| Trump tells Dems to nominate 'Mini Mike Bloomberg ASAP.' Should they take his advice? Posted: 05 Feb 2020 03:11 PM PST  Bloomberg made a bet that no consensus candidate would emerge by Super Tuesday and that Democrats would eventually turn to him (and his $60-billion fortune) to fill the void. Is it paying off?
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| Orange County Has Released More Than 2,000 Criminal Illegal Immigrants in Recent Years Due to California’s Sanctuary Law Posted: 06 Feb 2020 06:43 AM PST  Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes released data this week showing how California's SB54 sanctuary law allowed for over 2,000 illegal immigrants with outstanding ICE detainers to be released from custody over the last two years, with 411 of those later rearrested for additional charges.Barnes's data drew praise from acting ICE Director Matthew Albence, who released a statement Wednesday saying that "this is exactly what ICE has said time and again.""These policies do nothing but ensure that criminals are released back into the community, where many re-offend, instead of being turned over to ICE," Albence said. "These are preventable crimes, and more importantly, preventable victims. As the data released by Sheriff Barnes clearly demonstrates, all communities are safer when local law enforcement works with ICE."California's SB 54 restricts law enforcement from notifying, transferring, and communicating with ICE regarding certain offenders. The Trump administration has petitioned the Supreme Court to strike down the statuteBarnes's data shows that in 2019, 1,015 illegal immigrants were released from Orange County Jail with outstanding ICE detainers, with 238 of those — over 23 percent — later rearrested on additional charges. In 2018, a total of 1,106 inmates were released without notification given to ICE, and 173 of those ended up being rearrested by local law enforcement.Barnes said the data proved that "SB 54 has made our community less safe" and that "the two-year social science experiment with sanctuary laws must end." He also slammed the policy as leaving police unable "to protect our immigrant community.""The law has resulted in new crimes because my deputies were unable to communicate with their federal partners about individuals who committed serious offenses and present a threat to our community if released," he said.
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| Come to Rio, get robbed: Brazil tourism body shares awkward Instagram post Posted: 05 Feb 2020 12:54 PM PST  When marketing Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's national tourism agency typically focuses on the city's world-class beaches, samba-filled music scene and caipirinha-fueled parties. Violent crime is rarely listed among the attractions. "I just spent 3 days in Rio with my family, and in those 3 days my family and I were robbed and my 9-year-old sister witnessed a violent robbery," Instagram user "withlai" wrote in an Instagram Stories post.
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| An anti-Putin blogger was murdered in a French hotel, and the killing has the hallmarks of the Russian hit squad causing chaos in Europe Posted: 06 Feb 2020 05:28 AM PST  Imran Aliev, a 44-year-old Chechen blogger who opposed both Vladimir Putin and Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, was murdered in Lille last week.
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| A California surgeon and his girlfriend were accused of drugging and raping up to 1,000 women. A new DA says the evidence against them was 'manufactured.' Posted: 06 Feb 2020 07:14 AM PST  The county's new district attorney said his predecessor made up the evidence for political gain.
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| Outrage after Limbaugh given Medal of Freedom Posted: 06 Feb 2020 04:50 AM PST  President Trump has been roundly condemned by critics for giving the controversial conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh one of the highest civilian awards in the country in the middle of his State of the Union address.
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| Israeli strikes kill 23 Syrian, foreign fighters in Syria Posted: 06 Feb 2020 07:40 AM PST  Israeli air strikes killed 23 Syrian and foreign fighters in Syria Thursday, a monitor said, the latest in a spate of raids Israel has said targeted an Iranian presence on its doorstep. Israel has pledged to prevent its main enemy from entrenching itself militarily in Syria, where it is backing President Bashar al-Assad's government alongside Russia and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. The pre-dawn raids killed three Iranians and seven Tehran-backed foreign fighters near Kisweh south of the capital, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
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| Meet the JH-XX: China's Newest and Fastest Stealth Bomber? Posted: 06 Feb 2020 09:12 AM PST  Is it real?
