Posted: February 21, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
Good Afternoon!!
I’m extra late today, because I was talking to Dakinikat on the phone. One of her cats, Keely, had two seizures in the middle of the night. They were apparently petit mal seizures, based on information we found on-line. There haven’t been any more seizures this morning, and Keely is behaving normally.
There are apparently multiple possible causes for seizures in cats, including epilepsy, contagious diseases, and brain injuries or brain tumors. Keely has never been outside, so a contagious disease seems unlikely. The problem is that Dakinikat can’t get to a vet today, because everything in New Orleans is shut down for Mardi Gras. I thought I’d mention this here in case anyone has had experience with this.
Now for today’s news . . .
From Kevin Liptak at CNN:
President Joe Biden on Tuesday marked a year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by celebrating the strength and resilience of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his people.
In a second major address from Warsaw, Poland, in less than a year, Biden pointed to his trip to the Ukrainian capital a day before as evidence that the democracies of the world are growing stronger in the face of autocracy.
“One year ago, the world was bracing for the fall of Kyiv. Well, I’ve just come from a visit to Kyiv and I can report Kyiv stands strong. Kyiv stands proud, it stands tall and most important, it stands free,” Biden said.
The speech comes hours after Putin delivered a major speech to the Federal Assembly, again falsely claiming that Ukraine and its allies in the West started the war and offering no signs he is pulling back in his ambitions.
According to senior US and European officials, Putin’s aims have not changed since he launched his invasion a year ago. Despite humiliating setbacks for his military and an apparent power struggle between the mercenary Wagner Group and the Russian defense ministry, Russia has recently made gains in the east. Putin’s troops appear poised to take the city of Bakhmut, the first significant Russian military victory in months.
Visiting the region this week, Biden hoped to again provide a rallying cry for Ukraine, demonstrating to Putin and Russia that Western resolve isn’t weakening. Harkening to the start of the war, Biden said the challenges of the invasion extended beyond Ukraine’s borders.
“When Russia invaded, it was not just Ukraine being tested. The whole world faced a test for the ages,” he said. “Europe was being tested. America was being tested. NATO was being tested.”
Some video from Aaron Rupar:
See more coverage from Rupar on Twitter.
Last night, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia will halt its participation in the START Treaty.
From The Washington Post article:
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in a state of the nation address Tuesday that Moscow is “suspending” its participation in the New START nuclear nonproliferation agreement, the last remaining arms control treaty between the United States and Russia.
Putin said that Russia will not “withdraw” completely from the treaty, which has been extended to run through Feb. 4, 2026, but that Russia would not allow NATO countries to inspect its nuclear arsenal. He accused the alliance of helping Ukraine conduct drone strikes on Russian air bases that host strategic bombers that are part of the country’s nuclear forces.
The 2011 treaty placed “verifiable limits” on the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads deployed by the countries.
“Our relations have degraded, and that’s completely and utterly the U.S.’s fault,” Putin said.
“If the U.S. conducts tests, then so will we,” Putin said. “Nobody should have any illusions that global strategic parity can be destroyed.” Other nonproliferation agreements, including the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, or INF, treaty have fallen apart in recent years.
Western officials reacted with alarm at Putin’s decision.
“The announcement by Russia that it’s suspending participation in New START is deeply unfortunate and irresponsible,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters. “We’ll be watching carefully to see what Russia actually does.”
Blinken noted the Biden administration’s role in extending New START in 2021. “We extended New START because it was clearly in the security interests of our country and actually in the security interests of Russia,” he said, adding: “We remain ready to talk about strategic arms limitations at any time with Russia irrespective of anything else going on in the world or in our relationship.”
Another large aftershock has hit Turkey and Syria.
BBC News:
Rescuers are once again searching for people trapped under rubble in Turkey after another earthquake hit the country, killing at least six people.
A 6.4 magnitude tremor struck near the city of Antakya near the border with Syria, where massive quakes devastated both countries on 6 February.
The earlier quakes killed 44,000 people in Turkey and Syria with tens of thousands more left homeless.
Buildings weakened by those tremors collapsed in both countries on Monday.
Turkey’s disaster and emergency agency says the 6.4 earthquake occurred at 20:04 local time (17:04 GMT) at a depth of 10km (6.2 miles).
This was followed by a 5.8 aftershock three minutes later and dozens of subsequent aftershocks that were not as severe.
The health minister, Dr Fahrettin Koca, said 294 people have been injured – 18 of them seriously….
Reports from the city of Antakya spoke of fear and panic in the streets as ambulances and rescue crews tried to reach the worst affected areas where the walls of badly damaged buildings had collapsed.
“I thought the earth was going to split open under my feet,” local resident Muna al-Omar told Reuters news agency, crying as she held her seven-year-old son. She had been in a tent in a park in the city centre when the new earthquakes hit.
This is stunning news. Popular Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline is resigning from the House in June.
From CBS News:
Rep. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat who served as a House impeachment manager during former President Trump’s second impeachment process, will leave Congress to be the CEO of a foundation, he announced Tuesday.
Cicilline, 61, will leave Congress on June 1, a year and a half before his seventh two-year term is up, to be president and CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation. Cicilline was the mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, before joining Congress in 2011.
Cicilline’s departure will prompt a special election.
“For more than a decade, the people of Rhode Island entrusted me with a sacred duty to represent them in Congress, and it is a responsibility I put my heart and soul into every day to make life better for the residents and families of our state,” Cicilline said. “The chance to lead the Rhode Island Foundation was unexpected, but it is an extraordinary opportunity to have an even more direct and meaningful impact on the lives of residents of our state. The same energy and commitment I brought to elected office, I will now bring as CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation, advancing their mission to ensure all Rhode Islanders can achieve economic security, access quality, affordable healthcare, and attain the education and training that will set them on a path to prosperity.”
A member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and House Judiciary Committee, Cicilline was an impeachment manager for the second Trump impeachment over the former president’s actions leading up to and during the Capitol assault of Jan. 6, 2021.
Bennie Thompson attacked Kevin McCarthy for giving January 6 video to Tucker Carlson.
From The Hill:
House Homeland Security Committee ranking Democrat Bennie Thompson (Miss.) on Monday blasted Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for handing over tens of thousands of hours of riot footage from Jan. 6, 2021, to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
“It’s hard to overstate the potential security risks if this material were to be used irresponsibly,” Thompson said in a statement.
McCarthy’s office granted about 41,000 hours of footage of the Capitol riots to Carlson, Axios first reported. A Fox News spokesperson confirmed the development to The Hill on Monday.
“If Speaker McCarthy has indeed granted Tucker Carlson — a Fox host who routinely spreads misinformation and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s poisonous propaganda — and his producers access to this sensitive footage, he owes the American people an explanation of why he has done so and what steps he has taken to address the significant security concerns at stake,” Thompson said.
The Mississippi Democrat headed the select House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attacks for nearly a year and a half before releasing its final report in December. The committee had interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, read through documents and reviewed troves of video footage of the riots during its investigation.
Carlson has accused the select committee of “lying” about what happened on Jan. 6, and has boasted that Fox News did not cover the proceedings, or what he called “propaganda,” on live television.
One more shocking story, before I wrap this up:
From Raw Story: Given a chance to apologize for the theft of a Black man’s heart, Virginia House Republicans declined.
In what can only be characterized as a stunningly callous decision, last week members of a Rules subcommittee of Virginia’s House of Delegates killed a resolution to acknowledge and apologize for the state-sanctioned medical misuse of Black bodies in Virginia, a common practice in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Four of the subcommittee’s five members – including House Majority Leader Terry Kilgore, R-Scott, Speaker Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, Del. Barry Knight, R-Virginia Beach, and Del. Kathy Byron, R-Bedford – voted to lay SJ 274 on the table, politi-speak for postponing any action on the legislation indefinitely. The measure had sailed through the Senate with unanimous approval and, at least in the mind of Phillip Thompson, who came up with the idea of the bill, was a no-brainer, low-lift way for the state to recognize the wrongs of the past.
