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Category: Politics

‘If giving water to someone dying of thirst is illegal, what humanity is left in the law of this country?’

‘If giving water to someone dying of thirst is illegal, what humanity is left in the law of this country?’

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The Washington Post reports: During the summer of 2017, when temperatures reached triple digits in Arizona, four women drove to a vast desert wilderness along the southwestern border with Mexico. They brought water jugs and canned food — items they later said they were leaving for dehydrated migrants crossing the unfriendly terrain to get to the United States. The women were later charged with misdemeanor crimes. Prosecutors said they violated federal law by entering Cabeza Prieta, a protected 860,000-acre refuge,…

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Waiting for a shutdown to end in disaster

Waiting for a shutdown to end in disaster

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McKay Coppins writes: As the longest government shutdown in American history lurches toward its fifth week, a grim but growing consensus has begun to emerge on Capitol Hill: There may be no way out of this mess until something disastrous happens. This is, of course, not a sentiment lawmakers are eager to share on the record. But in interviews this week with congressional staffers on both sides of the aisle (whom I granted anonymity in exchange for candor), I heard…

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Protecting the work of the special counsel, Robert Mueller, isn’t the Attorney General’s only job

Protecting the work of the special counsel, Robert Mueller, isn’t the Attorney General’s only job

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Jeffrey Toobin writes: When William Barr testified last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee as President Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, he gave the impression that he would be an aberrational figure in the Administration. Unlike many members of the President’s Cabinet, Barr is experienced, knowledgeable, and clearly qualified, in any formal sense, for the job, which he has held before, under President George H. W. Bush. In addition, he has a reputation for integrity and straight dealing. Most of…

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What boys are learning from men

What boys are learning from men

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Melinda Wenner Moyer writes: No one who saw the new Gillette ad “The Best Men Can Be” thought it would be universally embraced. It establishes the state of masculinity today with various scenes of men acting sexist, boys physically and mentally terrorizing each other, and dads accepting a “Boys will be boys” mentality, before dramatically pivoting. The wide range of reactions was, of course, the point: to create a conversation starter. To rile people and get them talking about Gillette….

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The plot against George Soros

The plot against George Soros

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Hannes Grassegger writes: The glass tower that houses George Soros’s office in Manhattan is overflowing with numbers on screens, tracking and predicting the directions of markets around the world. But there’s one that’s particularly hard to figure out — a basic orange chart on a screen analyzing sentiment on social media. The data, updated regularly since 2017, projects the reactions on the internet to the name George Soros. He gets tens of thousands of mentions per week — almost always…

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Time to break the silence on Palestine

Time to break the silence on Palestine

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Michelle Alexander writes: On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stepped up to the lectern at the Riverside Church in Manhattan. The United States had been in active combat in Vietnam for two years and tens of thousands of people had been killed, including some 10,000 American troops. The political establishment — from left to right — backed the war, and more than 400,000 American service members were in Vietnam,…

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Mueller’s leak-proof investigation

Mueller’s leak-proof investigation

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On Friday, Peter Carr, spokesman for the Mueller investigation, released a brief statement challenging the accuracy of “specific statements” in BuzzFeed‘s blockbuster 1500-word report on Donald Trump instructing Michael Cohen to lie to Congress: BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the special counsel’s office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony are not accurate. The Washington Post then reported: Inside the Justice Department, the statement was viewed as a huge step, and…

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The evidence that Donald Trump never expected or wanted to become president

The evidence that Donald Trump never expected or wanted to become president

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Frank Bruni writes: I’m struck in particular by how the indisputable parts of the BuzzFeed article underscore what many Trump observers have long believed, an insight that explains so much about his eccentric campaign and unethical governance: He never really expected to be president. More than that, he never really hoped to be. That’s why he didn’t put business matters on hold or disentangle himself from glaring conflicts of interest. That’s why he refused to yoke himself to the sorts…

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Why Trump’s directing Cohen, others to lie would be far worse than Watergate

Why Trump’s directing Cohen, others to lie would be far worse than Watergate

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The first article of impeachment against Nixon was just this: obstruction by directing others to lie. This is not hysteria or hyperventilating. It’s history. — Jon Meacham (@jmeacham) January 18, 2019 Ryan Goodman writes: If the President of the United States directed his personal attorney and fixer to help sabotage the Russia investigation by lying to Congress, there is no turning back for the nation. Given the independent corroborating evidence that special counsel Robert Mueller reportedly has to show that’s…

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‘This shutdown is about the erosion of American democracy’

‘This shutdown is about the erosion of American democracy’

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First House Floor speech from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC): “The truth of this shutdown is that it's actually not about a wall…The truth is, this shutdown is about the erosion of American democracy and the subversion of our most basic governmental norms." pic.twitter.com/r8tmsGSNtT — CSPAN (@cspan) January 17, 2019  

Trump’s favorite polls were the ones he thought he could rig

Trump’s favorite polls were the ones he thought he could rig

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The Washington Post reports: A new report this morning makes one thing abundantly clear about Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign: Trump was right that many things were “rigged” . . . in ways that benefited him or his associates. And in some cases, Trump’s campaign was the one doing the rigging. The Wall Street Journal reports: In January 2014, Mr. Cohen asked Mr. Gauger to help Mr. Trump score well in a CNBC online poll to identify the country’s top business leaders…

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As international cooperation tackling climate change becomes more urgent, global divisions widen

As international cooperation tackling climate change becomes more urgent, global divisions widen

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The Guardian reports: Growing tension between the world’s major powers is the most urgent global risk and makes it harder to mobilise collective action to tackle climate change, according to a report prepared for next week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The WEF’s annual global risks report found that a year of extreme weather-related events meant environmental issues topped the list of concerns in a survey of around 1,000 experts and decision-makers. But with Donald Trump announcing protectionist measures…

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The malign incompetence of the British ruling class

The malign incompetence of the British ruling class

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Pankaj Mishra writes: Describing Britain’s calamitous exit from its Indian empire in 1947, the novelist Paul Scott wrote that in India the British “came to the end of themselves as they were” — that is, to the end of their exalted idea about themselves. Scott was among those shocked by how hastily and ruthlessly the British, who had ruled India for more than a century, condemned it to fragmentation and anarchy; how Louis Mountbatten, accurately described by the right-wing historian…

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Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about the Moscow Tower project

Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about the Moscow Tower project

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Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier report: President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter. Trump also supported a plan, set up by Cohen, to visit Russia during the presidential campaign, in order to personally meet President Vladimir Putin and jump-start the tower negotiations. “Make it happen,” the sources said Trump told Cohen….

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How Trump could wind up making globalism great again

How Trump could wind up making globalism great again

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Robert Wright writes: A few days before the 2016 election, journalist Andrew Sullivan wrote this about Donald Trump: “He has no concept of a nonzero-sum engagement, in which a deal can be beneficial for both sides. A win-win scenario is intolerable to him, because mastery of others is the only moment when he is psychically at peace.” I’m not sure dominating other people is the only occasion when Trump feels at peace. Presumably there’s a moment during what is reportedly…

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