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| 30 Side Table Designs That Do All the Things Posted: 06 Feb 2020 10:41 AM PST |
| Giuliani: If the U.S. doesn't investigate Joe Biden, it would be 'one of the great corrupt events in American history' Posted: 04 Feb 2020 06:14 PM PST  Rudy Giuliani expects President Trump to be acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate on Wednesday, and thinks he should celebrate by investigating a political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden."I would have no problem with him doing it," Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer, told NPR. "In fact, I'd have a problem with him not doing it. I think he would be saying that Joe Biden can get away with selling out the United States, making us a fool in the Ukraine." Giuliani continues to believe in a debunked conspiracy theory that Biden wanted a Ukrainian prosecutor ousted because he planned on investigating the gas company Burisma; Biden's son Hunter was once on its board."I believe that it would be one of the great corrupt events in American history if this case is not investigated at the highest levels of two governments," Giuliani said, referring to the United States and Ukraine.Trump's impeachment was triggered by his July 25 call with Ukrainian President Alexander Zelensky, during which he asked Zelensky to launch an investigation into Biden. The House impeachment managers say Trump froze military aid to Ukraine as a way of pressuring Zelensky into announcing investigations. Several Republican senators have said Trump acted inappropriately, including Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who told NBC's Chuck Todd what Trump did was "wrong" and "improper, crossing the line."Giuliani pushed back, saying they "don't understand the facts. Lamar is wrong, and Lamar is a good friend of mine, and he's a fine man except he doesn't know all the facts."More stories from theweek.com Trump just won the Iowa Democratic caucuses Should financial markets be freaked out by coronavirus? America is doing so much better than you think
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| It Doesn't Matter Who Technically Wins Iowa: Both Bernie Sanders And Pete Buttigieg Did Posted: 06 Feb 2020 01:03 PM PST  It may be awhile before we know who technically won the Iowa caucuses, but it doesn't really matter. In a contest that was always more…
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| Siberian street cats limp to new life with prosthetic paws Posted: 06 Feb 2020 09:12 AM PST  Ryzhik, a scruffy red tabby cat, was found on the streets of the Siberian city of Tomsk in the blistering cold, his four paws completely frozen. Two years later Ryzhik leads a normal life at Gorshkov's clinic, hobbling around on four prosthetic limbs. Ryzhik is one of the first cats in the world to have four titanium paws that were implanted into their bones using the technique, according to Gorshkov.
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| Ill Cali cartel drug kingpin seeks early prison release Posted: 06 Feb 2020 08:10 AM PST ![Ill Cali cartel drug kingpin seeks early prison release]( "Ill Cali cartel drug kingpin seeks early prison release") One of the world's major cocaine kingpins, a co-founder of Colombia's Cali Cartel that smuggled some $2 billion in drugs to the U.S., is seeking compassionate early release from a federal prison because of ill health. Gilberto Rodriguez-Orejuela, 81, is asking a Miami federal judge to let him return to his family in Colombia because he suffers from prostate and colon cancer. Rodriguez-Orejuela has served about half of his 30-year prison sentence under a 2006 plea deal.
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| Gabbard Campaign to Protest CNN Townhall over New Hampshire Snub Posted: 06 Feb 2020 09:12 AM PST  Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D., Hawaii) is scheduling a protest outside the New Hampshire venue where CNN is hosting town halls ahead of the state's primary next week, after Gabbard was excluded from the two-night lineup — despite out-polling townhall guests Andrew Yang, Tom Steyer, and Deval Patrick in New Hampshire."This attempt to silence Tulsi is bigger than one person — it's our right as voters to hear from ALL the candidates, and to have our voices represented. No institution should be allowed to get away with censoring democracy: That's why we're standing up to CNN on Wednesday, February 5th, demanding that our voices be heard," the Gabbard campaign told Fox News.Gabbard told the network last week that she had reached out about being excluded, but had not received a response."We have reached out, I think, more than once, and we received no explanation. I don't even think we've gotten a response to date about why they're excluding the first female combat veteran ever to run for president, the only woman of color in the race," she said.Gabbard currently sits sixth in New Hampshire polling at 4.7 percent, while Yang polls at 3.7 percent, and Tom Steyer at 3.1 percent, according to a RealClearPolitics polling average.Patrick, who does not even register in the average, hit 0.4 percent in the most recent Boston Globe/Suffolk University New Hampshire poll.Gabbard has voiced public criticism over CNN's treatment of her campaign, and slammed the news network during the October debate after a CNN analyst called her a Russian asset."The New York Times and CNN have also smeared veterans like myself for calling to an end to this regime-change war," Gabbard told the crowd in Ohio. " . . . This morning a CNN commentator said on national television that I'm an asset of Russia. Completely despicable."
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| Storage unit found, eldest son speaks out: What we know about the missing Idaho kids Posted: 06 Feb 2020 11:10 AM PST  Details continue to trickle out in the case of the two missing Idaho children as mother Lori Vallow missed court deadline a week ago.
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| Why the World Should Really Fear North Korea's Tunnels Posted: 06 Feb 2020 03:30 AM PST  Tunnels, yes, you read that right.
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| 'I don't want to listen to lies about the Second Amendment': Father of Parkland shooting victim detained for State of the Union protest speaks out Posted: 05 Feb 2020 08:15 AM PST  The father of a student killed in the Parkland shooting is speaking out after being removed from the State of the Union address last night for shouting at President Donald Trump over "lies about the Second Amendment."Fred Guttenberg's 14-year-old daughter Jamie was killed in February 2018 during the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Since her death, Mr Guttenberg has been an outspoken advocate for gun safety.
