Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
Reports of looting and growing chaos in the Sulawesi city four days after a devastating earthquake and tsunami hit
@ TheGuardian.com, Oct. 2, including The Devastation in Pictures posted 3 hrs. ago; latest entry--
Desperation exploded into anger Tuesday in Donggala, the town closest to the epicenter of the massive earthquake and tsunami, with residents begging Indonesia’s president to help them as hungry survivors crawled into stores and grabbed boxes of food.
“Pay attention to Donggala, Mr. Jokowi. Pay attention to Donggala,” yelled one resident in footage broadcast on local television, referring to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. “There are still a lot of unattended villages here.”
Most of the attention so far has focused on the biggest affected city, Palu, home to most of the more than 840 confirmed dead [....]
Researchers looked at hundreds of studies to determine whether dogs were exceptional when compared to other species.
By Samantha Cole @ Vice.com, Oct. 1
You might think your dog is a genius every time she shakes your hand for a treat, but the hard, scientific truth is this: Your pup is just not that special.
Researchers from the University of Exeter and Canterbury Christ Church University explored the biases toward dogs in research, and found that dogs—when compared to other, relatively intelligent species like wolves, cats, hyenas, chimpanzees and dolphins—aren’t particularly exceptional in their cognitive abilities [....]
Greg Sargent, WaPo this morning:
The White House appears to be playing all kinds of crafty rhetorical games to obscure the answer to a simple question: Has it deliberately placed limits on the scope of the FBI’s renewed background check into allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh, or not?
As of this morning, there are conflicting reports about who will now be interviewed by the FBI. The New York Times reports that the White House directed the FBI to interview only four people: Mark Judge, who is alleged by Christine Blasey Ford to have acted as Kavanaugh’s accomplice in the sexual assault; P.J. Smyth and Leland Keyser, who Ford claims were also in the house; and Deborah Ramirez, who has accusedKavanaugh of exposing himself to her at Yale.
Meanwhile, The Post reports that Kavanaugh will also be interviewed, but that a third accuser — Julie Swetnick — will not be. It’s also not clear whether Ford herself will be contacted — she has not yet been, according to her lawyer.
You’ll be startled to hear that instead of providing clarity, White House officials have sown further confusion. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told Fox News that the White House is “not micromanaging this process.” Similarly, counselor Kellyanne Conway told CNN that, while the investigation will be “limited in scope,” the White House is not setting those limits, which will be “up to the FBI” to set. Conway pointed to President Trump’s weekend tweet saying the FBI should “interview whoever they deem appropriate,” and insisted (somehow without dissolving into giggles at her own disingenuousness) that Trump respects the FBI’s “independence.”
Despite that, Sanders and Conway both also said terms are being dictated — by Republican senators. But the White House has not released the precise directive it gave to the FBI, so we cannot know whether the White House is actively imposing those same limits on those senators’ behalf. CNN reports that the White House and GOP senators together developed those limits with the aim of making them “as narrow as possible.”
Clear now? Of course it isn’t. Because that’s exactly how the White House and Republican senators want it.
Former FBI agents I spoke with questioned the apparent limits on the renewed background check.
“It’s not an investigation if the FBI is going to accept the dictates of the White House in terms of who you can interview and who you can’t,” John Mindermann, a former FBI special agent who investigated the Watergate break-in, told me. Mindermann added that the idea of such a limited investigation is “ridiculous” and that if this holds, “it would be unprofessional, it would be grossly incomplete, and it would be unfair to the American public.”
Kavanaugh’s classmates off-limits?
Another former Yale classmate of Kavanaugh’s, Chad Ludington, has now stepped forward to contest Kavanaugh’s sanitized account of his drinking at Yale, claiming that “on many occasions,” he personally witnessed Kavanaugh “staggering from alcohol consumption,” which made him “often belligerent and aggressive.” Ludington flatly asserted that Kavanaugh’s testimony to the Senate about this constituted “lies” and said he’s prepared to talk to the FBI.
But NBC News reports that limits imposed by the White House counsel on the FBI’s investigation preclude questioning former classmates who have contradicted Kavanaugh’s accounts of his drinking. Indeed, other former classmates who have tried to offer the FBI information about him tell the Times and the New Yorkerthat they haven’t been interviewed. Democrats have pointed out that Kavanaugh’s drinking should be examined because his minimizing of it goes to the core of his credibility, and at any rate, it appears central to the sexual assault allegations themselves.