“I thought it had a chance because it’s a very innocuous bill,” Thompson told me. “We weren’t asking for reparations, nothing like that; we just wanted a real apology.”
An apology would be the very least the state could do, considering Virginia institutions’ horrible history of using Black people, living and dead, as guinea pigs.
Thompson said he got the idea for the resolution after reading a Politico article in late 2022 that explained how Black laborer Bruce Tucker’s body was violated in the name of a medical miracle after his accidental death in 1968.
A day after he died from a fatal fall, and without his family’s knowledge or consent, Tucker’s “heart was sewn into the chest of a white business executive” at the Medical College of Virginia, the forebear of what is now Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Medicine, according to Politico’s report. “It was one of the first heart transplants in the country, and it gave the med school the status it had sought at the forefront of transplant science.”
Tucker’s sad fate also underscored Richmond’s record of body snatching, the practice of stealing the bodies of deceased Black people for doctors-in-training to practice dissection. “Resurrectionists” were known to lurk in Black cemeteries in Richmond, seeking to abscond with the remains of the newly dead, according to the documentary “Until the Well Runs Dry: Medicine and the Exploitation of Black Bodies,” directed by Dr. Shawn Utsey, former chair of VCU’s African American Studies Department.
There’s more at the link. The history of racism in this country is so stunning. It’s enough to take your breath away.
Have a nice Tuesday Sky Dancers! I’ll see you in the comment thread.
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Posted: February 18, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
Happy Caturday!!
Lorenzo the Cat has learned the identity of the handsome Turkish man who went viral after he rescued a cat from the rubble of the earthquake. His name is Ali Cacas, and he is on Twitter.
Hola!: Pet of the Week: Cat Saved from Turkey Earthquake Refuses to Leave his Rescuer’s Side.
Following the tragic 7.7 and 7.6 magnitude earthquake in Turkey and Syria, search teams worked hard to help the victims of the terrifying natural disaster. Members of the Mardin Fire Department were able to find many survivors, even 11 days after the two earthquakes.
Among the survivors, there was a cat trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building in the district of Defne. Ali Cakas, one of the members of the rescue team, found the adorable cat 9 days after the tragedy and decided to name him Enkas, which translates to Rubble.
The rescued cat instantly became a sign of hope amid the immense tragedy, not just because he was able to survive with minor injuries, but also because he showed how grateful he was with the 33-year-old rescuer.
Rubble became viral after the search team noticed that he decided to stick around. The cat showed his appreciation by not leaving Ali’s side, standing on his shoulder after being found. But the incredible story of Rubble doesn’t end here, as Ali decided to take him home and adopted him, becoming the mascot of the Mardin Fire Department.
The team continues to work day and night to find more survivors, including pets that might still be trapped in the rubble.
This bonus rescued cat is from Ukraine.
Now for the news of the day–interspersed with more cat tweets for relief.
Vice President Harris gave a major speech in Germany this morning. The Washington Post: Russia has committed ‘crimes against humanity’ in Ukraine, Harris declares.
Vice President Harris said Saturday that the United States believes strongly that Russia has committed crimes against humanity and needs to be held to account for ghastly actions that have been describedin intelligence reports and international headlines, including bombing a maternity hospital, forcibly relocating and “reeducating” Ukrainian children, and, just months ago, the suspected sexual assault of a 4-year-old girl.
“In the case of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, we have examined the evidence, we know the legal standards, and there is no doubt: These are crimes against humanity,” Harris said.
Speaking in moral terms a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, Harris told diplomatic, intelligence and defense leaders gathered at the Munich Security Conference that the world has a humanitarian and strategic interest in continued support of the besieged nation, even as the White House has warned Kyiv that fissures and fatigue threaten its global support a year into the conflict.
Harris stressed that standing firm against Russian aggression sends a message to “other authoritarian powers that could seek to bend the world to their will through coercion, disinformation and even a brute force.”
Later, she added, “We have come together to stand for our common values and our common interests. And our common humanity.”
You’ve probably heard about this awful story about child labor. NBC News: Federal officials say more than 100 children worked in dangerous jobs for slaughterhouse cleaning firm.
The Labor Department said Friday it found 102 children as young as 13 working hazardous overnight jobs cleaning slaughterhouses in eight states in what it called a “corporate-wide failure” by one of the largest food sanitation companies in the country, Packers Sanitation Services Inc.
In a statement, the company said, “We are pleased to have finalized this settlement figure as part of our previously announced December resolution with the Department of Labor (DOL) that ends their inquiry. We have been crystal clear from the start: Our company has a zero-tolerance policy against employing anyone under the age of 18 and fully shares the DOL’s objective of ensuring full compliance at all locations.”
“As soon as we became aware of the DOL’s allegations, we conducted multiple additional audits of our employee base. … Our audits and DOL’s investigation confirmed that none of the individuals DOL cited as under the age of 18 work for the company today, and many had separated from employment with PSSI multiple years ago. The DOL has also not identified any managers aware of improper conduct that are currently employed by PSSI.”
“We are fully committed to working with DOL to make additional improvements to enforce our prohibition of employing anyone under the age of 18.”
It seems kind of unbelievable that they bosses didn’t know about this.
Packers Sanitation Services has paid a $1.5 million fine for the violations. The fine amount is dictated by the Fair Labor Standards Act, which allows a penalty of $15,138 for each minor who was employed in violation of the law, according to the Labor Department.
The Labor Department says the children who were working overnight shifts used “caustic chemicals to clean razor-sharp saws.” The company employs 17,000 workers at 700 sites nationwide.
“Our investigation found Packers Sanitation Services’ systems flagged some young workers as minors, but the company ignored the flags. When the Wage and Hour Division arrived with warrants, the adults — who had recruited, hired and supervised these children — tried to derail our efforts to investigate their employment practices,” said Michael Lazzeri, regional administrator for the division in Chicago….
Advocates and lawyers for the children say some of the child workers for PSSI were unaccompanied minors who recently came across the southern border. Unaccompanied minors are processed by the Border Patrol and then turned over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement within the Department of Health and Human Services. The children are then matched with sponsors who usually have some link to their families.
It figures.
Another miserable white man went on a shooting rampage in Mississippi yesterday. CNN: Man arrested after 6 killed, including suspect’s ex-wife, in series of shootings in Mississippi, sheriff says.
Six people are dead and another was wounded Friday in a series of shootings in Tate County, Mississippi after a man opened fire on his ex-wife and potentially other family members, Tate County Sheriff Brad Lance told CNN.
The suspect, Richard Dale Crum, 52, was arrested after the alleged rampage and is facing charges of first-degree murder in connection with the case, the sheriff’s office said. Additional charges are expected to be filed, the department said.
Authorities got the first 911 call around 11 a.m. ET after the suspect pulled into the parking lot of a store in Arkabutla, a small rural town in northern Mississippi, and fired into the car next to him where he fatally shot the driver, Lance said. Another person in the vehicle was not injured.
Lance said the suspected gunman went into the store then took off, driving to his ex-wife’s home. Lance said the suspect shot and killed his ex-wife before striking her fiancé, who was also in the residence.
Deputies caught up to the suspect after finding a vehicle matching its description in front of a residence that authorities determined belonged to him, Lance said.
On a small road behind the suspect’s home, authorities found two men who had been shot and killed. One was found on the road and the other was in a vehicle, Lance said.
Another two victims were found shot and killed in a house neighboring the suspect’s home, Lance said. According to Lance, deputies believe the suspect might be related to the victims, a man and woman.
You’d think even the gun-loving Republicans would be getting sick to death of this, but it seems they will put up with any amount of violence and death to keep their precious assault rifles.
Another Virginia 6-year-old took a gun to school on Thursday. The Virginian Pilot: 6-year-old brings handgun to Norfolk elementary school, police say; mother charged.
Norfolk police charged the mother of a 6-year-old whom police said brought a handgun to Little Creek Elementary School on Thursday.
