The Commentariat -- March 18, 2018
Late Morning/Afternoon Update:
Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Trump appeared on Sunday to abandon a strategy of deferring to the special counsel examining Russia;s interference in the 2016 presidential election, lashing out at what he characterized as a partisan investigation and raising questions about whether he might seek to shut it down.... Until this weekend he had largely heeded the advice of lawyers who counseled him not to directly attack Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, for fear of aggravating prosecutors....'Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans?' Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Sunday morning. 'Another Dem recently added ... does anyone think this is fair? And yet, there is NO COLLUSION!' The attack on Mr. Mueller, a longtime Republican who was appointed F.B.I. director under a Republican president, George W. Bush, followed a statement by Mr. Trump's personal lawyer published Saturday calling on the Justice Department to end the special counsel investigation. Mr. Trump followed up that evening with a tweet arguing that 'the Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime.'" ...
... Kyle Cheney of Politico: "Congressional Republicans sounded alarm Sunday over ... Donald Trump's increasing belligerence toward special counsel Robert Mueller, but they offered no hint about what actions they might take if Trump attempts to fire him.... Bipartisan legislation intended to block a unilateral move by Trump to remove Mueller has stalled in Congress for months, as Republicans and Democrats have worked to combine competing proposals, and even the sponsors of the legislation have described limited urgency to act." ...
... Joanna Walters of the Guardian: "Donald Trump went on the offensive against fired FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe on Sunday, responding to reports McCabe kept memos of his conversations with Trump -- and has turned them over to special counsel Robert Mueller -- by claiming McCabe never took notes in meetings with the president. 'Spent very little time with Andrew McCabe,' Trump tweeted, 'but he never took notes when he was with me. I don't believe he made memos except to help his own agenda, probably at a later date. Same with lying James Comey. Can we call them Fake Memos?' The post came moments after Trump targeted Comey, the FBI director he fired last May.... Comey has also said he wrote memos concerning interactions with Trump. Trump tweeted: 'Wow, watch Comey lie under oath to Senator G[rassley] when asked "have you ever been an anonymous source ... or known someone else to be an anonymous source...?" He said strongly "never, no." He lied as shown clearly on @foxandfriends.' Trump was evidently watching his favourite Fox News show."
Graham Proposes Whitewash. Louis Nelson of Politico: "Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sunday said the Senate Judiciary Committee should hold a hearing on Attorney General Jeff Sessions' firing of deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, telling CNN's 'State of the Union' that the decision merits extra scrutiny 'to make sure it wasn't politically motivated.'" Mrs. McC: Yeah, I know it's hard to paint JeffBo any whiter.
*****
** Matthew Rosenberg, et al., of the New York Times report on the Cambridge Analytica shenanigans, & in their telling, it's a doozy. First of all, Facebook didn't just suddenly come clean about (a small portion of) the breach yesterday; they did so when Times & Observer reporters began making inquiries. Second, we're not talking about 270K Americans: "... the firm harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission..., making it one of the largest data leaks in the social network's history.... An examination by The New York Times and The Observer of London reveals how Cambridge Analytica's drive to bring to market a potentially powerful new weapon put the firm -- and wealthy conservative investors seeking to reshape politics -- under scrutiny from investigators and lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic. Christopher Wylie, who helped found Cambridge and worked there until late 2014, said of its leaders: 'Rules don't matter for them. For them, this is a war, and it's all fair.'... The full scale of the data leak involving Americans has not been previously disclosed -- and Facebook, until now, has not acknowledged it." Mrs. McC: Say, did I mention that the professor who swept up the Facebook data was a Russian-American who maintains close professional ties to Russia? Coincidence. And most of its data scientists in Ted Cruz's & Trump's 2016 campaigns were foreign nationals, even though the company (& Steve Bannon) had been warned by attorneys that it was illegal for foreigners to be contributing to U.S. election campaigns. AND there's this:
Under the guidance of Brad Parscale, Mr. Trump's digital director in 2016 and now the campaign manager for his 2020 re-election effort, Cambridge performed a variety of services, former campaign officials said. That included designing target audiences for digital ads and fund-raising appeals, modeling voter turnout, buying $5 million in television ads and determining where Mr. Trump should travel to best drum up support. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
... Also too, Steve Bannon has scoffed at the idea that he had anything to fear from Bob Mueller because "I don't even know any Russians." Bull. He engineered Cambridge Analytica's (illegal) participation in Trump's campaign. He even came up with the name Cambridge Analytica, & he was on its board. ...
