The problem is almost certain to get worse, spreading to even more areas of life as bots are trained to become better at mimicking humans. Given the degree to which product reviews have been swamped by robots (which tend to hand out five stars with abandon), commercial sabotage in the form of negative bot reviews is not hard to predict. In coming years, campaign finance limits will be (and maybe already are) evaded by robot armies posing as “small” donors. And actual voting is another obvious target — perhaps the ultimate target.

By Erin Cunningham & Carol Morello @ WashingtonPost.com, July 16

ISTANBUL — A Chinese American student whom Iran has accused of espionage was sentenced by an Iranian court to 10 years in prison, the judiciary’s official news agency reported Sunday, a move likely to raise tensions with the Trump administration ahead of a deadline to waive some Iran sanctions.

The Mizan news agency identified the American as Xiyue Wang, 37, a graduate student and researcher at Princeton University. The report said he was born in Beijing and is a dual citizen of the United States and China, but that information could not be confirmed.

Earlier in the day, judicial spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehi announced that a U.S. citizen had been sentenced for “infiltration” but did not give further details [....]

In Latin America, we’re too used to death. But there’s a way to stop it.

By Alejandra Sanchez Inzuza and Jose Luis Pardo Veiras @ NYTimes.com Sunday Review, July 15

[....] what is going on all over Latin America, where each day the morgues receive the bodies of roughly 400 murdered people. The homicide rate is so high — about four people every 15 minutes — that we are no longer shocked by the deaths. Latin America is home to just over 8 percent of the world’s population but a third of its homicides; between 2000 and 2016, 2.6 million people were murdered. Most countries have seen their homicide rate fall, but in Latin American countries, it is on the rise.

Murder has become a normal part of life. But we must work to reverse that. Some cities are fighting impunity and have developed social programs to reduce violence. Unfortunately, it’s not enough. The cure for the epidemic is complex. It will come from difficult, long-term adjustments in everyday life. And, of course, from the enforcement of the rule of law [....]

Punishment is rare. The Latin American countries included on the Global Impunity Index, from Mexico’s Center for Studies on Impunity and Justice, are categorized as nations of “high” impunity. Mexico is No. 2 on the list, after the Philippines. If we take into account the crimes that are never reported and remain unaccounted for, the two countries have an impunity rate of 99 percent.

People kill because they can get away with it. They kill to gain territorial control, to traffic drugs, to settle political disputes. The United Nations’ Global Study on Homicide establishes three types of murders: criminal, interpersonal and sociopolitical. Latin America takes first place in all three categories [.....]

The debate has shades of the divisive policy debates about drug treatment and tough jail sentences during urban America’s crack epidemic in the late 1980s and 1990s. But in the suburban and rural communities that largely escaped that epidemic, the debate this time is far more intimate, as residents’ traditional views about law and order — and how to spend limited resources — are being tested by a growing number of addicts.

Besides the Russian attorney having met with Donald the year before, Donald abruptly fired the US attorney Preet Bharara and then just as abruptly settled the multiyear case he was handling. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, just might be a duck.

Elsewhere, US Atty's office declares will retry Sheldon Silver case, even though the judges ruling narrowed the definition of bribery and corruption as a result of jury instructions based on the Bob McDonell case in Virginia - the Atty's office still feels the facts themselves in the case were validated.

The industry sounds just as angry as the patient advocates.

By Jonathan Cohn @ HuffPost, July 15

[....] The organizations, America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, speak for the businesses that would be responsible for making the new system work ― or at least attempting to do so.

That may help explain why, with a vote on the bill planned for next week, they are letting loose with what, by Washington lobbying standards, sounds like a primal scream.

In a publicly posted letter to Senate leaders, the two groups focused their attention on an amendment that would undermine the Affordable Care Act’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

The amendment, crafted by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) [....]

By Carol D. Leonnig @ WashingtonPost.com, July 14, 7:24 pm

President Trump has chosen a new lawyer to join the White House and take the lead on issues related to ongoing investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to two people familiar with the decision.

Ty Cobb, a former prosecutor and defense lawyer at Hogan Lovells, will seek to play the role of crisis manager and disciplinarian in a White House that has struggled to deal with continuing questions about the federal and congressional probes that have dominated the early months of Trump’s presidency [.....]

Trump will continue to be personally represented by his longtime New York-based lawyer Marc E. Kasowitz.

Meanwhile, Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, has decided that veteran Washington defense lawyer Abbe Lowell will take the lead in representing him in the Russia-related inquiries being conducted by Mueller and congressional committees, according to a statement and three people briefed on the decision. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, had originally hired well-known Washington criminal-defense lawyer Jamie Gorelick to represent them on matters related to their government service, but Kushner recently added Lowell to the team to avoid the potential conflict created because Gorelick and Mueller both worked at the law firm WilmerHale. Gorelick will continue to represent Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

“Of course I am still part of Jared Kushner’s legal team,” Gorelick said [.....]

He is offering a glimpse into what Fox News would look like as an intellectually interesting network.

By Peter Beinart @ TheAtlantic.com, July 13

Over the last two nights, something fascinating has broken out on the Tucker Carlson show: A genuine, and exceedingly bitter, debate between conservatives on foreign policy. On Tuesday, Carlson told retired Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters he thought the U.S. should team up with Russia to defeat ISIS. Peters responded that, “You sound like Charles Lindbergh in 1938.” Carlson called that comment “grotesque” and “insane.”

Then, on Wednesday night, Carlson told the Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow, and former Mitt Romney adviser, Max Boot, that he opposed overthrowing Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and didn’t see Russia as a serious threat. Boot responded by accusing him of being a “cheerleader” for Moscow and Tehran. Carlson called that comment “grotesque” too. And declared, “This is why nobody takes you seriously.”

In his vicious and ad hominem way, Carlson is doing something extraordinary: He’s challenging the Republican Party’s hawkish orthodoxy in ways anti-war progressives have been begging cable hosts to do for years [....]

@ NYTimes.com Opinion, July 13

What if it’s not a college degree that makes you successful, but whether you can pronounce “soppressata”?

David Brooks’s column “How We Are Ruining America” struck a nerve among New York Times readers, who wrote to us by the thousands to debate the social codes of the elite. Readers also took on the roles of money and education, or the lack thereof, in success. And yes, gourmet sandwiches came under fire too. Mr. Brooks’s article topped the Times’s Most Emailed list and received more than 3,200 comments. Here are excerpts from the article’s comments, some of which have been edited for length and clarity.