According to a police press release, police were called to Little Creek Elementary located at 7901 Nancy Drive around 3:30 p.m. Thursday for a report of a student having a weapon in school.
The handgun was turned over to police by a school staff member, and no injuries were reported.
The mother was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor and allowing access to a loaded firearm by children. She was issued a summons. The Virginian-Pilot is not identifying her to avoid the possibility of identifying the child….
Meanwhile, Newport News police are still investigating whether to bring charges against the parents or anyone else in the case of a 6-year-old first grader who shot his teacher at Richneck Elementary School on Jan. 6.
Thank goodness this kid didn’t shoot anyone. Parents have to be charged for these incidents.
At The Grid, Eric Sandy has a deep dive on the train derailment disaster in Ohio: Inside the hell of East Palestine: Unanswered questions, frustration and the lingering threat of toxic chemicals.
EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — As the wind picked up here, on Wednesday, several thousand residents joined public officials, law enforcement officers and members of various news media in a long line leading to the local high school, where a highly anticipated town hall meeting awaited.
By that point — 12 days after a Norfolk Southern train ran off the tracks on the east side of town, prompting an evacuation and a controlled burn of vinyl chloride, and dispersing a wave of other toxic chemicals into the environment — the 4,700 residents of this village were eager to translate that nightmare into plain English. Is their drinking water safe? Will their pets be all right? Will this disaster have any long-term health impacts on the population?
These are straightforward questions with complicated answers.
The residents of East Palestine and nearby communities are trying to square their lived experience — the evacuation, the sight of the toxic plume, the cloying odor drifting through the village — with public health officials’ insistence that the air and water is safe and contaminant-free as of now. Put simply, these families do not know how to plan for the near- or long-term future, and, in an already tenuous economic environment in rural Ohio, that level of uncertainty is a major problem. Even the basic question of who to trust is up for debate. In the midst of this calamity, who’s at the wheel?
Outside the high school, as the crowd shuffled forward an inch at a time, East Palestine residents Cory and Dawn White traded stories with others in line. They were coming to this meeting in search of clarity about a lot of things — about the water quality, yes, but also about the nuances of soil sampling and about the recovery plans for the city. But, like anyone in attendance at the town hall that night could attest, nailing down an answer to most any question — health-related, environment-related, finance-related, you name it — is no easy task.
“That’s the scary part,” Cory said. “Nobody knows what’s going to happen, and no one can give you answers.”
This is best story I’ve seen on the East Palestine disaster. Read the rest at the Grid link.
Did you hear about the Republican operative with longtime ties to Ron and Rand Paul who was convicted of funneling Russian money to Trump in 2016? Russ Choma at Mother Jones: GOP Operative Sentenced to 18 Months for Funneling Russian Money to Trump Campaign.
On Friday, a federal judge in Washington, DC sentenced a veteran GOP operative to 18 months in prison for funneling $25,000 from a Russian businessman to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Jesse Benton, a longtime aide to both Ron and Rand Paul, was convicted in November on six related charges. The court found that he and another GOP operative accepted $100,000 from Roman Vasilenko, a St. Petersburg-based influencer who wanted photos with Trump to display on his social media accounts. Benton kept most of the money for himself but donated $25,000 to the Republican National Committee as part of a plan to secure two tickets to a fundraising event for Trump in Philadelphia. At the event, Vasilenko was allowed to sit close to Trump at a roundtable discussion and later took a photo with him. Foreign nationals, like Vasilenko, are not allowed to donate to US political campaigns or committees, and it is illegal to make a donation on behalf of someone else.
Benton, who is married to Ron Paul’s grandaughter, was previously convicted in 2016of a scheme to pay an Iowa state senator to switch his endorsement from Michele Bachmann to Ron Paul ahead of the state’s 2012 republican presidential caucus. In that case, Benton, after pleading that he had reformed and had a family to support, was sentenced to home confinement. Just six days later, the Trump fundraiser at which Vasilenko met Trump took place. A few weeks after that, Benton was caught in an undercover sting orchestrated by the British newspaper The Telegraph, whose reporters posed as representatives of a Chinese businessman who wanted to donate $2 million to Trump’s campaign. Benton told them he could arrange it. He apparently violated the terms of his home confinement in the Iowa case to meet with the undercover reporters.
Read more at Mother Jones.
https://twitter.com/srvbluesrock/status/1624161574289039360?s=20
One more before I wrap this up. House Republicans have another George Santos on their hands.
Insider: GOP Rep. Andy Ogles claimed to fight international sex crimes and be an economic expert. Like George Santos, his real resume tells another story.
During far-right Republican Andy Ogles’ successful campaign for Congress last fall, he advertised himself as a successful entrepreneur and real estate investor, a tax policy expert, and the former leader of an international nonprofit rescuing sex trafficking victims.
But the freshman member from Tennessee embellished many aspects of his resume, according to interviews, business and property records, tax filings, and local newspaper archives. Ogles’ inflations invite comparisons to his Republican congressional colleague, Rep. George Santos of New York, who has seen nearly every aspect of his past called into question.
Ogles’ business experience seems to be limited to owning two restaurants, a short-lived travel agency, and becoming licensed as an insurance agent. His real estate investments appear limited to a few adjacent parcels of land, including one he lives on, in rural Tennessee, and he reported no rental income from his properties Insider found.
Ogles claimed he studied economics and international relations, and worked at two right-wing think tanks that focus on economic policy. But his educational credentials and supposed policy expertise were thrown into question this week by Nashville’s NewsChannel5, which reported Ogles had studied languages in college – not economics or international policy, as he had claimed.
Ogles’ supposed experience rescuing sex trafficking victims helped propel him into national headlines in his first week in Congress. But his representations about that work are vastly overstated, according to public records and a former manager at an anti-trafficking nonprofit where Ogles worked.
There’s more at the link. Also check out these local stories:
NewsChannel5 Nashville: Congressman Andy Ogles, graduate of respected Vanderbilt, Dartmouth business schools? Not really.
NewsChannel5 Nashville: Businessman, economist, cop, international sex crimes expert? The stories of Congressman Andy Ogles.
Sorry there wasn’t a lot of good news today. What stories are you following?
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Posted: February 16, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
At Dacha, by Isaak Brodsky, socialist realism
Good Afternoon!!
BREAKING…Parts of the Georgia special grand jury report were just released. You can read the report here. Just posted stories:
The Washington Post: Parts of Georgia grand jury report on Trump election investigation released.
A Georgia judge released parts of a report produced by an Atlanta-area special grand jury investigating efforts by President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia — though the panel’s recommendations on potential charges in that investigation remain secret.
The five-page excerpt made public on Thursday revealed that a majority of the grand jury concluded that some witnesses may have lied under oath during their testimony before the panel and recommended that charges be filed. The grand jury did not identify those witnesses in the unsealed excerpt.
“A majority of the grand jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it,” the report reads. “The grand jury recommends that the district attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling.”
The unsealed document offered no major clues about the grand jury’s other findings — though the panel pointedly noted that it unanimously agreed that Georgia’s 2020 presidential vote had not been marred by “widespread fraud” as has been claimed by Trump and his allies.
“The grand jury heard extensive testimony on the subject of alleged election fraud from poll workers, investigators, technical experts, and State of Georgia employees and officials, as well as from persons still claiming that such fraud took place,” the report reads. “We find by a unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election.”
The New York Times: Live Updates: Georgia Grand Jury in Trump Inquiry Sees Signs of Perjury by Witnesses.
A special grand jury examined attempts by Donald J. Trump and the former president’s allies to overturn his 2020 loss in the state. A small portion of its report released on Thursday made it difficult determine what, if any, indictments the jury recommended….
A court on Thursday released portions of a report by a special grand jury investigating whether Donald J. Trump and his allies interfered in the presidential election in Georgia in an attempt to overturn the 2020 result. The released portions — just six total pages — do not delve into the grand jury’s conclusions or say whether they recommended indictments related to election interference.