... Here's the Guardian/Observer story by Carole Cadwalladr & Emma Graham-Harrison. "Christopher Wylie, who worked with a Cambridge University academic to obtain the data, told the Observer: 'We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people's profiles. And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis the entire company was built on.'... Facebook ... failed to alert users and took only limited steps to recover and secure the private information of more than 50 million individuals.... The discovery of the unprecedented data harvesting, and the use to which it was put, raises urgent new questions about Facebook's role in targeting voters in the US presidential election.... Last month both Facebook and the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix, told a parliamentary inquiry on fake news: that the company did not have or use private Facebook data.... Steve Bannon's lawyer said he had no comment because his client 'knows nothing about the claims being asserted'. He added: 'The first Mr Bannon heard of these reports was from media inquiries in the past few days.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)...
... Carole Cadwalladr & Emma Graham-Harrison: "Cambridge Analytica employed non-American citizens to work on US election campaigns in apparent violation of federal law, despite receiving a legal warning about the risks. The company's responsibilities under US law were laid out in a lawyer's memo to the company's vice-president,Steve Bannon, British CEO Alexander Nix and Rebekah Mercer, daughter of billionaire owner Robert Mercer, in July 2014. It made it clear that most senior and mid-level positions involving strategy, planning, fundraising or campaigning needed to be filled by US citizens.... Employees working for Cambridge Analytica in the US at the time claimed that rather than tackling the problem, management appeared to ignore it.... The legal memo also warned Cambridge Analytica that it needed to carefully hide behind a firewall any work it did in a single state or election for a particular candidate and for any of the so-called super-PACs (political action committees) supporting the campaign. These committees can spend unlimited funds but cannot coordinate with individual candidates." --safari: The rich wipe their asses with our election laws with impunity...
... Carole Cadwalladr & Emma Graham-Harrison: "Aleksandr Kogan, the Cambridge University academic who orchestrated the harvesting of Facebook data, had previously unreported ties to a Russian university [in St. Petersburg], including a teaching position and grants for research into the social media network ... Cambridge Analytica ... also attracted interest from a key Russian firm with links to the Kremlin...Energy firm Lukoil, which is now on the US sanctions list ... has been used as a vehicle of government influence." --safari...
... Louis Ashworth & Todd Gillespie of Varsity: "Dr Aleksandr 'Alex' Kogan, a University lecturer at the Department of Psychology, has been thrust into the limelight after he was banned from Facebook for improper use of data.... Kogan was born in Moldova, and moved the United States at the age of seven.... Kogan is also an associate professor at the St Petersburg University -- a fact his Cambridge colleagues, aside from the head of the Department of Psychology, were not told.... In May 2014, Kogan set up GSR [Global Science Research] along with former University of Cambridge postdoctoral researcher, Joseph Chancellor.... Chancellor resigned from GSR in September 2015 [and] now works on Facebook's User Experience Research team." --safari...
... Zev Shalev & Tracie McElroy of Narrativ (Sept. 5, 2017): "While at Cambridge [Psychologist Michal] Kosinski met fellow researcher Aleksandr Kogan [a.k.a. Aleksandr Spectre]. Russian-born Kogan asked about using Kosinski's method for election manipulation. 'The whole thing began to stink, 'Kosinski told German Das Magazine. Kosinski ... broke off contact with Kogan.... Kogan ... used Kosinski's model to build an an algorithm to profile American voters.... Theresa Hong was a key digital officer for the Trump campaign. Hong told the BBC the data-set also included information about voting history.... In response to a question on how Cambridge Analytica would know all that information, Hong replied, 'that's their secret sauce.'... You'll recall Russian hackers were able to infiltrate voters rolls.... On February 17, the Trump Administration paid $496,000 upfront to Cambridge Analytica's parent company SCL in a contract with the U.S. State Department. SCL's role at the State Department is to 'assess the impact of foreign propaganda campaigns and provide intelligence agencies with predictions and insight on emerging threats,' according to the Washington Post.... SCL is also working a deal with the Pentagon to teach them 'how to conduct effective psychological operations,' says the Post. SCL has hired new staffers and opened a new office just up the street from the White House." --safari
On Facebook's origins of Cambridge Analytica. --safari
... Keep on Lyin'. Danny Hakim & Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times: "When the Russia question came up during a hearing at the British Parliament last month, Alexander Nix did not hesitate.... 'As far as I'm aware, we've never worked for a Russian company.... We've never worked with a Russian organization in Russia or any other country, and we don't have any relationship with Russia or Russian individuals,'... said Mr. Nix, head of a data consulting firm that advised the Trump campaign on targeting voters.... But Mr. Nix's business did have some dealings with Russian interests, according to company documents and interviews. Mr. Nix is a director of SCL Group, a British political and defense contractor, and chief executive of its American offshoot, Cambridge Analytica, which advised the Trump campaign. The firms' employees, who often overlap, had contact in 2014 and 2015 with executives from Lukoil, the Russian oil giant. Lukoil was interested in how data was used to target American voters...."
