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Category: Politics

How loneliness is tearing America apart

How loneliness is tearing America apart

Arthur C. Brooks writes: America is suffering an epidemic of loneliness. According to a recent large-scale survey from the health care provider Cigna, most Americans suffer from strong feelings of loneliness and a lack of significance in their relationships. Nearly half say they sometimes or always feel alone or “left out.” Thirteen percent of Americans say that zero people know them well. The survey, which charts social isolation using a common measure known as the U.C.L.A. Loneliness Scale, shows that…

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The world needs to quit coal. Why is it so hard?

The world needs to quit coal. Why is it so hard?

The New York Times reports: Coal, the fuel that powered the industrial age, has led the planet to the brink of catastrophic climate change. Scientists have repeatedly warned of its looming dangers, most recently on Friday, when a major scientific report issued by 13 United States government agencies warned that the damage from climate change could knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century’s end if significant steps aren’t taken to rein in…

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British parliament seizes cache of Facebook internal papers

British parliament seizes cache of Facebook internal papers

The Guardian reports: Parliament has used its legal powers to seize internal Facebook documents in an extraordinary attempt to hold the US social media giant to account after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly refused to answer MPs’ questions. The cache of documents is alleged to contain significant revelations about Facebook decisions on data and privacy controls that led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. It is claimed they include confidential emails between senior executives, and correspondence with Zuckerberg. Damian Collins, the…

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‘They silenced Khashoggi but gave thousands a voice’

‘They silenced Khashoggi but gave thousands a voice’

The Observer reports: For Omar Abdulaziz, a 27-year-old Saudi dissident living in exile in Canada, the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi was more than a prominent columnist and veteran who knew the ins and outs of the Saudi royal court. He was a mentor and father figure. Abdulaziz, who often lambasts the Saudi leadership and the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, in online videos that garner a huge following, cannot see his parents, who still live in the kingdom. Khashoggi was…

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We are Jamal Khashoggi’s daughters. We promise his light will never fade

We are Jamal Khashoggi’s daughters. We promise his light will never fade

Noha Khashoggi and Razan Jamal Khashoggi write: Jamal Khashoggi was a complex man, but to us, his daughters, he was simply “Dad.” Our family has always been proud of his work, and we understood the awe and grandeur with which some people viewed him. But in our lives, he was “Baba” — a loving man with a big heart. We loved it when he took us every weekend to the bookstore. We loved looking through his passport, deciphering new locations…

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The Hungarian website that shows how a free press can die

The Hungarian website that shows how a free press can die

The New York Times reports: Hungary’s leading news website, Origo, had a juicy scoop: A top aide to the far-right prime minister, Viktor Orban, had used state money to pay for sizable but unexplained expenses during secret foreign trips. The story embarrassed Mr. Orban and was a reminder that his country still had an independent press. But that was in 2014. Today, Origo is one of the prime minister’s most dutiful media boosters, parroting his attacks on migrants and on…

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U.S. government report says climate change will batter economy, in direct clash with Trump

U.S. government report says climate change will batter economy, in direct clash with Trump

Reuters reports: Climate change will cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century, damaging everything from human health to infrastructure and agricultural production, according to a government report issued on Friday. The Congressionally-mandated report, written with the help of more than a dozen U.S. government agencies and departments, outlined the projected impacts of global warming in every corner of American society, in a dire warning at odds with the Trump administration’s pro-fossil fuels…

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Mueller and the Democrats could bring down Trump

Mueller and the Democrats could bring down Trump

Joshua Zoffer and Niall Ferguson write: On May 17, 1973, Senator Sam Ervin Jr. opened Senate hearings into the Watergate affair. “It is the constitutional duty of this committee,” he said, to expeditiously investigate allegations that American democracy “has been subverted and its foundations shaken.” Ervin, a Democrat, did not mince words in characterizing the gravity of the accusations leveled against Richard Nixon’s campaign and administration. At stake were “the workings of the democratic process under which we operate in…

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How long before Trump destroys the rule of law?