But the jurors said they believed that at least one unnamed witness who testified in the inquiry may have committed perjury and should face indictment. They also found “that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election,” rejecting arguments made by Mr. Trump and his supporters.
Here are the details:
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The publicly released portion of the report does not mention the names of anyone that the jurors think should or should not be indicted. Nor does it mention, beyond potential perjury, which Georgia laws the jurors believe may have been violated. Read the released parts of the report here.
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A judge decided to release only a small portion of the grand jury’s full report. Here’s why.
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The special jury in the Trump case heard months of private testimony from 75 witnesses, including the former president’s allies and state officials. But it will be up to the local district attorney to decide whether to bring any charges.
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A central element of the investigation is the now-famous call by Mr. Trump on Jan. 2, 2021, during which he told Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, that he needed to “find” 11,780 votes — the number he needed to overcome Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s lead in the state.
View of Mylor Creek, Mike Hall, British
Lots of Trump investigation news broke yesterday. We learned that Mark Meadows received a subpoena from Special Counsel Jack Smith in January, before Mike Pence got his. CNN: Exclusive: Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows subpoenaed by special counsel in Jan. 6 investigation.
Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows has been subpoenaed by the special counsel investigating the former president and his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s office is seeking documents and testimony related to January 6, and Meadows received the subpoena sometime in January, the source said. An attorney for Meadows declined to comment.
The move to subpoena one of Trump’s most senior aides – in addition to the recent subpoena of former Vice President Mike Pence, as CNN reported last week – marks the latest significant step in the special counsel’s investigation into Trump’s role in seeking to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election.
Smith also is simultaneously investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents after leaving office. While the subpoena is related to January 6, Meadows also may be of interest in the documents investigation. He was one of Trump’s designees to the National Archives and played a role in discussions around returning government records in his possession.
The special counsel’s subpoena could set up a clash with the Justice Department and Meadows over executive privilege. The former White House chief of staff, citing executive privilege, previously fought a subpoena from a special grand jury in Georgia that was investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. A judge later ordered Meadows to testify, finding him “material and necessary to the investigation.”
Meadows was involved in the infamous phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and in a December 2020 White House meeting about election fraud claims. Meadows also visited a site where an audit of Georgia’s election was underway and sent emails to Justice Department officials about unsubstantiated fraud allegations.
On January 6, Meadows was in and out of the Oval Office and witness to Trump’s actions as rioters overtook the US Capitol that day.
The recent subpoena for Meadows also underscores the aggressive nature of the special counsel’s probe.
I’ve seen many people saying this means that Meadows is not cooperating, so I found this tweet from a former federal prosecutor interesting:
More Jack Smith news from CNN: Special counsel is locked in at least 8 secret court battles in Trump investigations.
Special counsel Jack Smith is locked in at least eight secret court battles that aim to unearth some of the most closely held details about Donald Trump’s actions after the 2020 election and handling of classified material, according to sources and court records reviewed by CNN.
The outcome of these disputes could have far-reaching implications, as they revolve around a 2024 presidential candidate and could lead courts to shape the law around the presidency, separation of powers and attorney-client confidentiality in ways they’ve never done before.
Yet almost all of the proceedings are sealed, and filings and decisions aren’t public….
A key sealed case revealed Wednesday is an attempt to force more answers about direct conversations between Trump and his defense attorney Evan Corcoran, where the Justice Department is arguing the investigation found evidence the conversations may be part of furthering or covering up a crime related to the Mar-a-Lago document boxes.
House of Squam Light, Gloucester, Edward Hopper
About half a dozen cases are still ongoing in court, either before Chief Judge Beryl Howell or in the appeals court above her, the DC Circuit. Most appear to follow the typical arc of miscellaneous cases that arise during grand jury investigations, where prosecutors sometimes use the court to enforce their subpoenas.
More challenges from subpoenaed witnesses – including former Vice President Mike Pence – are expected to be filed in the coming days, likely under seal as well. Pence may raise novel questions about the protections around the vice presidency….
Investigations that implicate government officials often beget sealed court proceedings, because confidential grand jury witnesses become more likely to assert privileges that prompt prosecutors to ask judges to compel more answers, criminal law experts say.
“I think we are in extraordinary times. Part of it is I think President Trump continues to assert these theories long after they’ve been batted away by the court,” Neil Eggleston, a former White House counsel who argued for executive privilege during the Clinton administration and the Whitewater investigation.
That train derailment in Ohio has begun getting more attention. Here’s the latest.
Politico: ‘The longer the train, the heavier the train’ — Ohio disaster calls attention to freight’s growing bulk.
The toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, is drawing new attention to the dangers of increasingly long freight trains — part of a series of cost-savings efforts by freight railroads that have drawn scrutiny from the industry’s critics.
The sheer bulk of the 150-car train that went off the rails Feb. 3 is just one factor investigators are expected to consider amid the unfolding ecological disaster near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, which caused a massive fireball, forced an evacuation and has left a lingering odor, fears of lasting contamination and thousands of dead fish. But union officials, regulators and congressional researchers say the industry’s trend toward ever-growing train lengths is causing a host of safety concerns that regulators need to address.
“The longer the train, the heavier the train, the more wear and tear it puts on the actual rail itself, as well as the equipment,” said Jared Cassity, a legislative director for the country’s largest rail union, SMART-Transportation Division. “We’re seeing more wear and tear. We’re seeing more unintended train separations, which is where the train breaks apart.”
The Ohio derailment is still under investigation by multiple agencies, including the Department of Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB, an independent agency, has said preliminarily that an overheated wheel bearing on one of the cars is partially the culprit for the derailment.
However, derailments like these typically have multiple points of failure, and the NTSB’s investigation will likely take over a year to complete. Such NTSB probes typically examine any conceivable cause that could have led to a crash, including equipment malfunctions, poor system design, the lack of safety precautions, inadequate training, crew fatigue and myriad other factors.
The Guardian: What do we know about the Ohio train derailment and toxic chemical leak?
On the night of Friday 3 February, at least 50 out of 150 train cars of a train heading from Conway, Pennsylvania, to Madison, Illinois, derailed. The train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, a town of about 5,000 residents along the Ohio and Pennsylvania border. A huge fire that spanned the length of the derailed cars erupted. No injuries or deaths were reported.
Marshall’s House, Edward Hopper
Residents within a one-mile radius of the derailment were evacuated as officials noted that over a dozen cars carrying vinyl chloride, a carcinogenic chemical, were involved in the derailment and could have been exposed to the fire.
On Monday 6 February, officials enacted a mandatory evacuation, threatening to arrest residents who refused to evacuate, as fear of an explosion rose. Governor Mike DeWine told residents that leaving was “a matter of life and death”. Crews ended up releasing toxic chemicals from five derailed tanker cars to prevent an explosion. Small holes were made into the train cars, whose chemicals were released into pits that were lit on fire. Pictures of the chemical release showed huge clouds of black smoke billowing into the sky over homes.
Evacuated residents, who were staying at shelters and schools, were given the clear to return to their homes on Wednesday 8 February as officials deemed air and water samples safe for residents.
On the chemicals that were released:
The most concerning chemical being carried by the derailed train was vinyl chloride, which is used to make polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, a hard resin used in plastic products. Vinyl chloride is colorless and highly flammable. It has been linked to a rare form of liver cancer, as well as other types of cancer like leukemia and lung cancer. Short-term exposure effects include dizziness and drowsiness, while high exposure can lead to hospitalization and death. Another chemical on board was butyl acrylate, also used in plastic production.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) later released information that showed three previously unreported chemicals were also released upon the derailment: ethylhexyl acrylate, isobutylene and ethylene glycol monobutyl ether. Exposure to the chemicals can cause shortness of breath, burning in the skin and eyes, coughing, headaches and nausea, among other symptoms.
In total, the EPA has reported five chemicals that were contained in rail cars that were “derailed, breached and/or on fire”, in a letter the agency wrote to Norfolk Southern.
There’s more at the link, if you’re interested.
