Category: Uncategorized

 
From Jonathan Bernstein:

On the merits, the president’s defenders can’t come up with much. That’s not a good sign.

I’ve argued that the House shouldn’t begin formal impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump at this point because few if any Senate Republicans have indicated that they’d be willing to consider the evidence, and therefore impeachment and removal simply isn’t available.

But what about on the merits? One way to judge the strength of the case for impeachment is to consider the case made against it by the president’s defenders. And so far, at least, their arguments are awfully weak.

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From Dave Dubya:

A public service message.

What is a sociopath? It’s not a “crazy” or psychotic person. It’s not someone holding delusional beliefs that are provably false. This isn’t someone suffering from auditory or visual hallucinations from a neurological or mental illness. It’s not mania or depression.

Some argue that sociopaths are mentally ill, but it is different from any treatable mental illness.

“Sociopath” is a term for a person with an antisocial personality disorder. If you may be wondering if someone is a sociopath, here is the information you need to understand this personality disorder.

This is from the Mayo Clinic:

Antisocial Personality Disorder

Overview

Antisocial personality disorder, sometimes called sociopathy, is a mental condition in which a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others. People with antisocial personality disorder tend to antagonize, manipulate or treat others harshly or with callous indifference. They show no guilt or remorse for their behavior.

Individuals with antisocial personality disorder often violate the law, becoming criminals. They may lie, behave violently or impulsively, and have problems with drug and alcohol use. Because of these characteristics, people with this disorder typically can’t fulfill responsibilities related to family, work or school.

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From Politico:

Donald Trump asked for a meeting with Boris Johnson during his U.K. visit, but was turned down.

According to an official close to Johnson, the U.S. president called the former foreign secretary and suggested they have a one-to-one meeting. The official said that Johnson thanked Trump but declined the invitation as he had to prepare for a Tory leadership campaign event.

Shorter Donald: I’m officially inviting you to a public meeting during my visit to London.

Shorter Boris: I’d like to, but I’m scheduled to wash my hair just then. What day was that again?

 
From nojo:

Last weekend, the New York Times published a sympathetic profile of longtime Trump confidante and former presidential adviser Hope Hicks. We know it was sympathetic because it described Hicks’s anguish over a decision whether to testify about Trump to Congress.

The story called that decision an “existential question”.

Twitter had fun with that. Twitter also had fun with the fact that the existential question was whether to obey the law. Hicks wasn’t entertaining an invitation; she was deciding whether to comply with a subpoena.

The fashion-shoot portrait accompanying the story didn’t help, either.

Much of the malicious glee was directed at the story’s writer, Maggie Haberman. Haberman’s one of those White House reporters with regular scoops on Oval Office palace intrigue; it was suggested that Hicks was one of her main anonymous sources, and the sympathetic story was returning the favor.

The weekend passed, the Times quietly changed the offending word to “crucial”, and the party moved on to the next outrage — until Tuesday, when Jonathan Chait published a vociferous defense of Haberman and her work.

“The progressive loathing of Haberman draws some of its force from the mistaken belief that straight news reporters should stand up to the president and call him out for his unfitness to hold office,” Chait wrote. “Some people who believe this fail to grasp the distinction between news gathering and opinion journalism.”

And on Twitter, the Blue Checkmarks came out to join Chait in his praise, proclaiming the unassailable virtue of Haberman’s work and deep misunderstanding of journalism itself.

At which point our head exploded.

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Cato’s Julian Sanchez on C-SPAN:

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board hosted a public forum to discuss the USA Freedom Act, a modified extension of the Patriot Act, which was due to expire at the end of 2019 if Congress did not reauthorize it. Privacy and data experts focused their remarks on the part of the legislation know as “Section 215”, which allows the NSA to collect phone records. Questions around whether a telephone records program violated privacy and civil liberties were also discussed as well as how technology has changed since the law was enacted back in 2015.

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From PZ Myers:

For last weekend’s Washington State 1B track and field championships, Rosalie Fish painted a red handprint over her mouth, the fingers extending across her cheekbones. On her right leg, she painted the letters “MMIW,” standing for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.

It’s an epidemic right now. Imagine if a town the size of Morris, Minnesota were wiped out every year…but these deaths are scattered and spread out among a neglected population.

MMIW seeks to address the issue of the thousands of indigenous women who are missing or were murdered. According to a report by the Urban Indian Health Institute, 5,712 of these cases were reported in 2016, but only 116 were put into the U.S. Department of Justice database. With 71 cases, Washington was second only to New Mexico, which had 78 cases of murdered or missing indigenous women.

I can imagine it: the reservations in Washington state are in many ways isolated, populated with poor people, but at the same time penetrated with highways and outsiders are encouraged to visit to buy cheap cigarettes or gamble, so some of the worst people from the outside are cruising through the place. Then there’s the problem of jurisdiction…if some predator is looking for prey no one with power will care about, reservations are targets of opportunity.

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From the satiric Borowitz Report:

Calling the Duchess of Sussex “a nasty woman,” Trump said, “If I were a princess, I would not be nasty. People would say, ‘Donald Trump is the nicest princess.’ ”

Trump added that “all a princess has to do is sit on a throne, and I would be very good at that also.”

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