Posted: April 11, 2019 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Foreign Affairs, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Adam Schiff, Chelsea Manning, computer crimes, conspiracy theories, corruption, Fox News, Julian Assange, Maryanne Trump Barry, Richard Neal, Steven Mnuchin, Trump tax returns, William Barr |
Painting by Karen Kinser
Good Morning!!
There’s way too much news this morning, but this is how we live now. Day after day the shocks come and it becomes more and more difficult to keep track of the corruption, the lawlessness, and the lack of ethics of this of this monstrous administration.
This morning Julian Assange was arrested and dragged kicking and screaming out the Equadorian embassy in London. The British courts will decide whether to extradite him to the U.S. to face charges of computer hacking and conspiracy. He is not charged in the U.S. with publishing stolen information, but for actively helping Chelsea Manning to discover the password that allowed him to break into U.S. State Department computers. More charges may be added in the future. Tweets from a British journalist.
The New York Times: Julian Assange Arrested on U.S. Extradition Warrant, London Police Say.
Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who released reams of secret documents that embarrassed the United States government, was arrested by the British police on Thursday at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he had lived since 2012, after Ecuador withdrew the asylum it had granted him.
The Metropolitan Police said that Mr. Assange had been detained partly in connection with an extradition warrant filed by the authorities in the United States, where he could face of a charge of computer hacking, according to an American official, if he is extradited.
President Lenín Moreno of Ecuador said on Twitter that his country had decided to stop sheltering Mr. Assange after “his repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols,” a decision that cleared the way for the British authorities to detain him.
The relationship between Mr. Assange and Ecuador has been a rocky one, even as it offered him refuge and even citizenship, and WikiLeaks said last Friday that Ecuador “already has an agreement with the UK for his arrest” and predicted that Mr. Assange would be expelled from the embassy “within ‘hours to days.’ ”
Yesterday was also a huge news day. Cover-Up General Barr appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee and revealed himself to be not only a political hack and Trump lackey but also a Fox News-style conspiracy theorist when he announced that he thinks U.S. intelligence agencies “spied” on Trump’s campaign. I wonder if he thinks Seth Rich hacked the DNC too? In his testimony Barr never expressed any concern about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election to help Trump. The New York Times reports:
With the Russia investigation complete, Mr. Barr said he was preparing to review “both the genesis and the conduct of intelligence activities directed at the Trump campaign,” including possible improper “spying” by American intelligence agencies.
“I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” Mr. Barr said, adding that he believed “spying did occur.” Mr. Trump and his allies have accused the F.B.I. and other government officials of abusing their power and cooking up the Russia investigation to sabotage the president.
“I am not suggesting that those rules were violated, but I think it’s important to look at them,” Mr. Barr said. Later he said he wanted to ensure that there was no “improper surveillance” — not suggesting there had been, but that the possibility warranted review.
It was not immediately clear what Mr. Barr was referring to, and he did not present evidence to back up his statement. The F.B.I. obtained a secret surveillance warrant on a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, after he left the campaign, and reports have suggested it used at least one confidential informer to collect information on campaign associates.
Mr. Barr said that he will work with the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, to examine the origins of the bureau’s counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign, and that he would soon set up a team for that effort. He noted that Congress and the Justice Department’s inspector general have already completed investigations of that matter, and that after reviewing those investigations he would be able to see whether there were any “remaining questions to be addressed.”
It’s pretty clear no to anyone with half a brain that Barr sees his job as acting as Trump’s personal lawyer and not the top law enforcement officer in the U.S. representing the American people.
Greg Sargent at The Washington Post: Adam Schiff just issued a stark warning about William Barr.
“I’m shocked to hear the attorney general of the United States casually make the suggestion that the FBI or intelligence community was spying on the president’s campaign,” Schiff told me. “I’m sure it was very gratifying to Donald Trump.” [….]
Schiff pointed out that the bipartisan Gang of Eight — the leaders and intelligence committee chairs in both parties — were already briefed by the Justice Department after Trump made yet another version of the assertion. At the time, the Democrats issued a joint statement saying nothing they had been told supported the notion of untoward conduct.
“It’s unclear to me what Barr was referring to,” Schiff said. He noted that he was unaware that the statement he and other Democrats put out had ever been “contested by anyone on either side of the aisle.”