This story on Elon Musk’s giant ego is a couple of days old, but I wanted post it, just in case you haven’t heard about it. Platformer: Yes, Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first.
At 2:36 on Monday morning, James Musk sent an urgent message to Twitter engineers.
“We are debugging an issue with engagement across the platform,” wrote Musk, a cousin of the Twitter CEO, tagging “@here” in Slack to ensure that anyone online would see it. “Any people who can make dashboards and write software please can you help solve this problem. This is high urgency. If you are willing to help out please thumbs up this post.”
By Andrew Wyeth
When bleary-eyed engineers began to log on to their laptops, the nature of the emergency became clear: Elon Musk’s tweet about the Super Bowl got less engagement than President Joe Biden’s.
Biden’s tweet, in which he said he would be supporting his wife in rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles, generated nearly 29 million impressions. Musk, who also tweeted his support for the Eagles, generated a little more than 9.1 million impressions before deleting the tweet in apparent frustration.
In the wake of those losses — the Eagles to the Kansas City Chiefs, and Musk to the president of the United States — Twitter’s CEO flew his private jet back to the Bay Area on Sunday night to demand answers from his team.
Within a day, the consequences of that meeting would reverberate around the world, as Twitter users opened the app to find that Musk’s posts overwhelmed their ranked timeline. This was no accident, Platformer can confirm: after Musk threatened to fire his remaining engineers, they built a system designed to ensure that Musk — and Musk alone — benefits from previously unheard-of promotion of his tweets to the entire user base.
A bit more:
In recent weeks, Musk has been obsessed with the amount of engagement his posts are receiving. Last week, Platformer broke the news that he fired one of two remaining principal engineers at the company after the engineer told him that views on his tweets are declining in part because interest in Musk has declined in general.
His deputies told the rest of the engineering team this weekend that if the engagement issue wasn’t “fixed,” they would all lose their jobs as well.
Late Sunday night, Musk addressed his team in-person. Roughly 80 people were pulled in to work on the project, which had quickly become priority number one at the company. Employees worked through the night investigating various hypotheses about why Musk’s tweets weren’t reaching as many people as he thought they should and testing out possible solutions.
There’s more at the link, believe it or not. I never thought anyone could be more of a malignant narcissist than Donald Trump, but Musk might actually surpass him.
I’ll end there. Please share your thoughts on these stories, and post links to stories you have found interesting.
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Posted: February 14, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
Happy Valentine’s Day!!
I’m not a big fan of this holiday, but if you celebrate it, I hope you enjoy the day. Meanwhile, today’s news is the same old same old unloving mess.
I mostly ignored the news yesterday; I’m trying to relax because I’m still recovering from my cold. Finally, at 10PM, I turned on MSNBC only to learn about another school shooting, this time at Michigan State University.
CBS News: 3 students killed, 5 critically wounded in shooting at Michigan State University, authorities say.
Three Michigan State University students were killed and five others were critically wounded in a shooting at the university Monday night, authorities said. The gunman was later found dead in Lansing of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.
Law enforcement officials at the university identified the shooter as Anthony Dwayne McRae, a 43-year-old man with no obvious affiliation to the school. McRae was neither a current nor former student or faculty member at Michigan State, said Chris Rozman, the university’s interim deputy chief of police and public safety.
The suspect was previously sentenced to 18 months in state prison on a weapons charge, according to the Michigan Department of Corrections. Arrest records show he was convicted and ultimately sentenced in November 2019 for possessing a loaded firearm inside a vehicle, which is illegal in Michigan without a concealed carry license. He was discharged in May 2021.
Michigan State Police initially confirmed the death toll on Monday night, announcing that five people were hospitalized with injuries and noting that all were in critical condition. Four of the five students transported to Sparrow Hospital in Lansing underwent surgeries for their injuries overnight, a hospital representative said. The fifth student was immediately admitted to the medical center’s critical care unit, and all five remained in critical condition on Tuesday morning, according to the representative.
Police located McRae’s body in the city of Lansing at around 11:30 p.m. Monday, Rozman said, thanking a caller whose tip led authorities to the suspect.
The shooter left a note that reportedly made a threat against a school in New Jersey. CBS Philadelphia: NJ school closure linked to Michigan State University shooting.
EWING TOWNSHIP, N.J. (CBS) — Ewing Township police say all public and private schools are closed Tuesday due to a threat that was connected to the suspect involved in the mass shooting at Michigan State University.
An investigation into the East Lansing, Michigan shooting led to a possible connection between 43-year-old Anthony McRae and Ewing, New Jersey.
Police say a note was found in McRae’s pocket “indicating a threat to two Ewing Public Schools.”
All five Ewing Township public schools closed Tuesday morning “out of an abundance of caution,” according to police.
There are additional officers from Ewing police and other agencies at public and private schools.
They plan to open the schools again tomorrow.
It’s difficult to know how to react to these shootings that have become almost routine in the U.S. The GOP and the gun lobby are wholly responsible for these tragic events. I can’t imagine why any young person today would vote for a Republican. Here’s a reaction from Detroit Free Press columnist (and mother of a young boy) Nancy Kaffer.
In seven hours, I have to tell my son.
He went to bed at 9 p.m., because he’s 12 and it’s a school night, before I saw the news alerts rolling in: A shooting on Michigan State University’s campus. The shooter still on the loose. One person, reportedly, slain; five at Sparrow Hospital. It’s 11:30 p.m., and I’m watching the news. The dead now number three, and there’s a blurry picture of the shooter on my screen. I hope at least they catch the guy before my son wakes up. At least then I can say it’s over.
I can’t not tell him, not anymore. He has a phone. He has a laptop, required for school. He has friends with phones and laptops and older siblings. I had to tell him about Oxford, in November of 2021; he listened, quietly — he is not, by nature, quiet — and asked: “Are you sending me to school tomorrow?”
His first active shooter drill was kindergarten. I didn’t know. They didn’t have active shooter drills when I was his age. There had been a substitute teacher, clearly as blindsided by the drill as any of her young charges. Administrators used a code name to communicate the actions of the fictional shooter. It made the drill seem real. He came home that day earnestly explaining to me that his class had to hide in the bathroom, because a bad guy had been in the school….
This isn’t the first time; it won’t be the last. I know what I’m supposed to say. I’m meant to be empathetic but matter of fact, to validate his feelings, but make him feel safe. I’m told to watch him for signs of trauma. I have to keep my cool. If I lose it, he will, too.
The children at MSU are older than he is, six or 10 or 12 years; a gulf to him, to me, the blink of an eye. Wasn’t it just yesterday that he took his first steps?
I hope you’ll go read the whole column. What a time to be a child–or a parent. How much longer will we tolerate this horrendous, meaningless violence in this country?
Mike Pence plans to fight the subpoena he received from Jack Smith’s January 6 Grand Jury.
From Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein:
Mike Pence is preparing to resist a grand jury subpoena for testimony about former President Donald Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the former vice president’s thinking.
Pence’s decision to challenge Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request has little to do with executive privilege, the people said. Rather, Pence is set to argue that his former role as president of the Senate — therefore a member of the legislative branch — shields him from certain Justice Department demands.
Pence allies say he is covered by the constitutional provision that protects congressional officials from legal proceedings related to their work — language known as the “speech or debate” clause. The clause, Pence allies say, legally binds federal prosecutors from compelling Pence to testify about the central components of Smith’s investigation. If Pence testifies, they say, it could jeopardize the separation of powers that the Constitution seeks to safeguard.
“He thinks that the ‘speech or debate’ clause is a core protection for Article I, for the legislature,” said one of the two people familiar with Pence’s thinking, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss his legal strategy. “He feels it really goes to the heart of some separation of powers issues. He feels duty-bound to maintain that protection, even if it means litigating it.”
Pence’s planned argument comes after an FBI search that followed his attorney’s voluntary report of classified material in his possession last month — drawing him into a thicket of document-handling drama that’s also ensnared Trump and President Joe Biden. While Pence aides say he’s taking this position to defend a separation of powers principle, it will allow him to avoid being seen as cooperating with a probe that is politically damaging to Trump, who remains the leading figure in the Republican Party.
