We can now add evidence from the Leveson enquiry to our view of the press as a policing agency, of the police as an agency too often in bed with the media or chasing celebrity figures for dubious purposes (see Dominic Lawson on this), and of politics as not so much the art of the possible as a contract with the public, press and police as to what can be said without damaging re-electability. [read post]

Pushed by Senator Charles Sumner, it was the final piece of landmark civil rights legislation passed during Reconstruction. [read post]