccessfully for sheriff in Florida, and millions more in numerous divorce settlements.

DeStefano remembers Goldstein as an "intellectual who cared about the world and geopolitics." But after a lavish lifestyle, Goldstein fell on difficult times, landing in a homeless shelter and a veterans hospital.

Four decades later, Reagan's soliloquies on welfare fraud are often remembered as shameless demagoguery. Many accounts report that Reagan coined the term "welfare queen," and that this woman in Chicago was a fictional character. In 2007, the New York Times' Paul Krugman wrote that "the bogus story of the Cadillac-driving welfare queen [was] a gross exaggeration of a minor case of welfare fraud." MSNBC's Chris Matthews says the whole thing is racist malarkey--a coded reference to black indolence and criminality designed to appeal to working-class whites.

Though Reagan was known to stretch the truth, he did not invent that woman in Chicago. Her name was Linda Taylor, and it was the Chicago Tribune, not the GOP politician, who dubbed her the "welfare queen." It was the Tribune, too, that lavished attention on Taylor's jewelry, furs, and Cadillac--all of which were real.

As of 1976, Taylor had yet to be convicted of anything. She was facing charges that she'd bilked the government out of $8,000 using four aliases. When the welfare queen stood trial the next year, reporters packed the courtroom. Rather than try to win sympathy, Taylor seemed to enjoy playing the scofflaw. As witnesses described her brazen pilfering from public coffers, she remained impassive, an unrepentant defendant bedecked in expensive clothes and oversize hats.

Linda Taylor, the haughty thief who drove her Cadillac to the public aid office, was the embodiment of a pernicious stereotype. With her story, Reagan marked millions of America's poorest people as potential scoundrels and fostered the belief that welfare fraud was a nationwide epidemic that needed to be stamped out. This image of grand and rampant welfare fraud allowed Reagan to sell voters on his cuts to public assistance spending. The "welfare queen" became a convenient villain, a woman everyone could hate. She was a lazy black con artist, unashamed of cadging the money that honest folks worked so hard to earn.

SNIP

When I set out in search of Linda Taylor, I hoped to find the real story of the woman who played such an outsize role in American politics--who she was, where she came from, and what her life was like before and after she became the national symbol of unearned prosperity. What I found was a woman who destroyed lives, someone far more depraved than even Ronald Reagan could have imagined. In the 1970s alone, Taylor was investigated for homicide, kidnapping, and baby trafficking. The detective who tried desperately to put her away believes she's responsible for one of Chicago's most legendary crimes, one that remains unsolved to this day. Welfare fraud was likely the least of the welfare queen's offenses.

For those who knew her decades ago, Linda Taylor was a terrifying figure. On multiple occasions, I had potential sources tell me they didn't think I was really a journalist. Maybe I was a cop. Maybe I was trying to kill them. As Lamar Jones tells me about his brief marriage to the welfare queen, he keeps asking how I've found him, and why I want to know all of these personal details. If I'm in cahoots with Linda, as he suspects I might be, he assures me that I won't be able to find him again. He's just going to disappear.

Those who crossed paths with Linda Taylor believe she's capable of absolutely anything. They also hope she's dead.

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Their ages were from about six to sixteen.

They were great.

The only thing I felt was somewhat bizarre was that they were dancing to a great beat, but the lyrics included "mthfker", "all fkd up", and "nggr".

It didn't mean a thing to anyone.

It didn't mean much to me either - but I took it in.

I thought of Lenny Bruce being jailed for uttering those words.

And a very Happy Birthday to His Eminence, who turned 77 today. He's certainly been a refreshing and welcome departure from the recent occupants of the Throne of St. Peter.

Steinberg had to prove that during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance the word "resurrection" could be used as a double entendre, connoting both the divine event and the humble mortal fact of an erection. Steinberg quotes from one of Boccaccio's fourteenth-century tales in the Decameron, in which a pious young girl inflames the desire of a monk named Rustico, causing in the latter a "resurrection of the flesh."

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