Browsed by
Author: From elsewhere

‘There’s no accountability’: Trump, White House aides signal a willingness to act with impunity in drive for reelection

‘There’s no accountability’: Trump, White House aides signal a willingness to act with impunity in drive for reelection

Comments 0 Comment

The Washington Post reports: Slumping in the polls and at war with his political rivals, President Trump has signaled a willingness to act with impunity in his drive for reelection, taking steps over the past week that demonstrate a disregard for legal boundaries meant to hold him accountable and protect the sanctity of American democracy. Trump said in an interview that he would accept damaging information on his election opponents from foreign entities, defiantly unrepentant after spending 2½ years trying…

Read More Read More

Paul Manafort seemed headed to Rikers. Then the Justice Department intervened

Paul Manafort seemed headed to Rikers. Then the Justice Department intervened

Comments 0 Comment

The New York Times reports: Paul J. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman who is serving a federal prison sentence, had been expected to be transferred to the notorious Rikers Island jail complex this month to await trial on a separate state case. But last week, Manhattan prosecutors were surprised to receive a letter from the second-highest law enforcement official in the country inquiring about Mr. Manafort’s case. The letter, from Jeffrey A. Rosen, Attorney General William P. Barr’s new…

Read More Read More

Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, dies in court

Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, dies in court

Comments 0 Comment

The New York Times reports: Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, collapsed and died while on trial in a Cairo courtroom on Monday, six years after the military ousted him in tumultuous circumstances that pushed Egypt back to autocratic rule. Egyptian authorities gave no official cause of death, but critics blamed the poor conditions in the prison where Mr. Morsi had spent the past six years. They said the authorities had deprived him of vital medicine for diabetes, high…

Read More Read More

Isaac Asimov on creativity

Isaac Asimov on creativity

Comments 0 Comment

In 1959, Isaac Asimov wrote: The history of human thought would make it seem that there is difficulty in thinking of an idea even when all the facts are on the table. Making the cross-connection requires a certain daring. It must, for any cross-connection that does not require daring is performed at once by many and develops not as a “new idea,” but as a mere “corollary of an old idea.” It is only afterward that a new idea seems…

Read More Read More

How the Sunrise Movement changed the Democratic conversation

How the Sunrise Movement changed the Democratic conversation

Comments 0 Comment

Ruairí Arrieta-Kenna writes: “When we were taught about the civil rights movement as kids, it was told to us as if a few big marches just happened and then the laws changed,” Emily LaShelle told me last weekend as she smoked a cigarette. Behind her, a group of her peers played Frisbee in a field while the sun set behind them. “But there was so much more work and effort by activists behind the scenes,” she said. “And that’s the…

Read More Read More

Joe Biden and the ‘electability’ delusion — and why the media keep making the same mistake

Joe Biden and the ‘electability’ delusion — and why the media keep making the same mistake

Comments 0 Comment

Margaret Sullivan writes: As Iowa journalist Robert Leonard talks to voters around his state, he finds himself baffled at the national portrayal of Joe Biden’s dominance in the presidential campaign. The local Democrats he encounters respect the former vice president, he told me, but many of them also feel his time has passed. They’re far more excited about other candidates, five in particular: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.); Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind.; Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.);…

Read More Read More

Sucker: Netanyahu’s ‘Trump Heights’ publicity stunt fools no one — except for Trump

Sucker: Netanyahu’s ‘Trump Heights’ publicity stunt fools no one — except for Trump

Comments 0 Comment

BBC News reports: Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has unveiled a new settlement in the occupied Golan Heights, named after US President Donald Trump. At a naming ceremony on Sunday, Mr Netanyahu said Trump Heights honoured Mr Trump for his decision to recognise Israeli sovereignty over the territory. Building work has yet to begin but a sign bearing Mr Trump’s name and US and Israeli flags was unveiled. Critics called the move a publicity stunt with no legal authority. Israel seized…

Read More Read More

What made Sarah Huckabee Sanders so good at being so despicable

What made Sarah Huckabee Sanders so good at being so despicable

Comments 0 Comment

Lili Loofbourow writes: Sanders didn’t just defend the president from the effects of his own statements; she offered herself as a kind of prosaic presence whose function it was to act like anything Trump did, no matter how shocking, was no big deal. She exemplified the stolid approval Trump wanted for everything from family separations to tax cuts for the rich. As her tenure ends, we can now see how much her reliance on reassuring phrases like “make a determination”—and…

Read More Read More

Kenneth Clarke: ‘If there’s no other way you’ve got to bring the government down’

Kenneth Clarke: ‘If there’s no other way you’ve got to bring the government down’

Comments 0 Comment

The Observer reports: Since he entered parliament in 1970, Kenneth Clarke has served under eight Conservative leaders, from Edward Heath to Theresa May. He has also stood three times, in 1997, 2001 and 2005, to be Tory leader himself during difficult periods for his party. But throughout it all he has never known a political crisis remotely like the present. Now aged 78, he still describes himself as “a natural optimist”. But a combination of Brexit and the Tory leadership…

Read More Read More

These animal migrations are huge — and invisible

These animal migrations are huge — and invisible

Comments 0 Comment

Carl Zimmer writes: Last week, ladybugs briefly took over the news cycle. Meteorologists at the National Weather Service were looking over radar images in California on the night of June 4 when they spotted what looked like a wide swath of rain. But there were no clouds. The meteorologists contacted an amateur weather-spotter directly under the mysterious disturbance. He wasn’t getting soaked by rain. Instead, he saw ladybugs. Everywhere. Radar apparently had picked up a cloud of migrating ladybugs spread…

Read More Read More

Tehran has held firm in its tussles with Trump

Tehran has held firm in its tussles with Trump

Comments 0 Comment

Martin Chulov writes: For much of this year, two beliefs have held firm in the halls of power in Iran: US attempts to strangle its economy cannot be tolerated and Donald Trump has no intention of going to war. Far from wilting under the barrel of a global superpower’s guns, Iran’s leaders have signalled an intent to defend their interests, by damaging those of their foes. Iran’s anger at the US, and its alleged role in the attacks on six…

Read More Read More

U.S. escalates online attacks on Russia’s power grid

U.S. escalates online attacks on Russia’s power grid

Comments 0 Comment

The New York Times reports: The United States is stepping up digital incursions into Russia’s electric power grid in a warning to President Vladimir V. Putin and a demonstration of how the Trump administration is using new authorities to deploy cybertools more aggressively, current and former government officials said. In interviews over the past three months, the officials described the previously unreported deployment of American computer code inside Russia’s grid and other targets as a classified companion to more publicly…

Read More Read More

Trump’s relentless war against science

Trump’s relentless war against science

Comments 0 Comment

The Hill reports: President Trump is directing all agencies to cut their advisory boards by “at least” one third. The executive order issued Friday evening directs all federal agencies to “evaluate the need” for each of their current advisory committees. The order gives agencies until Sept. 30 to terminate, at a minimum, one-third of their committees. Committees that qualify for the chopping block include those that have completed their objective, had their work taken up by other panels or where…

Read More Read More