Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Damian Paletta and Josh Dawsey report that cash for access is the only way for anybody to raise issues with the U.S. Republicans' tax bills. And Ronald Brownstein views the tax debacle as conclusive evidence of the closing of Republican minds.

- Meanwhile, Mark Kingwell offers a needed rebuttal to the reactionary right's efforts to falsely criticize universities for exactly the type of closed-minded attitudes underlying its own movement:

Right-wing postmodernism flourishes by bulldozing dissent. The current occupant of the White House, and those leading rhetorical crusades in his shadow, are just late-model versions of real intellectual rot. It begins with thinking you can say whatever you want, because you have power and a Twitter or YouTube account. It ends with a comprehensive sense of entitlement that you can get away with anything.

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters," the current President said. Yes, he said that. He said that. It's a fact that he said it.

Universities are always easy targets. You can target this so-called useless course or that apparently trendy professor. You can mock new pronouns and novel ways of thinking. But here's what we mostly do: We insist that when people utter falsehoods and nonsense, or behave intolerably, they will be challenged, on the facts, with reasons and arguments.

It's indoctrination, sure – into critical thinking. Sorry if that upsets what you already believe. (Note: not in fact sorry.)

- Damian Carrington reports on the health effects of air pollution on fetal health. And Karl Nerenberg writes about the global connection between inequality and reproductive health.

- Ben Parfitt makes the case for an inquiry into B.C.'s fracking industry. And Paul Willcocks discusses why the Libs' Site C disaster needs to be shut down, not continued by John Horgan's government.

- Donna Borden comments on the need for low-income Canadians to have fair access to financial services. And Tamar Harris reports on a lawsuit against Rogers for breaking its promise not to subject participants in a low-income Internet service program to credit checks which could harm their credit scores.

- Finally, Thomas Walkom writes about the costs of Ontario's power privatization, as monopoly private providers have been able to exploit the regulatory system to claim illegitimate costs.