Vox Sentences: Russian planes need to learn about personal space

Verizon's strike is the perfect set piece for Bernie Sanders; seriously, Russia, back off before someone gets hurt; Dennis Hastert's past is coming out.

TOP NEWS

Connectivity forever

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

• 36,000 Verizon workers went on strike Wednesday morning, challenging management on a range of issues, including proposals to replace employees with contractors and force them to move for work.

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

• The overwhelming majority of the striking employees work for Verizon's landline division, where growth has fallen off hugely over the past several years. So from Verizon's perspective, this is a case of workers trying to prevent Verizon from adapting to a changing environment.

  [Ars Technica / Jon Brodkin]

• From the unions' perspective, however, Verizon is just another company seeking to use business changes as an excuse to outsource jobs and reduce workers' rights.

  [NYT / Noam Scheiber]

• That perspective makes the Verizon strike total Bernie Sanders bait. And sure enough, Sanders picketed alongside workers today and gave a speech attacking Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam.

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

• McAdam struck back with a surprisingly vicious post for a corporate CEO. (It's posted on LinkedIn, of course.)

  [LinkedIn / Lowell McAdam]

• Hillary Clinton also met with Verizon workers in New York Wednesday afternoon.

  [Jennifer Epstein via Twitter]

• But in a microcosm of the Democratic primary thus far, the impact of her visit was blunted by the fact that Verizon lobbyists have co-hosted Clinton campaign fundraisers in the past.

  [IBT / Andrew Perez and David Sirota]

"Unsafe and unprofessional"

EUCOM

• On Monday, and again on Tuesday, Russian planes came insanely close to US ships in the Baltic Sea.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• Seriously, the photo above is an actual picture of the buzz. It was really close.

• The Navy condemned the flight as "unsafe and unprofessional" — a term of art that gets used frequently with close passes, and which Vox has been informed is a polite way of saying "too fucking close."

  [The Telegraph / David Blair]

• Russia has gotten caught doing this a lot recently. There was a similar incident in January. And, weirdly, incidents occurred over this week in April in both 2014 and 2015.

  [USNI / Sam Legrone]

• The Baltics are a particularly not-great place for this to be happening. They're exactly the sort of region where small escalations from Russia might actually be met with further escalation by the US, ultimately escalating into all-out war.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• In an interview with Vox, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the best way to avoid this accidental backing into conflict is to have militaries communicate with one another — but that he is not at all satisfied with the level of communication between the US and Russia right now.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

It all comes out

Scott Olson/Getty Images

• You may recall that in October, former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was convicted of a federal banking crime — in a case that everyone appeared to understand, but no one was willing to say outright, was about allegations that Hastert had sexually abused high school boys as a wrestling coach.

• Now those allegations are out in the open. In a memo prepared for the judge to use in sentencing Hastert, federal prosecutors allege that Hastert molested at least four boys.

  [Roll Call / Rema Rahman]

• (For what it's worth, in 2003 Hastert said that repeat child molesters should be put "in jail for the rest of their lives.")

  [Politico / Roger Simon]

• Because that's not the crime he's actually being sentenced for, though (and because federal prosecutors are less harsh than 2003-era Hastert wished they were), the prosecutors are only asking for Hastert to serve six months.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• The judge in the case might be inclined to be harsher — again, not because of the sexual abuse, but because Hastert lied to investigators only a year ago when they asked him about mysterious withdrawals.

  [NBC News / Pete Williams and Tracy Connor]

• But in trying to argue that Hastert should avoid prison entirely (and be sentenced to probation), his lawyers ended up arguing not only that he repented of what he'd done but that he couldn't really remember the details of what he'd done — and also that, say, a "groin rub" was an appropriate thing for a high school coach from 40 years ago to do.

  [The Daily Beast / Justin Glawe]

• This might not go well for Hastert. His sentencing hearing is scheduled to include testimony from two of his alleged victims and the sister of a third.

  [Chicago Tribune / Jason Meisner]

MISCELLANEOUS

Against top sheets, the ultimate scam of the bedding world (Dylan) or an absolutely necessary sleep cocoon (Dara). [GQ / Maggie Lange]

• Did Twitter founder and CEO Jack Dorsey send an envelope of his own hair to rapper Azealia Banks as compensation for promoting his app Square Cash? Maybe!

  [Re/code / Noah Kulwin]

• An interactive, narrated version of Hieronymus Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights."

  [NTR]

• Hudson Yang, the 12-year-old star of Fresh Off the Boat, says he knows what VCRs are because of his grandparents. We are all ancient, and death approaches.

  [NY Mag / Maria Elena Fernandez]

• Leninist communism is, it may shock you to hear, bad.

  [Dissent / Jeffrey Isaac]

VERBATIM

"There is no substantive-due-process right to stimulate one's genitals." [Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz via Mother Jones / David Corn]

• "I think splitting the cost on a date has to be evaluated on a kind of case-by-case basis."

  [Hillary Clinton to Cosmopolitan / Prachi Gupta]

• "McKinnon is the first person ever identified with a condition called severely deficient autobiographical memory. She knows plenty of facts about her life, but she lacks the ability to mentally relive any of it, the way you or I might meander back in our minds and evoke a particular afternoon. She has no episodic memories — none of those impressionistic recollections that feel a bit like scenes from a movie, always filmed from your perspective."

  [Wired / Erika Hayasaki]

• "Balibar was proposing in effect that Marx offered no providential assurance that things would work out in the end. This was Marxism without a Book of Revelation."

  [n+1 / Bruce Robbins]

• "Meaning is just another name for expressed intention, knowledge just another name for true belief, but theory is not just another name for practice."

  [Critical Inquiry / Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels]

WATCH THIS

How deterrence is changing, explained by Defense Secretary Ash Carter [YouTube / Max Fisher and Johnny Harris]

Vox / Johnny Harris