This Russia Thing, Ctd.
** Carol Leonnig & Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "President Trump's lawyer called on the Justice Department to immediately shut down the special counsel probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, in the wake of the firing of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Attorney John Dowd said in a statement that the investigation, now led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, was fatally flawed early on and 'corrupted' by political bias. He called on Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees that probe, to shut it down.... Dowd told The Washington Post on Saturday he was speaking for himself and not on Trump's behalf. Earlier Saturday, Dowd told the Daily Beast that he was speaking on behalf of the president and in his capacity as the president's attorney.... [Jeff] Sessions late Friday night fired McCabe, a little more than 24 hours before McCabe was set to retire -- a move that McCabe alleged was an attempt to 'slander' him and undermine the ongoing special counsel investigation into the Trump campaign.... An inspector general raised questions about McCabe's discussions with reporters about a case related to Hillary Clinton." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... ** Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: On Saturday, "This is a member of Trump's legal team floating a reversal of the team's long-standing policy of cooperating with Mueller's probe while suggesting it would find nothing. This is Dowd implying nothing valid could possibly come of the investigation. And it seems to lay the groundwork for either firing Mueller or a political clash over anything illegal Mueller does find." Read on. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
... Mrs. McCrabbie: All this is not hardball politics. It's Mob, Inc. Trump got to the White House by using illegal methods & foreign intervention -- not just Russians but also British. Australian (Julian Assage) & Canadian (Christopher Wylie) operatives -- by lying non-stop about Hillary Clinton & himself, by shutting down potential "problems" like Stormy Daniels, with hush money & possibly with threats of bodily harm, & now he's using his lawyers & other toadies (JeffBo, Devin Nunes) to further his coup. Remember how the mistreatment of Hillary was used as a cover to fire Comey? Once again, in the McCabe firing, the Trump cabal is using the leak of info against Clinton in furtherance of its aims. Trump himself may not be smart enough to have masterminded all of the means to effect & further this coup, but he is nonetheless overseeing it. ...
Il Capo della Casa Bianca is still gloating over his takedown of McCabe. In two tweets Saturday (via Nathalie Batiste of Mother Jones):
As the House Intelligence Committee has concluded, there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump Campaign. As many are now finding out, however, there was tremendous leaking, lying and corruption at the highest levels of the FBI, Justice & State. -- Donald Trump, Saturday afternoon
The Fake News is beside themselves that McCabe was caught, called out and fired. How many hundreds of thousands of dollars was given to wife's campaign by Crooked H friend, Terry M, who was also under investigation? How many lies? How many leaks? Comey knew it all, and much more! -- Donald Trump, Saturday afternoon
Trump's lawyers are probably freaking out. -- Nathalie Baptiste ...
... Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post: "From a political standpoint, McCabe's firing is likely to come across as vindictive, small-minded and cruel -- the essence of the Trump administration. For those within the FBI and the Justice Department..., if they needed further encouragement, this latest affront is likely to cause them to redouble their efforts to root out the extent of Russian interference in our election and any cooperation with the Trump campaign. Sessions's willingness to go along with this retaliatory move will not be received well within his department. He too has much to lose by enabling Trump's vendetta against DOJ.... Once more, a Trump-inspired stunt is likely to backfire." ...
