Need To Read: October 12, 2009

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You come to Mother Jones for unique journalism, and we love doing it for you. That's it. That's the upshot of our fall fundraising drive, and we're hoping to raise $250,000 in a shorter than normal three-week window so we can keep right on doing it.

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Today’s must-reads are at work on Columbus Day:

“Is Columbus Day Sailing Off the Calendar?” [WSJ]
Obama’s speech on gay equality was “highfalutin bullshit” [Sullivan/The Atlantic]
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell protects bigots [WaPo op ed]
Great Recession Landmark: 100 failed US banks [NYTimes]
Nobel Prize in economics goes to Americans Oliver Williamson and Elinor Ostrom, the first woman win the award [BBC]
George Soros invests a cool billion in clean tech [FT]
“Yes We Can (Get Republicans to Support Climate Bill)” [NYTimes op ed]
Obama should earn that Nobel at the Copenhagen Climate Conference [MoJo]
The White House goes on the offensive against Fox News [TPM]
Iran sentences three post-election protesters to death [AP]
Armenia and Turkey sign a peace deal and reopen their border for the first time since 1993 [Reuters]
The dangers of drudgery: bad jobs are killing people [The Economist]
Google co-founder Sergey Brin defends the controversial Google Books project [NYTimes op ed]
Listen to Michael Jackson’s final single, the appropriately titled “This Is It” [Bitten and Bound]

Nick Baumann posts pieces like these throughout the day on twitter. You should follow him for more must-reads. David Corn, Mother Jones’ DC bureau chief, also tweets. So do my colleagues Daniel Schulman, Rachel Morris, Kate Sheppard and our editors-in-chief, Clara Jeffery and Monika Bauerlein. Follow them too! (The magazine’s main account is @motherjones.)