“All I can make of it is that he wanted to say something pleasing to the boss, and did so at the cost of our institutions,” Schiff said.
Asked if Schiff would seek another briefing from the Justice Department on Barr’s latest claim, Schiff said: “We’ll certainly try to get to the bottom of many of the things he has been saying over the last two days — his references to investigation into the president’s political opponents.”
“His testimony raises profound concern that the attorney general is doing what we urge emerging democracies not to do, and that is, seek to prosecute your political opponents after you win an election,” Schiff continued, in an apparent reference to Barr’s vow to examine the beginnings of the investigation, precisely as Trump has long demanded….
“The big picture is this,” Schiff said. “The post-Watergate reforms are being dismantled, one by one. The Trump precedent after only two years is that you can fire the FBI director who is running an investigation in which you may be implicated as president.”
Last night, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin intervened in House Ways and Means Committee Chair Richard Neal’s demand that the IRS turn over Trump’s personal and business tax returns. The law says that the decision to turn over tax returns fall on the head of the IRS and that Mnuchin must give 30 days notice before he can get involved. But no one in the Trump administration seems to care about those silly things called laws. Axios:
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin failed to meet House Democrats’ request to hand over 6 years of President Trump’s tax returns by the Wednesday’s deadline, stating he needs more time for review, but providing no details as to whether he will comply.
Details: Mnuchin said in a letter to the House Ways and Means Committee chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) that his agency has consulted with the Justice Department to review the lawfulness of the request. He said it “raises serious issues concerning the constitutional investigative authority, the legitimacy of the asserted legislative purpose and the constitutional rights of American citizens.”
Also last night, we got a timely reminder of why we need to see Trump’s taxes.
The New York Times: Retiring as a Judge, Trump’s Sister Ends Court Inquiry Into Her Role in Tax Dodges.
President Trump’s older sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, has retired as a federal appellate judge, ending an investigation into whether she violated judicial conduct rules by participating in fraudulent tax schemes with her siblings.
The court inquiry stemmed from complaints filed last October, after an investigation by The New York Times found that the Trumps had engaged in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the inherited wealth of Mr. Trump and his siblings. Judge Barry not only benefited financially from most of those tax schemes, The Times found; she was also in a position to influence the actions taken by her family.
Judge Barry, now 82, has not heard cases in more than two years but was still listed as an inactive senior judge, one step short of full retirement. In a letter dated Feb. 1, a court official notified the four individuals who had filed the complaints that the investigation was “receiving the full attention” of a judicial conduct council. Ten days later, Judge Barry filed her retirement papers.
The status change rendered the investigation moot, since retired judges are not subject to the conduct rules. The people who filed the complaints were notified last week that the matter had been dropped without a finding on the merits of the allegations. The decision has not yet been made public, but copies were provided to The Times by two of the complainants. Both are involved in the legal profession.
The Trump crime family is so corrupt that it’s impossible to keep up with the daily revelations about them.
I’ll post some more links in the comment thread. What stories are you following today?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Posted: April 9, 2019 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics |
Good Morning!!
Cover-Up General William Barr is testifying before members of the House Appropriations Committee. He has steadfastly refused to give any straight answers about how he managed to review nearly 400 pages along with background materials in order to produce a “summary” in his letter to Congress 48 hours later. He hasn’t explained why he didn’t quote even one complete sentence from the report in his “summary.”
The bottom line from Barr is that the likely heavily redacted report will be released to the public in about a week.
One question that Barr has repeatedly refused to answer is whether the White House has been given a copy of the report. I assume that means that the answer is yes.
Perhaps that partially explains Trump’s unhinged behavior over the past week or so. We know he doesn’t read, but perhaps his attorneys or his son-in-law explained to him that the report is very bad for him. I’m sure the cover-up general will do everything he can to conceal (i.e. redact) negative information about Trump.
It’s very difficult for me to listen to Barr; because, as he speaks, I feel a powerful urge to slap this self-satisfied man across the face. Unfortunately, I can’t do that. Perhaps some comic relieve will help.
Andy Borowitz at The New Yorker: Redaction of Mueller Report Halted as Barr Passes Out from Sharpie Fumes.
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The redaction of the Mueller report stalled on Monday after the Attorney General, William Barr, passed out from inhaling fumes from multiple Sharpie markers.