... Jonathan Chait: "Trump is taking out his enemies & turning toward Robert Mueller.... The sacking of FBI staff member Andrew McCabe for alleged unauthorized leaking to the news media, and comments by Trump's lawyer John Dowd calling for the firing or Robert Mueller add to an ominous drumbeat.... He is aware that he has surrounded himself with people who consider him a moron or are trying to save the country from his madness, and he is relentlessly casting them off.... The case that he would leave Mueller alone relied on the assumption that Trump would stay contained forever. That assumption is crumbling.... Trump believes law enforcement should operate for his benefit, punishing his enemies and protecting his friends.... Trump is going to go after Mueller at some point because there is no other way for Trump's febrile mind to make sense of the world." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: On Friday, MSNBC legal analyst & former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks said that when Nixon began to threaten the Watergate special prosecutor (whom he eventually fired), members of the prosecutor's staff took home copies of documents to preserve them. I hope Mueller has a secret, huge, fireproof safe somewhere off-site where his staff is depositing copies of critical documents obtained during his investigation. ...
... Eric Tucker of the AP: "Andrew McCabe ... kept personal memos detailing interactions with the president that have been provided to the special counsel's office and are similar to the notes compiled by dismissed FBI chief James Comey, The Associated Press has learned.... McCabe's memos include details of his own interactions with the president, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation.... They also recount different conversations he had with Comey, who kept notes on meetings with Trump that unnerved him. Though the precise contents are unknown, the memos possibly could help substantiate McCabe's assertion that he was unfairly maligned by a White House he says had declared 'war' on the FBI and [Robert] Mueller's investigation. They almost certainly contain, as Comey's memos did, previously undisclosed details about encounters between the Trump administration and FBI that could be of interest to Mueller." ...
Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI - A great day for Democracy. Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made McCabe look like a choirboy. He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI! -- Donald Trump, just after midnight Saturday morning ...
... Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker: "Every sentence [of Trump's tweet] is a lie. Every sentence violates norms established by Presidents of both parties. Every sentence displays the pettiness and the vindictiveness of a man unsuited to the job he holds. The President has crusaded for months against McCabe, who is a crucial corroborating witness to Trump's attempts to stymie the F.B.I.'s investigation of his campaign's ties to Russia.... After McCabe was dismissed, on Friday night, he said in a statement that the 'investigation has focused on information I chose to share with a reporter through my public affairs officer and a legal counselor. As Deputy Director, I was one of only a few people who had the authority to do that. It was not a secret, it took place over several days, and others, including the Director, were aware of the interaction with the reporter. It was the type of exchange with the media that the Deputy Director oversees several times per week.' The idea that this alleged misdeed justifies such vindictive action against a distinguished public servant is laughable." ...
... Aaron Blake: "... President Trump's tweets about McCabe's situation pretty much erase any doubts that he applied political pressure on Sessions's decision.... Trump arguably terminated Comey more out of fear of how he was conducting the Russia investigation; he appears to have gone after McCabe because of a vendetta and possibly to send a signal to others in law enforcement who might run afoul of him. Trump's successful push to get McCabe fired is also undeniably more personal in nature, given McCabe was ousted just 26 hours before he was to gain full retirement benefits. McCabe was already basically out the door, and firing him now -- regardless of how valid the reasons in the yet-to-be-released inspector general's report (and those reasons might be completely valid!) -- comes off as even more spiteful." Former federal prosecutor Patrick Cotter compared Trump's "personal vindictiveness" toward McCabe to the behavior of FBI targets like "the mob or drug cartels." Blake writes that the IG's report could undercut McCabe's credibility, "But if it doesn't, Trump and Sessions have just created a very motivated enemy." ...
