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Weekend Reads 7/21/18

When a DNA Test Shatters Your Identity

But not all biological parents want to be found. In conversations and correspondence with more than two dozen people for this story, I heard of DNA tests that unearthed affairs, secret pregnancies, quietly buried incidents of rape and incest, and fertility doctors using their own sperm to inseminate patients. These secrets otherwise would have—or even did—go the grave. "It’s getting harder and harder to keep secrets in our society," says CeCe Moore, a prominent genetic genealogist who consults for the television show Finding Your Roots. "If people haven’t come to that realization, they probably should."

Yes, the Supreme Court Is Undemocratic

Progressives cheered all the while. They happily pocketed all the court-mandated policy changes to their liking, relieved of the burden of enacting them through democratic means.

Needless to say, the court was never meant to be an unelected superlegislature, and it has taken on such a highly charged role in our politics, in part, because it arrogated this power to itself.

Critics of Starbucks’ Straw Ban Are Missing the Point

The environmental movement has an unfortunate history of ignoring the well-being of humans—particularly marginalized humans—for the sake of animals and “nature.” That’s changed a lot in the last decade, but the movement could still improve how it communicates its priorities.

Trump’s Helsinki Discord

Ah, yes, both countries. One is given to invading its neighbors, rigging elections, killing dissidents (including on foreign soil), and violating international agreements and norms in the hopes of reestablishing something like the old Russian empire. The other has a strange, but apparently unbreakable, habit of electing new presidents who naïvely believe that they can reset relations with Russia based on their personality and goodwill.

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