Barr, who had been working around the clock to redact the report before its release, reportedly lost consciousness while trying to black out a seventy-four-page section detailing Donald Trump, Jr.,’s contacts with more than three dozen Russian individuals.
“You cannot use that many Sharpies, for hours on end, without proper ventilation,” a Justice Department staffer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said. “This was a disaster waiting to happen.”
According to Borowitz, the cover-up general’s condition was described as “Ben Carson–like.”
More expert tweets on the hearing:
Barr was asked about why members of Mueller’s team have been reported in the press to be unhappy with Barr’s characterization of their report.
And consider this tweet from last night:
Another topic that Barr has been asked about is his decision to go along with rump’s insistence that the DOJ not defend the Affordable Care Act in court even though he (Barr) disagreed with Trump. Barr insisted that he represents the American people, not the “president,” but he then admitted that he went along with Trump’s demand that he not defend a law passed by Congress. He would not answer why he did that, but he snottily remarked that if Democrats the DOJ action is so ridiculous then they should trust that the courts will make the right decision.
Kyle Cheney tweeted:
As Rep. Cartwright presses Barr on DOJ’s effort to strike down Obamacare, Barr asks the congressmanwhether he thinks the effort is likely to prevail.: “If you think it’s such an outrageous position, you have nothing to worry about. Let the courts do their job.”
You can watch that testimony at PBS News Hour.
That’s about all I can stomach about the Barr hearing. Can I just say that William Barr is a fucking asshole? Thank you.
Rep. Richard Neal
In other news, the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Richard Neal has sent letters to the IRS and the Treasury Department asking for 6 years of Trump’s personal and business tax returns. The law is clear that the IRS must release them.
Yesterday Larry Summers made that clear in a Washington Post op-ed: The IRS chief must release Trump’s tax returns — and Mnuchin must not stop him. Here’s the gist:
As best I can determine, the appropriate response of the treasury secretary is very clear: Under a long-standing delegation order, the secretary does not get involved in taxpayer-specific matters and has delegated to the IRS commissioner as follows: “The Commissioner of Internal Revenue shall be responsible for the administration and enforcement of the Internal Revenue laws.”
Moreover, this is not a delegation that is readily revocable. Federal law provides that if the secretary determines not to delegate a power, such determination may not take effect until 30 days after the secretary notifies the tax-writing (and other specified) committees.
So for the secretary to seek to decide whether to pass on the president’s tax return to Congress would surely be inappropriate and probably illegal. I would surely not have done it. Rather, I would have indicated to the IRS commissioner that I expected the IRS to comply with the law as always.
What would that mean? The relevant provisions date from 1924, and I have not been able to find any case where the IRS did not promptly provide full disclosure to a tax-writing committee. The statute is entirely clear regarding the right of the committee to request individual taxpayer information. And Congress explicitly prohibits the IRS from withholding information from inquiries such as this one: Section 1203 of the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act details the “10 deadly sins” for which IRS employees can be fired. Number 7 is “willful misuse” of the provisions of Section 6103 — invoked last week by Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), the chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee — to conceal information from a congressional inquiry.
But, as we all know, the Trump administration doesn’t really care about the laws; and it seems Mnuchin has already defied this one.
The Washington Post: Mnuchin reveals White House lawyers consulted Treasury on Trump tax returns, despite law meant to limit political involvement.
Treasury Department lawyers consulted with the White House general counsel’s office about the potential release of President Trump’s tax returns before House Democrats formally requested the records, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Tuesday.
Mnuchin had not previously revealed that the White House was playing any official role in the Treasury Department’s decision on releasing Trump’s tax returns.
Democrats are asking for six years of Trump’s returns, using a federal law that says the treasury secretary “shall follow” the request of House or Senate chairmen in releasing tax return information. The process is designed to be walled off from White House interference, in part because of corruption that took place during the Teapot Dome scandal in the 1920s.
Mnuchin revealed the discussions during a congressional hearing. He said he had not personally spoken with anyone from the White House about the tax returns, but he said that members of his team had done so.
We’re dealing with a rogue “president” who is shamelessly getting rid of anyone in his administration who still thinks the “president” should not be above the law. Yesterday it became clear that Trump is carrying out a Stalinesque purge of the Department of Homeland Security leadership.