... Adam Serwer of the Atlantic: Jeff "Sessions's reasoning [for firing Andy McCabe] is difficult to independently evaluate, because the underlying Inspector General's report outlining McCabe's conduct has yet to be released. But Matthew Miller, a former Justice Department spokesman under Attorney General Eric Holder, suggested that even if the cause was legitimate, Sessions's timing reflects political pressure from the president.... Michael Bromwich, McCabe's attorney, said in a statement that Trump's attacks on McCabe were 'quite clearly designed to put inappropriate pressure on the Attorney General to act accordingly.'... 'I think there's a substantial amount of evidence that this is the result of retaliation on the part of the Justice Department and the White House,' [Dave] Gomez[, a former FBI agent & cybersecurity fellow at GWU,] told me[,] 'While there might have been sufficient cause to fire him under FBI rules, the way it was done, [shortly] before retirement, smacks of a vindictive and retaliatory nature.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Betsy Woodruff of the Daily Beast: "Andrew McCabe, formerly the deputy director of the FBI, has lawyered up. Michael Bromwich of the Bromwich Group confirmed to The Daily Beast that he is representing McCabe for the purposes of the matter that led to his firing.... Bromwich, who has been representing McCabe for several weeks, was formerly the inspector general of the Justice Department." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Nathalie Baptiste of Mother Jones: "Democrats are laying into Donald Trump after he had Attorney General Jeff Sessions fire deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe late Friday night, only days before McCabe was set to retire with full benefits. While Trump considered it a victory, leaders on the other side of the aisle had harsh words for the president." Batiste cites several examples. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Republican Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), who is retiring, agrees with Democrats:
... A Poke in the Eye to TrumpBo? Amber Phillips of the Washington Post: "At least one Democratic congressman has offered [Andrew] McCabe a temporary job so he can get full retirement benefits -- and McCabe appears to be considering. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) announced Saturday afternoon that he has offered McCabe a job to work on election security in his office, 'so that he can reach the needed length of service' to retire. 'My offer of employment to Mr. McCabe is a legitimate offer to work on election security,' Pocan said in a statement. 'Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of American democracy and both Republicans and Democrats should be concerned about election integrity.'... Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) tweeted that he'd consider hiring McCabe, too.... It's not immediately clear if getting fired from the FBI on a Friday and going to work on Capitol Hill on a Monday would solve McCabe's problems for certain, though at least one former federal official with knowledge of retirement rules says it probably would."
It occurs to me that Trump is getting rid of and/or threatening Cabinet members who might be sane enough to vote to invoke the 25th Amendment. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie
Nathalie Baptiste of Mother Jones: "On Friday, a retired four-star Army general tweeted that President Donald Trump is a 'serious threat' to national security. Barry McCaffrey. who worked as the White House's drug czar during the Bill Clinton > administration, said Trump is refusing to protect the United States from Russian attacks and appears to be 'under the sway' of Russian president Vladimir Putin." --safari
Maureen Dowd: "This was the week Donald Trump ... became the president we were always expecting. He ceased bothering to pretend that he was ever going to do the job in any normal sense of the word. He decided to totally own the whole, entire joke that he is. He started hiring people right off TV.... He has stopped bothering to pretend that he doesn't [make up stuff].... Now he finds it's clever to be a fabulist, concocting phony facts about the trade deficit when talking to the Canadian prime minister -- one of our closest allies -- or inventing a story for donors about how Japanese officials test American cars by dropping a bowling ball on their hoods from 20 feet up to see which ones dent.... It's the final Foxification of politics. Trump spends all his time watching Fox News, basing his opinions and tweets on it, and now he's simply becoming one with it."
Trump Defines Crime by Who Commits It. Chris Hayes in a New York Times op-ed: "No president since Richard Nixon has embraced the weaponized rhetoric of 'law and order' as avidly as Mr. Trump.... Time and again, the president denounces 'illegals' and 'criminals.'... He even advised an audience of police officers to rough up suspects they were arresting. Yet this tough-guy stance disappears when the accused are in the president's inner circle. In defending Rob Porter..., the president wondered whatever happened to due process while praising a man accused of giving his wife a black eye.... The president's boundless benefit of the doubt for the Rob Porters and Roy Moores of the world, combined with off-with-their-heads capriciousness for immigrants accused of even minor crimes, is ... the expression of a consistent worldview.... Crime is defined by who commits it.... And this is what 'law and order' means [to Trump & people like him]: the preservation of a certain social order, not the rule of law."
