The first time I saw this story, I just glazed over it, i.e., same old same old, yawn. But now running across some major people tweeting it, I realize I missed its import.
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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In the News
São Paulo, the biggest city in South America, in state of emergency over fuel shortages while markets run out of food
By Dom Phillips & Sam Cowie in São Paulo @ TheGuardian.com, May 25
[....] In São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, supermarkets and restaurants are running low on supplies. Some factories have shut down, bus services been reduced. [....] The Folha de S Paulo newspaper site reported that 11 airports including one in the capital city Brasília have run out of fuel, and long queues have built up at gas stations around the country.
Behind the scenes, the army – already embroiled in a controversial operation against gang violence in Rio de Janeiro state – is concerned it might not have enough fuel to break the strike, the G1 news site reported [....]
Prosecutors are increasingly treating overdose deaths as homicides, but they aren’t just going after dealers. Friends, family and fellow users are going to prison.
By Rosa Goldenson @ NYTimes.com, May 25
[....] Many of those convicted are serving hard time: A Long Island woman whose best friend texted her from a business trip asking for heroin was sentenced to six years after he died taking the drugs she sent him. A former pipe fitter in Minnesota who shot speedballs with a mother of three got 11 years. A Louisiana man who injected his fiancée — both were addicted, his lawyer said — got life without parole.
In Pennsylvania two years ago, Caleb Smith, an aspiring doctor who had just completed a master’s degree in biomedical sciences, gave his girlfriend what he thought was Adderall, purchased on the internet, but was actually fentanyl.
After he was charged in her death, he committed suicide [....]
Exit poll result suggests huge majority of younger people voted Yes
By Jillian Jorgensen & Greg B. Smith @ NYDaily News.com, May 25
Illustration from the article (I should note that the NYDaily News is the city's left of center tabloid):
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/de-blasio-releases-emails-city-...
By Carole Cadwalladr & Emma Graham-Harrison @ TheGuardian.com, May 24
Mark Zuckerberg faces allegations that he developed a “malicious and fraudulent scheme” to exploit vast amounts of private data to earn Facebook billions and force rivals out of business.
A company suing Facebook in a California court claims the social network’s chief executive “weaponised” the ability to access data from any user’s network of friends – the feature at the heart of the Cambridge Analyticascandal.
A legal motion filed last week in the superior court of San Mateo draws upon extensive confidential emails and messages between Facebook senior executives including Mark Zuckerberg. He is named individually in the case and, it is claimed, had personal oversight of the scheme. Facebook rejects all claims, and has made a motion to have the case dismissed using a free speech defence [....]
Guest op-ed by Jason D. Hill @ TheHill.com, May 24
President Trump, during your presidential campaign you made a promise to send federal troops to drain the swamp in Washington, D.C., and also one festering with feral thugs and gang-bangers who are committing genocide among black Americans right in the great city of Chicago [.....}
I implore you to use your powers to suspend the dated Posse Comitatus Act, which unfairly limits your ability to use domestic militarization to respond to crises, and send in the resources necessary to stem the violence overrunning Chicago. Let me explain why this measure is necessary, starting with my story.
I am a black college professor who came to this country as a legal immigrant from Jamaica 32 years ago with $120 in my pocket. I worked for a year to save enough money for one semester of college, and for four years worked up to 45 hours per week while going to school full time. I graduated magna cum laude and then earned a scholarship to pursue a doctorate in philosophy. Not once did I believe that the state or America owed me anything except a chance to earn a living and pay my way as I journeyed through life [....]
By Rich Benjamin @ NewYorker.com, May 24
[....] Last month, Jared Kushner announced the Administration’s support for the bill in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, writing that the six million Americans in local and federal prisons are included among “the forgotten men and women” that Trump vowed to fight for during his Presidential campaign.. “Get a bill to my desk, and I will sign it,” Trump promised. The House passed the bill this week.
The Administration’s push for reform, though, is deeply dividing Washington on a rare issue of bipartisan agreement in the Trump era. The approach backed by Trump and Kushner in the First Step Act is limited in scope and focussed on giving current inmates a “second chance” by promoting reëntry programs—so-called “back end” reforms. In an unusual political alliance, the congressmen Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from Brooklyn, and Doug Collins, a Republican from Georgia, are co-sponsoring the bill.
A second, more ambitious reform proposal, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, aims to ease prison overpopulation through sentencing reform. These “front end” reforms would reduce mandatory-minimum sentences, restore judges’ discretion regarding sentencing, and end the three-strikes rule.
Like the First Step Act, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act has bipartisan political support [....]
President Trump on Thursday canceled a planned summit next month with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, citing “tremendous anger and open hostility” from the rogue nation in a letter explaining his abrupt decision.
“I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting,” Trump said to Kim in a letter released by the White House on Thursday morning.
The summit had been planned for June 12 in Singapore.
In his letter, Trump held open the possibility that the two leaders could meet at a later date to discuss denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, which Trump has been pushing.
[Read President Trump’s letter]
The decision came amid hostile warnings from North Korea in recent days that it was reconsidering participation, including a statement that the United States must decide whether to “meet us in a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown.”