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| NH poll: Sanders surges into the lead, followed by Buttigeig, Biden as Iowa results still roll in Posted: 06 Feb 2020 10:13 AM PST  Since the last Monmouth University poll released in January, Sanders has jumped 6 percentage points.
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| Top U.S. officials to spotlight Chinese spy operations, pursuit of American secrets Posted: 06 Feb 2020 03:00 AM PST ![Top U.S. officials to spotlight Chinese spy operations, pursuit of American secrets]( "Top U.S. officials to spotlight Chinese spy operations, pursuit of American secrets") An aggressive campaign by American authorities to root out Chinese espionage operations in the United States has snared a growing group of Chinese government officials, business people, and academics pursuing American secrets. In 2019 alone, public records show U.S. authorities arrested and expelled two Chinese diplomats who allegedly drove onto a military base in Virginia. On Thursday, U.S. Attorney General William Barr, FBI director Christopher Wray and U.S. counterintelligence chief William Evanina will address a Washington conference on U.S. efforts to counter Chinese "economic malfeasance" involving espionage and the theft of U.S. technological and scientific secrets.
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| The Kremlin is checking the temperatures of Putin's media visitors amid coronavirus fears Posted: 06 Feb 2020 10:09 AM PST  "These are just precautionary measures," a Kremlin spokesman told Russian media after the press pool had their temperatures checked.
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| Wichita woman convicted of beheading ex-boyfriend's mother Posted: 06 Feb 2020 02:25 PM PST  Prosecutors said Rachael Hilyard cut off the head of 63-year-old Micki Davis using two steak knives on April 9, 2017. Davis had gone to Hilyard's home with her 9-year-old grandson to collect her son's belongings, at Hilyard's insistence. Hilyard's lawyer acknowledged his client killed Davis but said it was not premeditated, which is required for a first-degree murder conviction, The Wichita Eagle reported.
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| AG Barr Requires FBI to Obtain His Approval Before Investigating 2020 Candidates Posted: 06 Feb 2020 05:26 AM PST  Attorney General William Barr has issued a memo requiring the FBI to obtain approval from Barr himself before conducting any investigation into any 2020 presidential election candidate."In certain cases, the existence of a federal criminal or counterintelligence investigation, if it becomes known to the public, may have unintended effects on our elections," Barr wrote in the memo, which was obtained by the New York Times. The attorney general went on to emphasize that "we also must be sensitive to safeguarding the department's reputation for fairness, neutrality and nonpartisanship."The memo establishes certain requirements for the FBI and other agencies under the purview of the Justice Department to meet before opening a "politically sensitive" criminal or counterintelligence investigation against candidates or donors. Barr must personally give approval for investigations into presidential and vice presidential candidates, as well as their respective senior staffs.The move follows Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report on the FBI's obtainment of a FISA warrant against former Trump-campaign adviser Carter Page as part of the agency's investigation into suspected collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian agents. The report detailed various errors and material omissions in the FBI's initial application for a FISA warrant and subsequent renewals."We identified multiple instances in which factual assertions relied upon in the first FISA application were inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported by appropriate documentation, based upon information the FBI had in its possession at the time the application was filed," the report read.The FBI in 2016 carried out investigations pertaining to both presidential candidates. While the Trump campaign was investigated for possible connections to Russia, a claim that the Mueller Report subsequently found to be based on insufficient evidence, the bureau in October 2016 also reopened its investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server for classified messages.