** Nuclear War Trump Card. Matthew Yglesias of Vox: "Secretary of Defense James Mattis is implicated in one of the largest business scandals of the past decades.... Theranos, led by CEO Elizabeth Holmes and president Ramesh 'Sunny' Balwani..., was founded on the promise of faster, cheaper, painless blood tests. But their technology was fake. Mattis not only served on Theranos's board ... but he earlier served as a key advocate of putting the company's [fake] technology ... to use inside the military while he was still serving as a general.... [A]ccepting six-figure checks to serve as a frontman for a con operation is the kind of thing that would normally count as a liability in American politics. But nobody wants to talk about it.... Everyone in Washington is more or less convinced that his presence in the Pentagon is the only thing standing between us and possible nuclear Armageddon. It's an absurd, intolerable situation, but that's life in America in 2018." --safari: Hangin' with Huckabee much, are we Mattis? (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Michael Cohen Has Been Threatening Women for a While. Frances Sellers of the Washington Post: "The president's personal attorney Michael Cohen interceded in 2011 to prevent porn star Stormy Daniels from airing her story about an alleged affair with Donald Trump, telling the agent who arranged for its publication that he could harm her career, according to a person involved in the discussions. Randy Spears, the ex-husband of agent Gina Rodriguez, told The Washington Post he answered the phone when Cohen called Rodriguez after she arranged for Daniels to earn $15,000 by telling her story to a celebrity publication. 'You tell Gina that if she ever wants to work in this town again, she'll call me immediately,' Spears said Cohen told him. He said Rodriguez, who declined to take Cohen's call, contacted her lawyer instead.... Daniels ... had first agreed to tell her story to Bauer Publications, publisher of celebrity tabloids, in 2011. She abruptly pulled out of the deal and the story was held."
HUD Officials Scam the Faithful. Jon Swaine of the Guardian: "One of the top officials in Donald Trump's housing department runs an opaque religious charity with a colleague who resigned from the administration when the Guardian found he was accused of fraud and exaggerated his biography. Johnson Joy, the chief information officer at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (Hud), is part of a Christian not-for-profit in Texas with Naved Jafry, who quit as a Hud adviser after inquiries about his professional history. Until this week the group, GJH Global Ministries, invited donations on its website. But it was not clear what work the group did and its mission statements and other information appeared to be copied from those of major churches. GJH was formed in 2014 but Stephen Austin, one of its directors, said in a brief interview: 'We literally did nothing.' Following inquiries by the Guardian, GJH's website was locked from public view." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
New York Times Editors: The ACLU has sued Kansas AG & former "brains" behind Trump's failed voter suppression commission Kris Kobach, who is representing himself in court. It is not going well for Kris & his attorney. "Mr. Kobach and his fellow true believers have struggled to defend a 2013 [Kansas] state law that requires prospective voters to prove their citizenship before they can register.... Unfortunately, the courts have not always brought the appropriate degree of skepticism to these laws.... More recently, courts have gotten better about questioning the evidence and rationale for these laws, striking down some of the strictest ones, in Texas and North Carolina, for deliberately discriminating against minority voters.... These laws masquerade as common-sense measures, but they are in truth anti-democratic shams, and it is gratifying to see them unravel in the harsh light of a federal courtroom."
Easter Island as Parable. Nicholas Kristof: "The statues [of Easter Island], or moai, were built over hundreds of years by Easter Islanders themselves -- a formerly advanced Polynesian society that was prosperous enough to make ever bigger and more ornate statues.... What destroyed this civilization was apparently deforestation in the 1500s and 1600s. The islanders cut down trees for cremation, for firewood, for canoes, for homes and perhaps for devices to move the statues.... Once the trees were gone, there were no more fruit and nuts, and it became impossible to build large canoes to hunt porpoises and to fish for tuna.... Once the trees were gone, there were no more fruit and nuts, and it became impossible to build large canoes to hunt porpoises and to fish for tuna.... I hope that some day far in the future, tourists don't swim through Midtown Manhattan and similarly reflect on the hubris and recklessness of early-21st-century Americans."
Beyond the Beltway
Nick Madigan, et al., of the New York Times: "Hours before the collapse of a pedestrian bridge at Florida International University on Thursday, the engineering company for the bridge held a meeting to discuss a crack on the structure, according to a statement from the university released early Saturday. The engineering company, Figg Bridge Engineers, delivered a technical presentation on the crack, and 'concluded there were no safety concerns and the crack did not compromise the structural integrity of the bridge,' the statement said. The construction manager on the project and representatives from the university and the state Department of Transportation attended the two-hour meeting, which was led by Figg's lead engineer on the project, W. Denney Pate."
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