How long before Trump destroys the rule of law?

Harry Litman writes: Tuesday’s revelation that the president had ordered his White House counsel to prosecute Hillary Clinton and James Comey illustrates the fragility of even apparently bedrock political norms in the Age of Trump. The story prompted a new level of stunned outrage among Trump critics, even those already jaded by the president’s weekly onslaughts against the rule of law. Former Department of Justice officials in particular responded with variants of “He’s got to be kidding.” But others claimed…

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Confronted with the bloody behavior of autocrats, Trump, instead, blames the world

Confronted with the bloody behavior of autocrats, Trump, instead, blames the world

The Washington Post reports: In fielding questions from reporters about the killing of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi, President Trump avoided blaming Mohammed bin Salman, despite the CIA’s findings that the Saudi crown prince had ordered the assassination. “Who should be held accountable?” a reporter asked Trump Thursday. Sitting inside his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, the president took a deep breath, seemingly mulling his response. Then he said: “Maybe the world should be held accountable, because the world is…

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Conservative ‘charity’ with shady roots yet promoting ‘accountability’ paid Matthew Whitaker $1.2 million

Conservative ‘charity’ with shady roots yet promoting ‘accountability’ paid Matthew Whitaker $1.2 million

The Washington Post reports: In the three years after he arrived in Washington in 2014, Matthew G. Whitaker received more than $1.2 million as the leader of a charity that reported having no other employees, some of the best pay of his career. The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust described itself as a new watchdog nonprofit dedicated to exposing unethical conduct by public officials. For Whitaker, it became a lucrative steppingstone in a swift rise from a modest law…

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Why the Pilgrims were actually able to survive

Why the Pilgrims were actually able to survive

‘Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor’ by William Halsall (1882). Pilgrim Hall Museum By Peter C. Mancall, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences Sometime in the autumn of 1621, a group of English Pilgrims who had crossed the Atlantic Ocean and created a colony called New Plymouth celebrated their first harvest. They hosted a group of about 90 Wampanoags, their Algonquian-speaking neighbors. Together, migrants and Natives feasted for three days on corn, venison and fowl. In…

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Saboteur in Chief

Saboteur in Chief

Fintan O’Toole writes: We all know that people in power deploy distraction as a professional skill, much as magicians do. We are used to it. In every act of political communication, “Look at this” is always the explicit obverse of an implicit “Don’t look at that.” But Trump confounds us by using as distractions the very things that other politicians want to distract us from. In democracy as we think we have known it, the art of governance is, in…

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Trump launches an unprecedented attack on the American system of government

Trump launches an unprecedented attack on the American system of government

Politico reports: Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and President Donald Trump took swipes at each other Wednesday in an extraordinary exchange over just how partisan federal courts really are. Roberts said Wednesday morning there are no “Obama judges or Trump judges” after the president attacked the judge who ruled against his attempt to restrict asylum seekers at the border earlier this week. “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said in…

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Washington’s stubborn support for Saudi Arabia is increasingly indefensible

Washington’s stubborn support for Saudi Arabia is increasingly indefensible

Mark Hannah writes: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared last week that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman should “hold all of those involved in the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi accountable.” Over the weekend the CIA concluded the crown prince had himself ordered the murder. Yet earlier this afternoon, President Donald Trump issued a remarkable statement siding with the kingdom over his own intelligence agencies, speculating “we may never know all the facts” about the murder,…

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Democrats won House popular vote by largest midterm margin since Watergate

Democrats won House popular vote by largest midterm margin since Watergate

NBC News reports: Not since the Watergate scandal have Democrats run up such a large margin of victory in midterm House races, NBC News data showed. With votes continuing to be tallied more than two weeks after Election Day, Democrats hold a lead over Republicans in the House popular vote by more than 8.6 million votes. That’s the largest total victory in a midterm House election since Democrats defeated Republicans by more than 8.7 million votes in 1974, just months…

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