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| U.S. citizen dies in border patrol custody Posted: 05 Feb 2020 11:03 AM PST  A U.S. citizen has died in government custody, Customs and Border Patrol announced Wednesday.Border patrol agents arrested the 32-year-old man Tuesday afternoon "after he was identified as a suspect in an alien smuggling incident," BuzzFeed News reports via a CBP statement. "At around 6:00 p.m., during processing at the Brackettville Station, the man began exhibiting signs of distress," the statement continued. "EMT-certified agents" began tending to the man, and an ambulance took him to a local hospital around 6:40 p.m. "He was pronounced deceased by medical personnel at 9:37 p.m. CST," per the statement.The agents who arrested the man were assigned to a Brackettville, Texas, station, which is near the Del Rio, Texas, port of entry.More stories from theweek.com How Trump's New York trusted traveler ban will punish the most conservative parts of the state How history will view Trump's impeachment Fox News' Brian Kilmeade is really mad that Romney would 'bring religion' into his impeachment decision
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| Tourism Industry Pleads Mexico’s AMLO: Please Don’t Cancel Long Weekends Posted: 06 Feb 2020 02:20 PM PST  (Bloomberg) -- If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That's what Mexico's tourism industry is telling President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador after he proposed canceling long weekends.AMLO, as the president is known, wants holidays to be celebrated on the actual day that they happened to boost their historical significance. For many years now, Mexico has moved holidays that fall in the middle of the week to either Monday or Friday so people can enjoy a long weekend.Getting rid of these would hurt the economy and the tourism industry, said the head of tourism chamber Concanaco Servytur, Jose Manuel Lopez, in a statement. Long weekends are when people are able to travel to nearby, domestic spots, he said, and it's when transportation services, restaurants and hotels register significant increases in cash flows."We're doing a lot of things that are helping tourism grow," Lopez Obrador said in his morning press conference on Thursday. "We're cleaning beaches, we're building the Maya Train and working to increase road security. So this won't impact tourism. On the contrary, we'll be affected if we forget our past."Concanaco's Lopez said long weekends also allow workers to relieve some stress and come back to work recharged. Mexico only has seven official holidays per year, one of the fewest in the world.The Finance Ministry is going to review the president's initiative to analyze its possible impact on the industry, Deputy Finance Minister Gabriel Yorio told media on Thursday. "We'd have to see how it would be implemented, but we'll analyze it."(Updates with comments by Deputy Finance Minister in sixth paragraph.)To contact the reporters on this story: Andrea Navarro in Mexico City at anavarro30@bloomberg.net;Lorena Rios in Mexico City at lriost@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Case at bcase4@bloomberg.net, Nacha CattanFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Trump’s Press Secretary Whines About Media Lunch Leaks—in New Leaked Email Posted: 06 Feb 2020 07:53 AM PST  The Trump White House is apparently still reeling because the president didn't get anything to eat at the soup-and-sole lunch he hosted for television personalities before Tuesday's State of the Union address."[T]he president of the United States welcomed you to the White House and spent almost two hours answering so many questions that he didn't eat his own lunch," White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham complained about President Donald Trump's personal sacrifice in a confidential email to the attendees—an email that was shared with The Daily Beast on Thursday morning. "He graciously gave you a couple of items on the record and then spoke frankly, honestly, and most importantly in good faith that it was off the record."Grisham, who doesn't follow the practice of delivering White House press briefings, thus obliterating a decades-long tradition by administrations of both parties, continued: "Our only agenda was to give you an idea of what the president was going to say to the country in his third State of the Union address. It was so disappointing that not even an hour passed before we were inundated with inquiries, as someone or perhaps a few in the group chose to leak out most of what was said. What's worse, some of the details were things the president specifically asked you not to share."It seems Grisham and her boss, who banned CNN from the meal, were especially angered by The Daily Beast's report about the lunch—published hours before Trump's speech to Congress—that contained many such details, such as the president's criticisms of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and his vow to block publication of former National Security Adviser John Bolton's tell-all book."To me, it is the height of hypocrisy that a press who bemoans the perceived lack of ethical behavior in this administration, so brazenly violates its own ethical standards," Grisham went on, clearly warming to her subject. "The media cries for more access but cannot adhere to a simple agreed upon standard of off-the-record, which allowed your colleagues who were not in attendance to break the news for you." Delivering a helpful lecture on journalistic ethics, Grisham added: "Call me naïve, but it is my belief that old-fashioned accountability should be applied to a press corps that has sadly failed to hold itself to its very own standards. Accountability is, after all, one of the five core principles of journalism. 'We hold the powerful accountable' is a mantra that many in the press righteously shout from every news desk in this county. I ask—who holds all of you accountable?"And so on and so forth, for several paragraphs more."In closing," Grisham wrote, "I must say that for once I wouldn't mind if this email leaked, but somehow I doubt anyone will want to admit to this complete lapse in integrity."Oh ye of little faith.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Donald Trump Has Been Acquitted. But Our Government Has Never Seemed More Broken. Posted: 05 Feb 2020 01:33 PM PST  The Senate voted to acquit President Donald Trump. Here's what the vote means for Trump — and the future of our government.
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| Scientists have discovered an unusual 'monster' galaxy from the early universe Posted: 06 Feb 2020 10:57 AM PST  Scientists have discovered an unusual "monster" galaxy that existed about 12 billion years ago. But why it suddenly stopped forming stars is unknown.
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| Xi says China has achieved 'positive' virus control results Posted: 06 Feb 2020 06:01 AM PST  China has achieved "positive" results in its prevention and control efforts in fighting the new coronavirus, President Xi Jinping told Saudi Arabia's King Salman by telephone, China's official Xinhua news agency reported. The two discussed "efforts to combat and control the novel coronavirus epidemic", the report said. China has declared a "people's war" on the virus and the whole nation is working as one to combat it, Xi said.