Pence is preparing to launch a presidential campaign against his onetime boss. Aides expect the former vice president to address the subpoena — and his plans to respond it — during a visit to Iowa on Wednesday.
Pence is as delusional as Trump if he thinks he has any chance to win the Republican nomination, much less become president. But he’s not the only delusional Republican hopeful.
From the Washington Post article:
Nikki Haley, who served as U.N. ambassador and governor of South Carolina, announced Tuesday that she is running for president, becoming thefirst major rival to officially challenge Donald Trump for the GOP nomination in 2024.
Haley made her announcement in a 3½-minute video released online, in which she declares, “It’s time for a new generation of leadership.” The video emphasizes Haley’s gender and her family’s immigrant roots.
A veteran of the Trump administration, Haley begins as an underdog in the GOP race. If successful, she would become the first woman and first Asian American to lead the Republican ticket. She previously made history as the country’s first female Asian American governor and the first Indian American to serve in the Cabinet.
Haley has shifted her posture toward Trump over the years. She criticized him when he first ran in 2016, before joining his administration the next year and later vowing not to run against him in 2024. In recent months, she has disavowed the pledge as she moved toward a planned announcement speech here in Charleston on Wednesday.
To say that Haley has “shifted” her position on Trump is a vast understatement. She has been all over the map. She’s a wishy-washy flip flopper. I can’t imagine the GOP base will support her for the nomination.
A tiny bit of news about the mysterious balloons:
Richard Luscombe at The Guardian: ‘Significant’ debris from China spy balloon retrieved, says US military.
The US military has recovered “significant debris” from a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon shot down this month, the Pentagon has said, after the White House claimed China had been operating a high-altitude balloon program spying on the US and its allies for many years.
The US Northern Command said in a statement: “Crews have been able to recover significant debris from the site, including all of the priority sensor and electronics pieces identified as well as large sections of the structure.”
The balloon, shot down off the coast of South Carolina on 4 February, was the first of a series of mysterious objects shot down by the US military over an eight-day period in North American airspace.
However, China’s surveillance program, according to John Kirby, the US national security council spokesperson, dated back to at least the administration of Donald Trump, which he said was oblivious to it….
“We detected it, we tracked it. And we have been carefully studying to learn as much as we can. We know that these PRC [People’s Republic of China] surveillance balloons have crossed over dozens of countries on multiple continents around the world, including some of our closest allies and partners.”
There will be an all-senators classified briefing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday morning, the office of the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said, and the White House’s office of national intelligence will brief John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, on Wednesday, CNN reported.
Separately in Japan, the Fuji News Network reported on Tuesday that Tokyo had concluded that the object that flew over Japanese waters near the south-western region of Kyushu in January last year was mostly likely a Chinese spy balloon.
I’m going to end with two opinion pieces, one on the GOP and Social Security and the other on the GOP book-banning craze.
Krugman begins by noting the Republicans’ noisy fake outrage when Biden accused them of wanting to “sunset” Social Security and Medicare during his State of the Union speech. Of course “sunset” was exactly the word Rick Scott used in his plan for a future Republican majority in the Senate. Fortunately, they didn’t get one in 2022.
But, of course, many Republicans do want to eviscerate these programs. To believe otherwise requires both willful naïveté and amnesia about 40 years of political history.
First of all, if Republicans had absolutely no desire to make major cuts to America’s main social insurance programs, why would they sunset them — and thus create the risk that they wouldn’t be renewed? As Biden might say, c’mon, man.
And then there’s that historical record. Two things have been true ever since 1980. First, Republicans have tried to make deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare every time they thought there might be a political window of opportunity. Second, on each occasion they’ve done exactly what they’re doing now: claiming that Democrats are engaged in smear tactics when they describe G.O.P. plans using exactly the same words Republicans themselves used.
So, about that history. It has been widely forgotten, but soon after taking office Ronald Reagan proposed major cuts to Social Security. But he backed down in the face of a political backlash, leading analysts at the Cato Institute to call for a “Leninist” strategy — their word — creating a coalition ready to exploit a future crisis if and when one arrived.
To that end, Cato created the Project on Social Security Privatization, calling for replacing Social Security with individual accounts — which George W. Bush tried to do in 2005. By then, however, Cato had quietly renamed its project; “privatization” polled badly, and Bush insisted that it was a “trick word” used to “scare people.”
So there’s a history here, and there’s a similar history for Medicare. Many people probably recall that Newt Gingrich shut down the federal government in 1995. I don’t know how many people realize that Gingrich’s key demand was that President Bill Clinton agree to large cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.
After Republicans gained control of the House in 2010, Paul Ryan began pushing for major cuts in spending. One key element was converting Medicare from a system that pays medical bills to a system offering people fixed sums of money to be applied to the purchase of private insurance — that is, vouchers.
Read the rest at the NYT link.
From The Guardian:
A wave of Republican enthusiasm for banning concepts, authors and books is sweeping across the United States. Forty-four states have proposed bans on the teaching of “divisive concepts”, and 18 states have passed them.
Florida’s Stop Woke Act bans the teaching of eight categories of concepts, including concepts that suggest that “a person, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex”. Many of the laws also target Nikole Hannah-Jones’s influential 1619 Project.
These laws have already started to take effect. Administrators and teachers have been forced out of their positions on the suspicion of violating these laws, and what has started as a trickle may soon become a flood.
In January, Florida’s board of education banned AP African American studies, on the grounds that it included concepts forbidden by Governor Ron DeSantis’s law, including critical race theory and intersectionality, as well as authors such as Kimberlé Crenshaw, bell hooks, Roderick Ferguson, Angela Davis and Ta-Nehisi Coates. The College Board chose to remove these authors and subjects from its curriculum, claiming, as it turns out dubiously, that it did so independently of Florida’s pressure.
These laws have been represented by many as a “culture war”. This framing is a dangerous falsification of reality. A culture war is a conflict of values between different groups. In a diverse, pluralistic democracy, one should expect frequent conflicts. Yet laws criminalizing educators’ speech are no such thing – unlike a culture war, the GOP’s recent turn has no place in a democracy.
What are the consequences of these laws?
The concepts these laws centrally target include addressing structural racism, intersectionality and critical race theory….
The laws are manifestly incoherent. The failure to teach about structural racism will make Black children born into poverty feel that their parents and grandparents are responsible for their own impoverished position relative to white children, and so will make Black children feel “anguish or other forms of psychological distress” because of “actions … committed in the past by other members of the same race”. The “anguish” and “psychological distress” these laws forbid are only anguish felt by the dominant racial group, white Americans.
In other national contexts, everyone would clearly recognize the problematic nature of laws of this sort. Germany’s teaching of its Nazi past creates clear anguish and guilt in German children (and perhaps for this reason, Germany is the world’s most stable liberal democracy). If the German far right passed laws forbidding schools from teaching about the sins of Nazism, on the grounds that such teaching does in fact quite obviously cause anguish and guilt in German children, the world would not stand for it for one moment. Even Israel’s far-right government strenuously objected when Poland drafted a law that would make it illegal to suggest that Poland had any responsibility for Nazi atrocities on its soil. Why isn’t there greater outcry when such laws are passed to protect the innocence of white Americans?
It is frequently claimed by proponents of such laws that banning discussion of structural racism and intersectionality is freeing schools of indoctrination. And yet indoctrination rarely takes place by allowing the free flow of ideas. Indoctrination instead rather takes places by banning ideas. Celebrating the banning of authors and concepts as “freedom from indoctrination” is as Orwellian as politics gets.
Head over to The Guardian to read the whole piece.
That’s it for me today. What are your thoughts? What other stories are you following?
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Posted: February 11, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: cat art, caturday, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: Alaska, children with guns, classified documents, Evan Corcoran, grand jury, gun violence, Mike Pence, Turkey/Syria earthquake, unidentified high altitude object |
By Adrie Martens
Happy Caturday!!
