Ken Burns, the documentarian behind PBS's acclaimed The Civil War series, blasted the myth that the Confederate flag isn't a symbol of racism and white supremacy during a Thursday appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe.

"I think what happens is that we build up over time the sense of an excuse about why it came," Burns said. "If you read … South Carolina's articles of secession in November — after Lincoln's election of 1860 — they don't mention states' rights, they don't mention nullification. They mention slavery over and over again."

He later added, "Those (Confederate) flags came in after Brown v. Board of Education. This is not about heritage. This is about resistance to civil rights."

More: http://www.vox.com/2015/6/25/8846879/ken-burns-civil-war

Hillary Clinton’s first campaign rally felt like a coming out party for a woman who’d been shoved in a closet back in the 1990s and hadn’t seen much daylight since. Wonkish Hillary, liberal Hillary; the Eleanor Roosevelt admirer; the Children’s Defense Fund attorney. That’s who promised an adoring crowd on a bright sunny Saturday, in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, that she’d bring back “an America where if you do your part, you reap the rewards; where we don’t leave anyone out, or anyone behind.”

We didn’t get to know this Hillary while her husband was president, especially after the failure of the healthcare reform project she led. She was too feminist, too liberal, too all around off-putting to be much help to her husband’s effort to rebrand the Democratic Party with a common sense centrism that wouldn’t frighten away white Southern men. The Clinton operation looked for ways to sand off the First Lady’s rough edges, mostly with her cooperation. She traded policy for writing books about Socks and Buddy, the Clintons’ pets.

We didn’t see much of this Hillary during her 2008 presidential campaign, either. She was still trying not to scare away the dwindling numbers of white working class voters left available to Democratic Party appeals.

Of course, if you don’t like her, this version of Hillary Clinton is all head and no heart; all about polling data and electoral college math that show a successful White House run requires that she consolidate the Obama coalition, and leave the (Bill) Clinton coalition behind. As an often-vexed admirer of Clinton, I see it as her finally being her real self. The question is, can this Hillary Clinton become president, or will the GOP turn her into a scary Frankenstein monster of liberalism, a cross between Eleanor Roosevelt and Barack Obama?

Read more at Salon.

At a dramatic weekend rally on Roosevelt Island, Hillary Clinton unleashed a speech that was in some ways strikingly liberal, especially for a candidate who's not facing meaningful opposition in the Democratic primary. Politico's Glenn Thrush says it shows that "the Democratic Party is moving left fast" and Clinton knows it, which is why she uncorked "economic-inequality rhetoric could have been comfortably uttered by the likes of Elizabeth Warren, Joseph Stiglitz, Bernie Sanders, or Martin O’Malley."

The truth, however, is that on the kind of pocketbook issues Clinton spent most of yesterday's speech discussing, she's always been on the left wing of the Democratic Party. She's been in the public eye far too long to have avoided inconsistencies over the years. But in positional terms, somewhat to the left of Obama — or Bill Clinton — on economics is where she's been this whole time.

Clinton's voting record was to the left of Obama's

In 2008, both Clinton and Obama spent a lot of time debating a single fateful vote she cast in 2002 in favor of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq. But if you look at all the votes that were cast during the four years they served together in the Senate, it was Clinton who amassed the more liberal record.

Read more: http://www.vox.com/2015/6/15/8779449/hillary-clinton-populist-record

One Tough Mother
Hillary Clinton’s campaign is going to sell her as a fighter like no other.

By John Dickerson, Slate

Tough mother. That’s both the theme of Hillary Clinton’s big speech on Saturday and the emerging theme of her campaign. According to a preview of her remarks, Clinton will talk about her mother’s struggles and how they guide her and her campaign, which the candidate has fashioned around four tough fights. Since announcing her campaign in April, at every stop Clinton has said she will advocate for families, remove money from politics, increase wages for the middle class, and protect America. How is she going to do these things? She’s going to fight.

Read more here.