RSS

Sarah Laskow

Sarah Laskow is a journalist based in New York.

Recent Articles

Sexual Assault at Yale

Sarah LaskowApr 04, 2011

Like fellow TAPPED blogger Jamelle Bouie, I give serious kudos to the Obama administration for highlighting sexual assault. I'd note, too, that built in to the coverage of Biden's forthcoming announcement is an example of why this issue is so often dismissed.

A lot of the articles mention a recently opened investigation into sexual harassment at Yale. These quick nods tend to link the complaint to ugly statements made by campus fraternities, which make it easy to downplay the complaint's seriousness. (And indeed the Yale Daily News found plenty of students willing to say that the complaint was unwarranted.)

Carbon Bills

Sarah LaskowApr 01, 2011

The Hill's E2 Wire is reporting that a Senate vote on EPA carbon regulations won't happen until next week. Although the White House handed out some tepid reassurance that it would not sell the EPA down the river, it doesn't sound like the administration will jump to the agency's defense.

Officially Invisible

Sarah LaskowMar 31, 2011

As data from the census rolls out, fantastic visualizations are popping up all over. But all that eye candy is necessarily missing a layer of detail: Even though this year census officials tried harder than ever to reach hard-to-count immigrant and students communities, many of those people still aren't accounted for in the official statistics.

In Texas, for instance, Equal Voice Newspaper reports:

Disaster Preparedness of the Mind

Sarah LaskowMar 31, 2011

Rebecca Solnit writes at Yes! Magazine about how racial stereotypes affect perceptions about people's behavior in the wake of a disaster:

After both Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the word “looting” was used to justify shooting people down in the streets—the death penalty, that is, without benefit of trial—for what in ordinary times might otherwise be called “petty theft.”...

Clean Energy Is a Short-Term Solution

Sarah LaskowMar 30, 2011

Greenwire reports on the White House's push for a clean-energy standard and makes clear an important distinction:

A clean energy standard differs from a renewable portfolio standard insofar as it permits utilities to derive electricity from more than just green fuels. Under Obama's CES, firms could meet the standard using renewable sources, nuclear power, combined cycle natural gas, and coal plants equipped to capture carbon emissions.

Pages