The New York Times: Trump Purge Set to Force Out More Top Homeland Security Officials.
President Trump moved to clear out the senior ranks of the Department of Homeland Security on Monday, a day afterforcing the resignation of its secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, as he accelerated a purge of the nation’s immigration and security leadership.
The White House announced the departure of Randolph D. Alles, the director of the Secret Service, who had fallen out of favor with the president even before a security breach at his Mar-a-Lago club that the agency effectively blamed on Mr. Trump’s employees.
Government officials, who asked not to be identified discussing personnel changes before they were announced, said at least two to four more high-ranking figures affiliated with Ms. Nielsen were expected to leave soon, too, hollowing out the top echelon of the department managing border security, presidential safety, counterterrorism, natural disasters, customs and other matters.
The wave of departures of officials originally appointed by Mr. Trump underscored his growing frustration with his own administration’s handling of immigration and other security issues. In recent days, Mr. Trump has threatened to close the southwestern border altogether only to back off and give Mexico a one-year notice in the face of warnings about deep economic damage from such a move.
The shake-up, coming more than two years into Mr. Trump’s term, indicated that he is still searching for a team that will fulfill his desire for an even tougher approach to immigration. It also signaled the enduring influence of Stephen Miller, the president’s hard-line senior adviser who has complained about recalcitrant homeland security officials.
Supposedly, some Republicans are *concerned* about this dictatorial behavior. Two stories to check out:
Politico: Trump’s DHS purge floors Republicans.
The Washington Post: Grassley warns White House not to oust any more top immigration officials.
Ioffe, an expert on Russia, adds the following: “…history doesn’t actually repeat itself, but sometimes things remind you of other things and a comparative approach to history is often fruitful.”
We now have acting heads of a number of cabinet departments. That means that Trump is bypassing the Senate advise and consent process in order to concentrate more power in the executive.
NPR: An Acting Government For The Trump Administration.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen’s resignation may have come as a surprise, but it’s part of a pattern for the Trump administration. Replacing Cabinet secretaries has become a feature, not a bug, of this White House.
And it means that after Nielsen leaves her post later this week, three of the president’s Cabinet members will be serving in an acting capacity.
Kevin McAleenan
Kevin McAleenan was named acting secretary of homeland security to replace Nielsen. Patrick Shanahan has been acting defense secretary since Jan. 1. And David Bernhardt has been acting interior secretary since Jan. 2, though he has been nominated to become the permanent interior secretary.
Trump sees an advantage in their status.
“I like ‘acting’ because I can move so quickly,” he told CBS’ Face The Nation in February, adding, “It gives me more flexibility.”
The New York Times: Another Day, Another ‘Acting’ Cabinet Secretary as Trump Skirts Senate.
Temporary status is a seemingly permanent condition of the Trump administration.
The resignation of Kirstjen Nielsen as homeland security secretary on Sunday means that another cabinet officer who reports directly to President Trump will have the word “acting” next to the official title at a major department of government.
Interim secretaries are also in place at the Departments of Defense and of the Interior, and at the Office of Management and Budget, the Small Business Administration and ambassador’s office at the United Nations. Mick Mulvaney, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, is also serving in an acting capacity.
“I like acting. It gives me more flexibility. Do you understand that?” Mr. Trump told reporters in January before departing to Camp David. “I like acting. So we have a few that are acting. We have a great, great cabinet.”
But there are concerns about having men and women in such high-level jobs without having been subjected to Senate confirmation for those posts. Leaving cabinet secretaries unconfirmed in their roles could give the president even more leverage over them, or could leave them without full authority in the job.
There are *concerns.* Meanwhile, Trump has two more years as “president,” and we’re well on the way to a Putinesque autocracy. It’s an emergency, and Democrats need to recognize that and act swiftly and decisively.
What do you think? What stories are you following today?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Posted: April 6, 2019 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics, Women's Rights | Tags: Bill Barr, Casimir Pulaski, dinosaurs, DNA, Donald Trump, Hell Creek, Jones Day, mass extinction, Mueller report, North Dakota, paleontology, Paul Manafort, Redoshi, Robert De Palma, Roger Stone, Sexual harassment, slave ships, slavery, terrorism, White extremists |
The cat’s lunch, Pierre Bonnard, circa 1906
Good Afternoon!!