Indeed, Mindermann told me that a “complete investigation” would include talking to more people “in all of the venues in which Kavanaugh interacted — private school, parties, law school.” Mindermann added that if the FBI “did the job they should and can do, I would be very surprised if they did not find relevant, very significant additional information about Kavanaugh.”
“A complete background check investigation will not be possible without the ability to interview classmates and associates and anybody with knowledge of the circumstances in the time frame in question,” Dennis Franks, a former FBI agent with two decades of experience, added in an interview with me. “The circumstances in this matter deal with allegations of extensive drinking and behavior while intoxicated. This would normally be an issue that is addressed.”
...........
Yes, the alleged incident occurred 36 years ago. But F.B.I. agents know time has very little to do with memory. They know every married person remembers the weather on their wedding day, no matter how long ago. Significance drives memory. They also know that little lies point to bigger lies. They know that obvious lies by the nominee about the meaning of words in a yearbook are a flashing signal to dig deeper.
What they say will affect what many of those who watch old fashioned TV believe.
A pornstar’s new book about her alleged affair with Donald Trump ranks with the best in a surprisingly moving genre.
By Bill Scher @ Politico Magazine, Sept. 30
Great work, Bill. You now got a one up on a lot of supposed presidential historians out there by reading all the important texts.
On the "factually-distorted" ideology behind Trump's/Bolton's Sept. 25 speech to the U.N. General Assembly:
Constitutionally, his actions are defensible. But there is deepening worry that Congress will impose permanent restrictions on the office as lawmakers seek to restrain this president.
By Ellen Nakashima @ WashingtonPost.com, Sept. 29
[...] the president is “eviscerating precedent and procedure,” said David Rivkin, a conservative constitutional lawyer who was an attorney in the George H.W. Bush and Reagan administrations. “As far as the mechanics of government are concerned, it is creating anger and disharmony on both the side of the political masters and the career people,” he said. “It breeds resistance. It’s negative synergy.”
Trump’s unorthodox approach — taking actions, in many cases, without consulting key advisers — may bring a much-needed shake-up to the federal bureaucracy, some conservative scholars say. But others say it not only risks eroding the norms of government, but also may lead Congress and the courts to erect guardrails that constrain the presidency, leaching it of the flexibility integral to its effectiveness.
“If Congress inserts itself into these national security processes as a reaction to the way he’s exercising the powers of his office, then the institution of the presidency will actually be left much weaker than he found it,” said Carrie Cordero, who was a senior Justice Department national security lawyer in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. Cordero suggested that, should Democrats retake Congress after November’s elections, they may seek to put restraints on Trump by pursuing legislation that bars the president from firing a special prosecutor or requiring that the chief executive first consult the Justice Department before granting pardons [....]
By Avi Selk @ WashingtonPost.com, Sept. 28
[....] Late Thursday evening, the ABA called for an FBI investigation into sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh before the Senate Judiciary Committee voted on his Supreme Court nomination. The warning was all the more remarkable, because just hours earlier, Kavanaugh and his Republican defenders had cited the ABA’s previously glowing endorsement of the nominee — “the gold standard,” as one leading Republican put it.
Flash back to the mid-2000s and another fight in the Senate over Kavanaugh’s nomination to a federal court:
Democrats for three years had been blocking President George W. Bush’s 2003 nomination of Kavanaugh to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. They argued he was biased, as shown by his work as a lawyer for Bush’s presidential campaign, for an independent counsel’s investigation into President Bill Clinton and for other conservative causes.
Republicans kept pushing to make Kavanaugh a judge on the powerful appeals court, year after year. In his defense, they cited multiple reviews by the ABA’s judicial review committee that found him “well qualified” — the big attorney association’s highest possible endorsement, meaning Kavanaugh had outstanding legal abilities and outstanding judicial temperament.
But in May 2006, as Republicans hoped to finally push Kavanaugh’s nomination across the finish line, the ABA downgraded its endorsement.
The group’s judicial investigator had recently interviewed dozens of lawyers, judges and others who had worked with Kavanaugh, the ABA announced at the time, and some of them raised red flags about “his professional experience and the question of his freedom from bias and open-mindedness." [....]