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| Polls show Biden’s campaign could be doomed Posted: 06 Feb 2020 01:39 PM PST  New polls reveal the state of Joe Biden's campaign is far shakier than his longtime lead in the national polls would suggest. In fact, it may have already entered the terminal stage.
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| Man Who Killed Son for Insurance Money Is Convicted of Doing the Same to Wife Posted: 05 Feb 2020 12:30 PM PST  A man who killed his son in 2008 to collect $700,000 from his life insurance policy was convicted this week of killing his wife nearly 30 years ago for the same reason.Karl Holger Karlsen, 59, pleaded guilty in 2013 to murdering his son, Levi Karlsen, in Seneca Falls, New York, and was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. That conviction raised suspicions with detectives in California, where the investigation into his wife's death had been continuing, according to court documents.Karlsen's wife, Christina Karlsen, 30, died on New Year's Day in 1991, when she was trapped by a fire in a boarded-up bathroom of the family's home in Calaveras County, Karlsen's lawyer, Richard Esquivel, said.Days after his wife's death, Karlsen collected $215,000 from his wife's insurance policy, and he and his children moved to Seneca Falls, where he is from, Esquivel said.On Monday, a jury convicted Karlsen of murdering his wife by committing arson -- purposefully boarding up the bathroom and lighting a fire in a hallway to kill her.He could face a maximum life sentence without the possibility of parole during his sentencing hearing March 17. He plans to appeal the conviction, Esquivel said.The victim's mother, Arlene Meltzer, 78, was in the courtroom when the verdict was read by the jury."I just knew that he had something to do with it," she said Tuesday. "It is something a mother always carries in their heart."With the money from his wife's life insurance policy, Karlsen moved back to New York, bought a house and paid several bills, Esquivel said.According to court documents, Karlsen's son, Levi Karlsen, bought a $700,000 life insurance policy in 2008. Soon after that, Levi Karlsen, 23, signed paperwork that named his father the sole beneficiary of his policy in the event of his death, records show; his father was present at the time of signing.Hours after signing the paperwork, Levi Karlsen's body was found by his father's second wife, Cindy Karlsen, under a truck that had fallen on him in his father's garage, records show.Initially, authorities deemed the death an accident. But in 2011, when Cindy Karlsen realized that her husband had invested money from his son's policy into a $1.2 million life insurance policy for her, she alerted authorities, according to court documents.She cooperated with authorities, and while she was wearing a wire, her husband admitted that he had deliberately caused the truck to fall on his son, according to court documents. In 2012, Karlsen was charged with murdering his son, and he pleaded guilty the following year."We suspected that he was guilty of Levi's death as well," Meltzer said. "I expected that he was involved in it in some way."Karlsen appealed his conviction in that case and lost, but he planned to appeal again, Esquivel said.Meltzer, meanwhile, is done waiting."For 30 years we stood and waited. Right now I am just taking quiet time to help me get strong," Meltzer said as her voice quivered. "I just kept my prayers going because I knew that he was involved, but I just had to stand by and believe that God was going to take care of it."It has finally come to an end," she said.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Chinese officials are only letting people leave their homes every 2 days and have forbidden weddings and funerals Posted: 06 Feb 2020 02:19 PM PST  In four cities that are home to more than 30 million people, each household is given a so-called passport. It permits one person to leave every two days.
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| Virginia lawmakers to debate assault weapon ban Posted: 06 Feb 2020 02:06 PM PST  Democratic lawmakers in Virginia are set to try to advance legislation to ban assault weapons despite pushback from members of their own party. A state House committee is scheduled to take up legislation backed by Gov. Ralph Northam on Friday that would ban the sale of certain semi-automatic firearms, including popular AR-15 style rifles. Heated debates over guns have dominated this year's legislative session, as Virginia has become ground zero in the nation's raging debate over gun control and mass shootings.
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| Russia Is Building Radar To Detect Hypersonic Weapons (And Is Testing Them Too) Posted: 06 Feb 2020 10:57 AM PST  Moscow is looking to make money by selling this technology.
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| US warns Venezuela of consequences if Guaido harmed Posted: 06 Feb 2020 02:08 PM PST  The United States on Thursday warned Venezuela's leftist regime of consequences if opposition leader Juan Guaido is not allowed to return safely from a visit to Washington. "We hope that the regime makes the calculation, particularly after this trip, that the support for Guaido is strong and that the counter-reaction to any move against him would make it a mistake for the regime," said Elliott Abrams, the US pointman on Venezuela. Guaido, who is considered interim president by the United States and most other Western and Latin American nations, paid a surprise visit as a guest Tuesday at President Donald Trump's State of the Union address to Congress.