I have a mixed bag of reads for you today: some stories about the terrible earthquake in Turkey and Syria, including a long read about the situation in Syria; a long read about the case of a six-year-old in Virginia who shot his teacher; a story about the still-unidentified flying object shot down over Alaska, and some new Trump investigation stories.
Turkey-Syria Earthquake
AP News: Survivors still being found as quake death toll tops 25,000.
ANTAKYA, Turkey (AP) — Rescue crews on Saturday pulled more survivors, including entire families, from toppled buildings despite diminishing hopes as the death toll of the enormous quake that struck a border region of Turkey and Syria five days ago surpassed 25,000.
Dramatic rescues were being broadcast on Turkish television, including the rescue of the Narli family in central Kahramanmaras 133 hours after the 7.8-magnitude temblor struck Monday. First, 12-year-old Nehir Naz Narli was saved, then both of her parents.
That followed the rescue earlier in the day of a family of five from a mound of debris in the hard-hit town of Nurdagi, in Gaziantep province, TV network HaberTurk reported. Rescuers cheered and chanted, “God is Great!” as the last family member, the father, was lifted to safety.
Turkish President Recep Tayypi Erdogan, on a tour of quake-stricken cities, raised the death toll in Turkey to 21,848, which pushed the total number of dead across the region, including government and rebel-held parts of Syria, to 25,401….
Still, the day brought one astonishing rescue after another, numbering more than a dozen.
Melisa Ulku, a woman in her 20s, was extricated from the rubble in Elbistan in the 132th hour since the quake, following the rescue of another person at the same site in the same hour. Ahead of her rescue, police announced that people shouldn’t cheer or clap in order to not interfere with other rescue efforts nearby. She was covered in a thermal blanket on a stretcher. Rescuers were hugging. Some shouted “God is great!”
Just an hour earlier, a 3-year-old girl and her father were pulled from debris in the town of Islahiye, also in Gaziantep province, and soon after a 7-year-old girl was rescued in the province of Hatay.
The rescues brought shimmers of joy amid overwhelming devastation days after Monday’s 7.8-magnitude quake and a powerful aftershock hours later caused thousands of buildings to collapse, killing more than 25,000, injuring another 80,000 and leaving millions homeless.
From Twitter:
This is a long Washington Post article by Louisa Loveluck about the earthquake aftermath in Syria: In earthquake-battered Syria, a desperate wait for help that never came.
JINDERIS, Syria — It took four days and nights after the earthquake for the rubble to fall silent here. The strongest voices belonged to the women, residents said. Parted from their children, or fighting to save them, they screamed until their lungs gave out.
In this forgotten pocket of rebel-held northwest Syria, there were no international rescue workers to save them. No aid shipments brought painkillers to the survivors when stocks ran low. Just six miles away, across the border in Turkey, thousands of tons of relief poured in; support teams from as far away as Taiwan answered the Turkish government’s call for help. But Syria, divided against itself and isolated from much of the world, was left to pick up the pieces alone, as it has again and again over more than a decade of war and dislocation.
In the shattered town of Jinderis, at least 850 bodies had been recovered by Friday morning. Although hundreds are still missing, few believed there were any lives left to save. “We needed help here, we asked for help here,” said the town’s mayor, Mahmoud Hafar. “It never came.”
By Sandra Bierman
On Friday, the Bab Al-Salama border crossing into Syria was almost empty. A single ambulance with flashing lights was waiting to enter. The only Syrians crossing back were those being returned to their families in body bags.
On a rare visit to this Syrian enclave, controlled by Turkish-backed armed groups, The Washington Post found communities gripped by shock and bewilderment, and very much alone. In Jinderis, fathers stood watch over the remains of their homes and told of waking up to find their wives and children dead. As hulking excavators clawed the rubble, searching for a 13-year old boy, a man asked reporters to help him contact the United Nations for help. “Maybe they don’t know what happened in Jinderis,” he said. “No one could see this and not come here.”
This part of Syria has endured crisis after crisis, home to millions of people who have braved war and displacement, hunger and disease. Even before the earthquake, 4.1 million here required humanitarian assistance.
Heartbreaking. Read the rest at the WaPo. There are also many photographs the story.
USA Today has a story about how the Turkey/Syria earthquake compares to others in recent history:100 years of earthquakes: Turkey, Syria disaster could be among this century’s worst.
More than 25,000 people have been killed and the death toll is expected to rise after two earthquakes struck Turkey and Syria on Feb. 6. The quakes have become one of this century’s worst natural disasters.
More than 75,000 people have been injured. International rescue efforts from the U.N. and other organizations continue.
The two earthquakes, near the Syrian border, had magnitudes of 7.8 and 7.5. They struck about nine hours apart and were the strongest quakes recorded in Turkey in 80 years.
USA TODAY examined earthquake patterns over the past 100 years and how the unfolding tragedy in Turkey and Syria compares. Here is what we found.
See maps and charts at the USA Today link.
The Virginia Six-Year Old Who Shot His Teacher
This is a very interesting investigative piece about the case of a six-year-old boy who shot his first-grade teacher. I can’t do it justice with excerpts, but I’ll give you a taste, and hope you’ll go read the rest.
Hannah Natanson and Justin Jouvenal at The Washington Post: How Richneck Elementary failed to stop a 6-year-old from shooting his teacher.
Abigail Zwerner was frustrated.
It was Jan. 4. A 6-year-old in her first-grade class at Richneck Elementary School had stolen her phone and slammed it to the floor, apparently upset over a schedule change, according to text messages Zwerner sent to a friend.
Administrators, she wrote, were faulting her for the situation.
The 6-year-old “took my phone and smashed it on the ground,” Zwerner wrote in a text message obtained by The Washington Post, “and admin is blaming me.”
Two days later, the 6-year-old told classmates at recess he was going to shoot Zwerner, showed them a gun and its clip tucked into his jacket pocket, and threatened to kill them if they told anyone, according to an attorney for the family of a student who witnessed the threat, offering the first account of events leading to the shooting from someone in Zwerner’s class.
That afternoon, the 6-year-old did as he promised, authorities said — firing a bullet through Zwerner’s upraised hand and into her chest as she was midway through teaching a lesson.
Zwerner’s lawyer and other educators at the Newport News, Va., school have alleged the shooting came after school administrators downplayed repeated warnings from Zwerner and other teachers about the boy. The incident sparked a staffing shake-up at Richneck and the ouster of Superintendent George Parker III.
Olesya Serzhantova_(Serjantova)
Administrators had ample warning about the child’s behavior problems.
Teachers’ fears about the 6-year-old date backto his kindergarten year, when he tried to strangle his teacher, according to a letter Zwerner’s attorney sent to the school system Jan. 24 announcing her intent to sue. The letter was first reported by the Daily Press.
“The shooter had been removed from the school a year prior after he chokedhis teacher until she couldn’t breathe,” says the letter, obtained by The Post through a public records request. It was not immediately clear how a boy so young could have choked an adult. The Post was not able to learn other details of the incident and authorities have not released information about the boy.
Early this fall, as Richneck teachers sought to settle their new crop of students inside the low-slung red-brick building nestled amid trees, news of the 6-year-old’s troubled history circulated swiftly among the staff, according to text messages between teachers.
Less than a week into September, officials switched the 6-year-old to a half-day schedule due to misbehavior — but administrators were already lagging in efforts to accommodate the student, according to Toscano’s letter and to text messages sent between Zwerner and a friend of hers who teaches at the school.
It was not clear what specific incident triggered the schedule change.Toscano wrote in her letter that the 6-year-old “constantly cursed at the staff and teachers and then one day took off his belt on the playground and chased kids trying to whip them.”
What was going on in this child’s home life? It certainly seems as if abuse could be a clue to his behavior. And how was he able to get his hands on his mother’s gun, which she claimed was locked in her bedroom closet?
