Attention to the Unseen

Ian Millhiser writes: A tone of ritualized obsequiousness pervades most briefs filed in the Supreme Court of the United States. Judges are powerful and at the Supreme Court level, unaccountable. They wield enormous, arbitrary power not just over litigants but over the lawyers who appear in their courtrooms. So when most lawyers speak to a court, they speak with a painful awareness of the arbitrary control separating the bar from the bench. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), however, is not most…

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Elizabeth Warren writes: The next president has a moral obligation to use whatever executive authority she has to address the gun crisis. But it is obvious that executive action is not enough. Durable reform requires legislation — but right now legislation is impossible. Why? A virulent mix of corruption and abuse of power. Big money talks in Washington. And the NRA represents a particularly noxious example of Washington corruption at work. Over the last two decades, the NRA has spent…

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Harry Litman writes: For anyone familiar with Bureau of Prisons standard operating procedures, Jeffrey Epstein’s apparent suicide is more than mysterious; it is unfathomable. The 66-year-old accused sex trafficker was found dead in his prison cell at the Metropolitan Correction Center (MCC) Saturday morning, apparently after having hanged himself. The Bureau of Prisons, the federal agency that runs the MCC, has said the FBI will investigate. It had better. Epstein’s death almost certainly means that astounding blunders occurred, perhaps by…

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The Young Turks reports: Under President Trump, the FBI’s official counterterrorism priorities have included “Black Identity Extremists,” “anti-authority” extremists, and “animal rights/environmental extremists,” according to leaked Bureau documents obtained exclusively by The Young Turks. The documents, many of which are marked “Law Enforcement Sensitive” and “For Official Use Only,” also reference a mysterious plan to mitigate the threat of “Black Identity Extremists” with a program codenamed “IRON FIST” involving the use of undercover agents. Each fiscal year, the FBI headquarters…

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Yahoo News reports: Alleged white supremacists were responsible for all race-based domestic terrorism incidents in 2018, according to a government document distributed earlier this year to state, local and federal law enforcement. The document, which has not been previously reported on, becomes public as the Trump administration’s Justice Department has been unable or unwilling to provide data to Congress on white supremacist domestic terrorism. The data in this document, titled “Domestic Terrorism in 2018,” appears to be what Congress has…

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The Washington Post reports: For nearly two decades, the Trump Organization has relied on a roving crew of Latin American employees to build fountains and waterfalls, sidewalks and rock walls at the company’s winery and its golf courses from New York to Florida. Other employees at Trump clubs were so impressed by the laborers — who did strenuous work with heavy stone — that they nicknamed them “Los Picapiedras,” Spanish for “the Flintstones.” For years, their ranks have included workers…

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CNN reports: White House officials rebuffed efforts by their colleagues at the Department of Homeland Security for more than a year to make combating domestic terror threats, such as those from white supremacists, a greater priority as specifically spelled out in the National Counterterrorism Strategy, current and former senior administration officials as well as other sources close to the Trump administration tell CNN. “Homeland Security officials battled the White House for more than a year to get them to focus…

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Renato Mariotti writes: After this weekend’s mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, pressure to reform gun laws has focused on Congress—and, as usual, Congress seems stymied about what to do. But with far less attention, an important strand of the debate has now landed in the Supreme Court. Last week, the gun-maker Remington, which had annual sales of approximately $600 million in 2017, asked the Supreme Court to overturn a Connecticut decision that gave Sandy Hook families the ability to…

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Jana Winter reports: The FBI for the first time has identified fringe conspiracy theories as a domestic terrorist threat, according to a previously unpublicized document obtained by Yahoo News. The FBI intelligence bulletin from the bureau’s Phoenix field office, dated May 30, 2019, describes “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists,” as a growing threat, and notes that it is the first such report to do so. It lists a number of arrests, including some that haven’t been publicized, related to violent incidents…

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The Los Angeles Times reports: President Trump will be ineligible for California’s primary ballot next year unless he discloses his tax returns under a state law that immediately took effect Tuesday, an unprecedented mandate that is almost certain to spark a high-profile court fight and might encourage other states to adopt their own unconventional rules for presidential candidates. The law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on his final day to take action and passed on a strict party-line vote in…

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BuzzFeed reports: The Trump administration announced Thursday that it will resume federal executions for the first time since 2003, reviving a court fight over lethal injections that’s been dormant for nearly a decade. Five men on death row are now scheduled for execution by lethal injection in December 2019 and January 2020, according to the Justice Department; each was convicted of murder and has exhausted his appeals. The new federal execution protocol involves a single drug, sodium pentobarbital, which is…

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The Daily Beast reports: The “MAGA Bomber” who mailed explosives to President Donald Trump’s critics turned violent on a steady diet of Fox News, Trump tweets, and Facebook, his lawyers claim. Cesar Sayoc, 57, previously pleaded guilty to sending 16 pipe bombs to news outlets and public figures in October. On social media, Sayoc promoted far-right conspiracy theories and threatened people who were critical of Trump. He faces life in prison for the mail bombings. But Sayoc’s lawyers argue he…

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