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| Norwegian won't issue $32,000 refund to family that canceled Asian cruise over coronavirus Posted: 05 Feb 2020 07:58 AM PST  A Maui woman said that when her family tried to cancel their upcoming Asia cruise, Norwegian wouldn't refund any of the $32,000 they'd already paid.
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| 'Grey death': Louisiana police say powerful opiod can kill on contact Posted: 05 Feb 2020 01:54 PM PST  Police in Louisiana have issued a warning over 'grey death' - a powerful drug combination that can reportedly cause severe illness and even death through skin contact alone.David Spencer, a spokesperson for St Mary Parish Sheriff's Office near New Orleans, said: "The public recognises a lot of the drugs that we deal with. This is a new one."
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| Joe Biden moves town-hall audience to tears as he opens up about how he dealt with his stutter Posted: 05 Feb 2020 10:17 PM PST  The former vice president and 2020 hopeful emphasized the importance of empathy and asked people to "to reach out a little more for people."
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| Texas executes man convicted of killing five family members in 2002 Posted: 06 Feb 2020 04:12 AM PST  Abel Ochoa, 47, was executed with lethal injection and pronounced dead at the state's death chamber in Huntsville at 6.48 p.m. CST (1248 GMT), 17 years after a jury found him guilty of capital murder, according to a statement by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Ochoa was the third inmate in the United States and the second in Texas to be executed in 2020. Texas, which executed nine people in 2019, has executed more prisoners than any other state since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
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| 4 children — one only 2 years old — were lost in an Alaskan blizzard for more than 27 hours but were miraculously found alive Posted: 05 Feb 2020 07:02 AM PST  The children were found alive 18 miles from their home in Alaska. They had gone on a snowmobile ride, but got stuck in a blizzard.
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| Pelosi says Trump knows nothing about 'faith and prayer' Posted: 06 Feb 2020 08:50 AM PST  During a press briefing, Speaker Nancy Pelosi responding to criticisms of her ripping up the president's State of the Union speech. She also said the president knows nothing about "faith and prayer."
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| President upsets Mexicans with plan to end long weekends Posted: 05 Feb 2020 11:01 AM PST  Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has floated a strikingly unpopular proposal to end the practice of creating long weekends by moving national holidays around. López Obrador is a student of Mexican history, and he was irked because few people appeared to remember that Wednesday is the anniversary of the Feb. 5, 1917 adoption of the country's Constitution. López Obrador said it is a bad practice because it leads people to forget what they were celebrating, even though he acknowledged the three-day weekends were popular.
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| Taiwan Is Running Out Of Time Before China's Invasion (What?) Posted: 05 Feb 2020 06:00 PM PST  It will happen one day.
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| What Trump’s Acquittal Means for the Rule of Law Posted: 05 Feb 2020 02:28 PM PST  In Wednesday's final impeachment vote in the Senate, only one Senate Republican, Mitt Romney, crossed party lines to vote to remove Donald Trump from office. No Senate Democrat bucked party-line discipline to vote for Trump's acquittal. This followed last Friday's 51–49 vote to conclude the trial on the basis of the evidence heard in the House, without live witness testimony. Only two Republicans (Romney and Susan Collins), and no Democrats, crossed party lines in that vote.There has been a great deal of hand-wringing about what it means that Senate Republicans kept enough of a united front to dispose of the charges against Trump without even a full trial. In fact, acquittal is a reasonable political judgment by Republican senators that reflects the preexisting standards for presidential impeachments, rather than a change to them.Impeachment for abuse of power is political. A great deal of the commentary and political argument on impeachment takes a wrong turn from the very start. The mistake is treating presidential impeachment as a purely legal question in which it is somehow inappropriate to consider politics. Taking this view, Democrats argue that if any impeachable "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" are proven, there is a solemn duty to remove the president, and it is a violation of the senators' oaths and an offense against the rule of law to acquit. The president's defenders, for their part, argue that no impeachable "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" are even alleged, and therefore the entire process amounts to an assault by the House on the rule of law and something like a coup. Both views are wrong.The Constitution says that a president or other federal officer "shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Every prior successful impeachment and removal under this standard has involved a federal judge, and almost all involved treason, bribery, or some criminal offense closely related to bribery. In such cases, where a serious crime is proven that is both illegal and related to the duties of public office, there is a stronger argument for expecting the Senate to carry out removal without regard to politics.Trump's defense team, in particular Professor Alan Dershowitz, have argued that this is all there is to impeachment: proof of a serious crime or "quasi-crime," or nothing. Dershowitz is, however, misreading the history of the impeachment clause. As I have explained at greater length, the Framers also intended to create a remedy for official abuses of power that did not involve an enumerated crime. The Constitutional Convention started with treason and bribery and initially considered adding "maladministration," a term used in multiple state constitutions at the time, but that would have licensed too many impeachments for simply being negligent about some presidential duty. The Convention thus instead chose the term "high Crimes and Misdemeanors against the United States," adapted from Edmund Burke's then-ongoing bill of impeachment in Parliament against the Governor-General of India for abuses of power. Gouverneur Morris's final draft dropped "against the United States," arguably broadening the types of offenses covered by impeachment. Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist No. 65, described impeachment as a remedy for "offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL."The central charge against Trump falls within this third and most ambiguous category: abuse of public trust. For all the rhetoric thrown around by House Democrats, there is no criminal conduct charged. Trump is principally accused of using the foreign policy powers of the presidency — including delaying congressionally authorized military aid, arguably without legal authority to do so — in order to get Ukraine to announce a criminal investigation against Joe Biden's son, Hunter, and possibly Biden himself. The accusation is that Trump did so purely for his own political benefit against Biden, and without obtaining any legitimate public benefit to the United States.This would be an abuse of public trust because Trump leveraged presidential power and the public's money to gain something of political benefit to himself, and nothing of any benefit to the nation or the taxpayers. The way this was done departs from the proper methods for investigating public corruption in three ways: 1. siccing the dubious institutions of a foreign government on American citizens, one of them a former vice president, rather than simply asking foreign cooperation in an American Justice Department investigation; 2. asking that foreign government to publicly announce the investigation from the outset, for the apparent purpose of using that announcement as a club in the American presidential election; and 3. pressuring Ukraine to give information directly to Rudy Giuliani in his capacity as the president's personal attorney, rather than to the proper American authorities who answer to Trump in his capacity as head of the executive branch and who have the power to convene grand juries, issue subpoenas, and prosecute crimes.There remain some important facts in dispute about these charges, such as precisely what was communicated to Ukraine and when (other than Trump's call with President Zelensky). The Trump defense has other arguments for why an investigation was warranted. But many of the key facts are not really in serious doubt. Nor is the fact that Trump ultimately relented and released the aid.If you see impeachment purely as a legal question, then the debate is about whether this could be an impeachable offense, and if it is, then it must lead to conviction. But abuse of power is an inherently political charge, as Hamilton recognized, and its disposition is given to a body of elected officials with the understanding that they will have to make political judgments. Those judgments are not just about the elements of the offense (e.g., whether the United States had any public interest in Ukraine investigating Hunter Biden), but also about whether the punishment fits the offense. A great many uses of presidential power could be, and have been, argued as bases for impeachment. It is a political decision for the House to choose which to charge, and a political decision for the Senate to decide when to remove.In this case, there are entirely legitimate political considerations that weigh in favor of acquittal. None of these should be considered bright-line rules; each requires precisely the sort of political prudence we expect of senators: 1. The president is duly elected to head a coordinate branch of the federal government, and so should not be removed lightly in a borderline case. This is not a complete bar to removal — it is present in every impeachment — but it separates presidential impeachments from impeachments of judges or Cabinet secretaries. 2. There is no clear, bipartisan public support for removing Trump. Richard Nixon's impeachment did not pass the House Judiciary Committee until there was clear, majority support: by late July 1974, Gallup showed the public 57–24 behind removing Nixon, and an August 5 Harris poll taken after the Judiciary Committee vote showed 66–27 support. Nixon resigned four days later. The polling averages at this writing, by contrast, show 48.1 percent opposed to removing Trump compared to 47.8 percent in favor, with Republicans overwhelmingly opposed and independent voters opposing removal 46.8 percent to 45.3 percent. Those numbers have fluctuated, but when the country is roughly evenly divided and only the opposing party's voters are clearly in favor of removal, the public legitimacy of removing the president for the first time in American history is shaky. 3. Republican voters in particular would regard Trump's removal as a double standard, after Bill Clinton was not removed for committing felonies in office. Every single Democrat in the Senate in 1999 voted to acquit Clinton. The case for not removing Clinton was explicitly based on his popularity and the argument that it was imprudent to remove a president over felonies aimed at covering up a political liability. 4. Trump is running for reelection and will face the voters in nine months, so if the Senate errs on the side of acquittal, the voters can always reverse that outcome. This distinguishes the situation from those of all the previous presidents facing impeachments. Ben Franklin's argument for allowing impeachments of presidents was that without one, the people's only remedy would be assassination — but an impending election lets the voters decide. 5. Removing Trump would reward the ongoing efforts of civil servants within the Executive Branch to shift power over foreign and national-security policy from the elected commander in chief to the permanent civil service, by means of generating investigations, surveillance, and legal and media campaigns against elected leaders. 