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John Wagner and Anna Fifeld, WaPo 18 minutes ago
Jennifer Rubin writes in today's WaPo, The Right Turn:
"President Trump’s unprecedented meeting on Monday with the FBI director and deputy attorney general regarding a case in which he is directly involved may turn out to be the defining moment of his presidency and for his party. Bob Bauer at the Lawfare blog writes:
[The meeting] was a brazen assertion of presidential authority over the investigation. It was a flaunting of Trump’s belief that even in a highly sensitive matter that bears on his own interests, Trump controls “his” department and can call it to account as he wishes. It is true that the meeting was publicly disclosed, and that the White House issued a statement after-the-fact, but this is not so much an exercise in transparency as it is a victory lap. In his flagrant disregard of a vital norm, Trump is bent on sending a message, and perhaps that message is just as important to him as the substance of the agreement reached by the meeting’s participants.
The meeting’s goal of answering a demand from senior Republican congressional leadership contributes significantly to this fouling of appropriate process. It injects a directly partisan note into the meeting’s function. If the intention was to address a serious and sincerely raised question about the integrity of law enforcement procedures, then the White House would have made a public point of also engaging the Democratic leadership. The president could have directed that that congressional leadership across the aisle be briefed on the issues raised, the agreement reached, and the reasons for extraordinary measures.
[note: end of Bauer quote: having trouble formatting this]
Naturally, Democrats protested vehemently. On Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) sent a forceful letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray declaring that the meeting “is completely improper in its proposed form and would set a damaging precedent for your institutions and the rule of law.” They warned, “We can think of no legitimate oversight justification for the ex parte dissemination – at the direction of the president – of investigative information to the president’s staunchest defenders in Congress and, ultimately, to the president’s legal defense team.” However, they wrote, if Rosenstein and Wray think the meeting is necessary to prevent things from “devolving into an outright constitutional crisis,” then the only proper body to receive information was the so-called Gang of Eight (the majority and minority leaders of both houses and the chairmen and ranking members of the House Intelligence Committee).
..........."
By Larry Neumeister @ ApNews.com, May 23
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge ruled Wednesday that President Donald Trump is violating the First Amendment when he blocks critics on Twitter because of their political views.
U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan stopped short in her written decision of ordering Trump or a subordinate to stop the practice of blocking critics from viewing his Twitter account, saying it was enough to point out that it was unconstitutional. “A declaratory judgment should be sufficient, as no government official — including the President — is above the law, and all government officials are presumed to follow the law as has been declared,” Buchwald wrote.
The judge did not issue an order against Trump, and the plaintiffs did not ask for one. But in cases like this, plaintiffs can, in theory, go back and ask for such an order, and if it is not obeyed, the violator can be held in contempt [....]
North Korea is threatening to reconsider Kim Jong Un’s participation in a summit with President Trump next month, saying it is up to the United States to decide whether it wants to “meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown.”
No Nobel for the Pussy Groper?
Despite widening gaps in politics and demographics, Americans across community types have a lot in common
in key facets of their lives.
Analysis by Aaron Blake @ WashingtonPost.com, May 22, 6:03 pm
[....] The Post's Rosalind S. Helderman confirms that Michael Cohen's one-time business partner, Evgeny "Gene" Freidman (a.k.a. the "Taxi King"), has reached a plea deal with prosecutors and will cooperate with the government (the news was first reported by The New York Times) [....]
Both the timing and the circumstances are key. Freidman faced allegations that he failed to pay $5 million in taxes, including four counts of tax fraud and one of grand larceny. As part of the deal, he will serve no jail time. That suggests that he has been able to provide information of some value when it comes to Cohen, who is widely seen as a target for prosecutors to, in turn, flip against Trump.
“Do you understand the nature of the benefit your attorneys have accomplished on your behalf?” Judge Peter Lynch asked Freidman on Tuesday, according to the Times. That question that should frighten both Cohen and President Trump's legal team [....]
By Hunter Harris @ Vulture.com, May 21
[...] The former president and first lady have signed a multiyear agreement to produce films and series with Netflix, according to the streaming service. [....] “The Obamas will produce a diverse mix of content, including the potential for scripted series, unscripted series, docu-series, documentaries and features,” according to a release from Netflix [....]
Guest op-ed by Rob Henderson @ NYTimes.com, May 21
Mr. Henderson served in the Air Force before going to Yale, where he majored in psychology. He graduated on Monday
NEW HAVEN — There aren’t many conservative students at Yale: fewer than 12 percent, according to a survey by our student newspaper. There are fewer former foster children. I am one of the rare students on campus who can claim both identities.
My unusual upbringing has shaped my conservatism. My birth mother was addicted to drugs. As a young child, I spent five years in foster care. At age 7, I was adopted, but for a long time after that I was raised in broken homes.
Foster care, broken homes and military service have fashioned my judgments. My experiences drive me to reflect on what environments are best for children. Certainly not the ones I came from [....]
Brings back memories of long "hate Mark Penn" threads way back in the old days!
The Sanders-inspired grass-roots group ‘Our Revolution’ is flailing, an extensive review by POLITICO shows, fueling concerns about a potential 2020 bid.
By Edward-Isaac Dovere @ Politico.com, May 21
[....] An extensive review of the Sanders-inspired group depicts an organization in disarray — operating primarily as a promotional vehicle for its leader and sometimes even snubbing candidates aligned with Sanders. Our Revolution has shown no ability to tip a major Democratic election in its favor — despite possessing Sanders’ email list, the envy of the Democratic Party — and can claim no major wins in 2018 as its own.
The result has left many Sanders supporters disillusioned, feeling that the group that was supposed to harness the senator's grass-roots movement is failing in its mission [....]