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Glenn Greenwald does The Intercept a big favor

Glenn Greenwald does The Intercept a big favor

The editors of The Intercept write: Glenn Greenwald’s decision to resign from The Intercept stems from a fundamental disagreement over the role of editors in the production of journalism and the nature of censorship. Glenn demands the absolute right to determine what he will publish. He believes that anyone who disagrees with him is corrupt, and anyone who presumes to edit his words is a censor. Thus, the preposterous charge that The Intercept’s editors and reporters, with the lone, noble…

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Are the brain’s electromagnetic fields the seat of consciousness?

Are the brain’s electromagnetic fields the seat of consciousness?

Tam Hunt writes: Christof Koch is a neuroscientist distinguished by his rock-solid scientific work and romantic yearning to understand consciousness. He recently closed an essay by wondering: “What is it about the brain, the most complex piece of active matter in the known universe, that turns its activity into the feeling of life itself?” No coincidence with that phrasing—The Feeling of Life Itself is his latest book. He argues that consciousness is produced by the brain but that it’s also…

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Why workers will decide the 2020 election

Why workers will decide the 2020 election

Rev. William J. Barber, II and Sen. Sherrod Brown write: For far too long, we have failed to recognize that work’s purpose is to support and nurture our families and communities and civil society – not Wall Street. But under the Trump administration, Wall Street has been running the country. The current president’s cabinet looks like a big bank executive retreat. The halls of Congress teem with corporate lobbyists. And those lobbyists take their cues from Wall Street, which rewards…

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Undocumented immigrants may actually make American communities safer – not more dangerous – new study finds

Undocumented immigrants may actually make American communities safer – not more dangerous – new study finds

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that undocumented immigrants cause more crime, but new research suggests the opposite might be true. Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images By Robert M. Adelman, University at Buffalo and Lesley Reid, University of Alabama The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea Undocumented immigration does not increase the violent crime rate in U.S. metropolitan areas. In fact, it may reduce property crime rates. These are the key findings from…

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Supreme Court will not speed up review of Pennsylvania mail-in voting fight

Supreme Court will not speed up review of Pennsylvania mail-in voting fight

Reuters reports: The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday handed a setback to Republicans by declining to quickly decide whether to hear their latest bid to overturn a lower court’s ruling that extended Pennsylvania’s deadline to receive mail-in ballots in next Tuesday’s election. The justices declined to expedite their consideration of the request by the Republican Party of Pennsylvania to hear and decide before the election its appeal of a ruling by the state’s top court ordering officials to count mail-in…

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Finally at zero new cases, Victoria, Australia, is on top of the world after unprecedented lockdown effort

Finally at zero new cases, Victoria, Australia, is on top of the world after unprecedented lockdown effort

By Stephen Duckett, Grattan Institute and Tom Crowley, Grattan Institute If the past few months have been like a long-haul flight, Victorians are now standing in the aisles waiting for the cabin door to open, a little groggy and disoriented but relieved. They have every right to be. No other place in the world has tamed a second wave this large. Few have even come close. Read more: Of all the places that have seen off a second coronavirus wave,…

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Trump to strip protections from Tongass National Forest, one of the biggest intact temperate rainforests

Trump to strip protections from Tongass National Forest, one of the biggest intact temperate rainforests

The Washington Post reports: President Trump will open up more than half of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to logging and other forms of development, according to a notice posted Wednesday, stripping protections that had safeguarded one of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforests for nearly two decades. As of Thursday, it will be legal for logging companies to build roads and cut and remove timber throughout more than 9.3 million acres of forest — featuring old-growth stands of red and…

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‘Sleeping giant’ Arctic methane deposits starting to release, scientists find

‘Sleeping giant’ Arctic methane deposits starting to release, scientists find

The Guardian reports: Scientists have found evidence that frozen methane deposits in the Arctic Ocean – known as the “sleeping giants of the carbon cycle” – have started to be released over a large area of the continental slope off the East Siberian coast, the Guardian can reveal. High levels of the potent greenhouse gas have been detected down to a depth of 350 metres in the Laptev Sea near Russia, prompting concern among researchers that a new climate feedback…

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‘Pristine’ extraterrestrial organic compounds found on meteorite may shed light on origin of life on Earth

‘Pristine’ extraterrestrial organic compounds found on meteorite may shed light on origin of life on Earth

Vice reports: On a dark winter night in 2018, hundreds of people across the Great Lakes region witnessed a radiant meteor brighten the skies. Mere days after the fireball streaked overhead on that night in January, scientists were able to track down precious pieces of the ancient space rock using weather radar reports. The scattered remnants of the object, known as the Hamburg meteorite, contain a “high diversity” of extraterrestrial organic compounds that are preserved “in a pristine condition,” according…

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The Republican Party’s Supreme Court

The Republican Party’s Supreme Court

In an editorial, the New York Times says: What happened in the Senate chamber on Monday evening was, on its face, the playing out of a normal, well-established process of the American constitutional order: the confirmation of a president’s nominee to the Supreme Court. But Senate Republicans, who represent a minority of the American people, are straining the legitimacy of the court by installing a deeply conservative jurist, Amy Coney Barrett, to a lifetime seat just days before an election…

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The Supreme Court’s recent rulings don’t mean the justices will decide the presidential race

The Supreme Court’s recent rulings don’t mean the justices will decide the presidential race

Richard L. Hasen writes: If [Amy Coney] Barrett does not recuse herself from election disputes next month, there’s every reason to worry that a 5-4 court could interfere in the election to help Trump if a case that might swing the outcome gets before the court. So why not panic about all of this? Mainly because, as both Jonathan Lai and Greg Sargent explained on Tuesday, the chances of the election being decided by the Supreme Court are very slim….

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Former U.S. attorneys — all Republicans — back Biden because Trump threatens ‘the rule of law’

Former U.S. attorneys — all Republicans — back Biden because Trump threatens ‘the rule of law’

The Washington Post reports: Twenty former U.S. attorneys — all of them Republicans — on Tuesday publicly called President Trump “a threat to the rule of law in our country,” and urged that he be replaced in November with his Democratic opponent, former vice president Joe Biden. “The President has clearly conveyed that he expects his Justice Department appointees and prosecutors to serve his personal and political interests,” said the former prosecutors in an open letter. They accused Trump of…

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As Trump warns of economic disaster, Wall Street, hoping for stability, welcomes the prospect of a Biden win

As Trump warns of economic disaster, Wall Street, hoping for stability, welcomes the prospect of a Biden win

Politico reports: President Donald Trump loves to say that if Joe Biden wins the White House, stocks will crash, retirement accounts will vanish and an economic depression “the likes of which you’ve never seen” will engulf the nation. But much of Wall Street is already betting on a Biden win — with a much different take on what the results will mean. Traders in recent weeks have been piling into bets that a “blue wave” election, in which Democrats also…

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As election nears, Trump administration takes new steps to suppress climate science

As election nears, Trump administration takes new steps to suppress climate science

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration has recently removed the chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the nation’s premier scientific agency, installed new political staff who have questioned accepted facts about climate change and imposed stricter controls on communications at the agency. The moves threaten to stifle a major source of objective United States government information about climate change that underpins federal rules on greenhouse gas emissions and offer an indication of the direction the…

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