Text messages and a photo shared between teachers show that a student in Zwerner’s class reportedly hit a teacher so hard with a chair that her legs became dotted with green and purple bruises — and that, at another point, a kindergartner was accused of pushing a pregnant teacher to the ground and kicking her in the stomach so hard that she feared for her unborn child, two weeks shy of giving birth. It was not immediately clear how administrators responded to those episodes, although one educator wrote in a text this fall that the bruised teacher had “heard nothing from admin.”
On Nov. 9, the second-grade teacher wrote in a text message to a colleague that she was applying to work in another district because of “how bad the first graders are right now put together with the fact we don’t have doors.”
Yes, you read that right. The classrooms didn’t have doors because the administration said it would cost too much to put them in.
Diane Toscano, Zwerner’s lawyer, has said teachers relayed several warnings to administrators on the morning of the shooting, including at least three reports that the boy had a gun. The Post interviewed a kindergartner who said the boy threatened to punch her at lunch that day and that she informed a staffer — but that the staffer did little more than give the boy a verbal warning.
In the direct aftermath of the shooting, two second-grade classes were left briefly wandering the hallways in search of a safe place to hide because their classroom was not equipped with doors and they had not rehearsed safety drills, according to one second-grade teacher, one fifth-grade teacher and a parent of a second-grade student, as well as text messages obtained by The Post. A second-grade teacher told The Post she had asked to have doors installed but administrators refused, saying the doors would be too expensive.
As someone who attended elementary school in the 1950s, I can’t begin to comprehend what is happening these days. Not only do we have teenagers and adults committing school shootings; there are also 6-10 year-old kid bringing guns to school and even killing other kids. I hope you’ll read this story; it’s both frightening and fascinating.
High-Altitude Flying Object Over Alaska
The New York Times: U.S. Shoots Down High-Altitude Object Over Alaska.
The Pentagon said it shot down an unidentified object over frozen waters around Alaska on Friday at the order of President Biden, less than a week after a U.S. fighter jet brought down a Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic in an episode that increased tensions between Washington and Beijing.
Unknown artist
U.S. officials said they could not immediately confirm whether the object was a balloon, but it was traveling at an altitude that made it a potential threat to civilian aircraft.
At a news conference on Friday, John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, said Mr. Biden ordered the unidentified object near Alaska downed “out of an abundance of caution.” [….]
Pentagon officials said they were able to immediately bring down the object over water, so they could easily avoid the dilemma posed by the spy balloon drifting over populated areas, which had prompted commanders to recommend to Mr. Biden to wait to shoot down the machine in order to avoid any chance of debris hitting people on the ground.
Three U.S. officials said that as of Friday evening, the government did not know who owned or sent the object seen above Alaska, which, like the Chinese balloon last week, was shot down by an F-22 fighter jet using a Sidewinder air-to-air missile.
Several officials said they believed the object shot down Friday was a balloon, but a Defense Department official said it broke into pieces when it hit the frozen sea, which added to the mystery of whether it was indeed a balloon, a drone or something else.
Mr. Kirby said that the object was “much, much smaller than the spy balloon that we took down last Saturday” and that “the way it was described to me was roughly the size of a small car, as opposed to the payload that was like two or three buses.”
So we still don’t know what this object was. Maybe we’ll find out today.
Trump-Pence News
CNN: Trump team turns over additional classified records and laptop to federal prosecutors.
Former President Donald Trump’s legal team turned over more materials with classified markings and a laptop belonging to an aide to federal prosecutors in recent months, multiple sources familiar with the investigation told CNN.
The Trump attorneys also handed over an empty folder marked “Classified Evening Briefing,” sources said.
The previously undisclosed handovers – from December and January – suggest the protracted effort by the Justice Department to repossess records from Trump’s presidency may not be done.
The Trump attorneys discovered pages with classified markingsin December, while searching through boxes at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence. The lawyers subsequently handed the materials over to the Justice Department.
A Trump aide had previously copied those same pages onto a thumb drive and laptop, not realizing they were classified, sources said. The laptop, which belonged to an aide, who works for Save America PAC, and the thumb drive were also given to investigators in January.
By Ophelia Redpath
Excuse me, how do we know that Trump didn’t order the aide to copy the documents? And how do we know there aren’t other electronic copies out there? I just can’t believe that Trump never shared any of those stolen documents.
NPR: FBI finds an additional classified document during ‘consensual’ search of Pence’s home.
The FBI confirmed it found an additional classified document during a search Friday at the Indiana home of former Vice President Mike Pence.
The search for classified documents as well as materials that aren’t classified but are subject to the Presidential Records Act lasted about five hours. Agents removed one document with classified markings plus six additional pages without classification markings.
The consensual search follows a discovery, relayed by Pence’s representatives to the National Archives and Records Administration last month, that documents bearing classified markings had been, they said, “inadvertently” boxed up and found in the former vice president’s home in Indiana.
This is big news from The New York Times: Trump Lawyer in Mar-a-Lago Search Appeared Before Grand Jury.
A lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump appeared before a federal grand jury investigating his handling of sensitive government documents that he took to his Mar-a-Lago club and residence after he left office, two people briefed on the matter said on Friday.
The lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, a member of Mr. Trump’s legal team who handled his responses to the government over its repeated requests for the return of such records, could offer firsthand knowledge of the search the F.B.I. undertook in August and any insights into whether Mr. Trump knew that documents remained at the club.
Mr. Corcoran did not respond to a request for comment. And it was not immediately clear when and under what circumstances he appeared. His appearance was reported earlier by Bloomberg News.
Mr. Corcoran has raised eyebrows within the Justice Department for his statements to federal officials assuring them that Mr. Trump had returned all classified materials in his possession.
As part of Mr. Trump’s legal team, Mr. Corcoran was in discussions with the Justice Department in January 2022, after the National Archives and Records Administration recovered 15 boxes of presidential material from Mar-a-Lago containing nearly 200 individual classified documents.
In May 2022, Mr. Corcoran was in touch with the department after a grand jury subpoena was issued for any remaining classified material that Mr. Trump retained. He was also on hand the next month when the top Justice Department counterintelligence official visited Mar-a-Lago and collected more than 30 additional classified documents.
At the time, another lawyer working for Mr. Trump, Christina Bobb, signed a statement attesting that a “diligent search” for all remaining classified documents had been conducted and that what was turned over was all that remained. The attestation was drafted by Mr. Corcoran, but Ms. Bobb added language to it to make it less ironclad before signing it, according to people familiar with what took place.
Olesya Serzhantova_(Serjantova)
One more from Raw Story: Pence could be the star witness at Trump’s criminal trial: Watergate prosecutor.
Former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman explained to MSNBC’s Joy Reid the significance of former Vice President Mike Pence’s cooperation with the Justice Department, as it subpoenas him for information in the January 6 investigation.
Above all, Akerman said, we are approaching the unprecedented possibility that a former vice president may have to testify at the criminal trial of his former president.
“If you had [Pence], you know, as you said, for hours and hours, and hours, what would you want to ask him?” asked Reid. “Myself personally, I would also want to know what the Secret Service agents were saying, did you trust them? Because this could be about Donald Trump, but it could also be about some of them. What would you want to know?”
“Yeah, I think we want to know exactly what his suspicion was based on,” said Akerman. “I mean, why did he think they were trying to whisk him out of the Capitol so quickly? Was it one of the people that was close to Donald Trump that was in charge of doing that? Did somebody say something to him? I mean, I’m sure he knew that part of this whole plot was to stop that vote, stop the Congress from considering the electoral count. And that one way to do it was to get him off premises, get him out of the Capitol. So I think, you know, he probably did have other conversations with people.”
“I mean, don’t forget, once Mike Pence told him there’s no way no how I’m gonna do this, Donald Trump knew that the only way he was going to stop this whole count was through the violence, through the disruption in the chaos that ensued at the Capitol and that one of the ways to do it of course was to get Mike Pence out of the Capitol as a result of all this violence and used the Secret Service as a foil and an excuse to do that,” continued Akerman.
I hope you find something here that interests you. What other stories have you been following?
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