6. Trump was not even successful in his attempt; he ultimately released the funds to Ukraine without a major delay and without conditions. (I regard this last as the least persuasive of these arguments, but it is a mitigating factor.)There are, of course, also some reasonable arguments in favor of conviction, which helps explain why Romney crossed the aisle: 1. Trump's misconduct was aimed at the upcoming election, and there is really no assurance that an unrepentant Trump will not try something similar, especially if he draws a different opponent than Biden. 2. The failure to ever remove a president has contributed to the accumulation of power in the presidency at the expense of Congress. We are a long way from the great fear of 1868 that removing the president would fatally weaken the presidency and lead to congressional hegemony. 3. The House has always treated oversight of the president as a purely partisan matter. While no Senator has ever voted to remove a president from his or her own party, the devolution of Senate oversight into the same dynamics as the House is unhealthy. 4. The Clinton-acquittal standard had ripple effects in corroding our politics over the past two decades, leading to the cynicism about elite unaccountability that gave rise to Trump in the first place; removal would act as an admission that we went down the wrong path in 1999. 5. Trump has shown a worrisome tendency to regard his Article II powers over foreign affairs, national security, and law enforcement as inseparable from his personal interests.For Republican senators, of course, there is also the more elemental fact of political survival: Because Republican voters overwhelmingly see this as a partisan test of strength and independent voters are divided, there is a great political downside in voting to convict, and very little political price to be paid in voting to acquit. Voters who are single-issue anti-Trump in 2020 are unlikely supporters anyway, and senators up for reelection in 2022 or 2024 may find memories shorter in general elections than they are in partisan primaries. Also, a handful of Republican senators voting to convict accomplishes nothing; only 20 yes votes would actually remove Trump.Given the political nature of Trump's abuse of power, there are more than enough legitimate reasons for Senate Republicans to vote to acquit.Democrats killed censure. In a sane world, Trump should have been censured instead of impeached. Democrats knew from the outset of this process that they were going to lose the impeachment fight. They also knew that some Republican senators would have liked a way to acknowledge that Trump overstepped his bounds, without being accused of a "coup." Up to the point of the House impeachment vote, Democrats had the leverage to try to work something out along those lines. But just as happened with the Clinton impeachment, once the House voted on the articles and forced the Senate to hear the case, the chance for a middle ground vanished. And once the Senate voted to proceed without live witnesses, all of the Democrats' political leverage was lost. Republicans now are right to be concerned that Democrats would use a censure not as a way to close the book on this sordid chapter, but rather as justification to restart the process.It doesn't matter that there was no real trial. The Constitution provides for a trial presided over by the chief justice, but it does not say anything about the nature of that trial. That leaves the Senate in charge of its own procedures, as it normally is.Much of the hue and cry against Republicans for deciding to proceed to a vote without witnesses is either just political spin or treats a trial as a political exercise in informing the voters. It is true that all prior impeachment trials have called witnesses, but witnesses are there for two reasons: to help the senators decide how to vote, and to allow the accused to present a defense that may not have been possible in the House. Neither of those reasons matters once a sufficient number of senators have decided, as a matter of political judgment, to acquit. Just as was true in the House, "due process of law" is an important value, but not one that Congress is required to follow within its own walls. Even in courts of law, judges throw out cases where the allegations in an indictment or civil complaint do not make out a case worth trying, or where the known and undisputed facts fail to prove some element of a charge.Proceeding without witnesses is a political risk for pro-acquittal Republicans: There is still no way for any Senator to know if there are other shoes to drop. But if the sole point of witnesses is to provide oversight and sunlight to the public, that is something the House should have considered before voting to impeach on an inadequate record, and it is also something the House and/or Senate could still do later. Congressman Jerry Nadler has already said he is likely to subpoena John Bolton and continue the House's investigation. And the politics of the issue simply mirror the House's often high-handed management of its own side of the process. The House managers' crocodile tears over not getting to put on a case they should have put on in their own chamber are simply political theater.The rule of law will go on. The rule of law in America will not be significantly worse off for the acquittal of Trump. The decision to acquit him was a natural and expected outcome of a process that charged him only with political offenses and failed to move a clear majority of the public against him. The result was exactly what anyone would have predicted simply from a reading of the history of the impeachment proceedings against Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton. If our standards for impeaching presidents are too high, all this vote did was reiterate what we already knew.Future Congresses should not fear to impeach presidents — even this one, again — if they really have the goods and can get the public behind them. In the meantime, both parties in Congress ought to get back to the less glamorous but important work of reviving the other tools given by Article I to Congress to rein in the executive branch.If Democrats are worried that an acquittal will embolden Trump, they should have considered that before they began down a road that was always going to end with one. They will have a second chance to make their case directly to the American people in November.
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