I’m sick to death of politics right now, but I don’t want to completely ignore it either. So today I’ll begin with a few of today’s news stories and then I’m going to recommend some interesting long reads that I’ve enjoyed this week.
Harry Litman at The Washington Post: Release the Mueller team’s summaries. Now.
In the (so far) quiet war of words between the Barr and Mueller camps, we have learned that the special counsel’s report was prepared with summaries of each section that were designed purposely for quick delivery to Congress. These summaries have been scrubbed of all or nearly all controversial material and, therefore, consist of Mueller’s analyses and conclusions without disclosing the supporting, potentially confidential, evidentiary material.
‘Company’ by English painter & illustrator Ophelia Redpath (b.1965)
The summaries should be released to the Congress and the public. While some at the Justice Department assert that the materials are marked as containing grand jury material, we know from Mueller’s team that they were prepared for the purpose of quick release. It, therefore, stands to reason that any problematic material they contain could be removed in short order. They are core explanations of Mueller’s work, which the public has been hungry to learn about — and which Mueller intended the public to have.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the Judiciary Committee chairman, should set to the side for one day the maneuverings over grand jury material and other redactions. The Justice Department should similarly reserve its prerogative to fight over these materials in court. For today, all parties should agree immediately to produce the summaries of Mueller’s work that would greatly illuminate the currently obscured special counsel’s report.
Marcy Wheeler at The Washington Post: We already knew Barr’s summary was too easy on Trump. Public records prove it.
When Attorney General William P. Barr released a four-page memo two weeks ago opining that “the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense,” we already knew enough to be sure that Barr was spinning the contents of the report his memo claimed to summarize, as multiple reports now say he did.
Girl with Cat, by Lotte Laserstein, 1898-1993, was a German-Swedish painter and portraitist
That’s because there was already public evidence at the time that undermined Barr’s conclusions. Barr’s letter may have been accurate, technically speaking. But based on what it omitted about two key associates of President Trump — his longtime adviser Roger Stone and his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort — it was obvious that the attorney general had left whole areas of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s findings out of the summary. That Mueller’s team thinks Barr made the investigation’s findings look less damaging to Trump should not come as a surprise.
For example, the indictment of Roger Stone, who isn’t mentioned in Barr’s “summary.”
When Attorney General William P. Barr released a four-page memo two weeks ago opining that “the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense,” we already knew enough to be sure that Barr was spinning the contents of the report his memo claimed to summarize, as multiple reports now say he did.
That’s because there was already public evidence at the time that undermined Barr’s conclusions. Barr’s letter may have been accurate, technically speaking. But based on what it omitted about two key associates of President Trump — his longtime adviser Roger Stone and his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort — it was obvious that the attorney general had left whole areas of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s findings out of the summary. That Mueller’s team thinks Barr made the investigation’s findings look less damaging to Trump should not come as a surprise.
Read more examples at the WaPo.
Think Progress: Lawsuit alleges utterly flabbergasting sexism at law firm closely associated with Donald Trump.
By Suzanne Valadon (French, 1865-1938) Jeune Fille au Chat
A $200 million lawsuit filed against a law firm closely associated with President Donald Trump alleges that the firm fostered a “fraternity culture” featuring heavy drinking, an overbearing male leader, and sexism that was often so absurd it reads like something out of a gross-out comedy from the 1980s.
The suit against Jones Day, a 2,500 lawyer firm that played a significant role in placing Trump in the White House — the Trump campaign paid Jones Day $3.3 million in legal fees according to a 2017 report — alleges a culture where women attorneys were denied promotions despite exemplary work, excluded from mentoring opportunities afforded to male associates, asked to leave the firm after taking maternity leave, and subjected to cruel and sexist jokes by male colleagues.
Trump appointed numerous Jones Day lawyers to high-level positions within his administration, including Solicitor General Noel Francisco, former White House Counsel Don McGahn, and the two highest ranking attorneys in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Trump also appointed two former Jones Day partners to federal appellate judgeships.
At one event hosted by a Jones Day partner, the complaint alleges that a male summer associate (“summer associate” is the title typically given to highly paid law students who work at a firm during their summer vacation) pushed a female colleague into the partner’s swimming pool while the woman was wearing a white dress. According to the complaint, “the male summer associate who pushed her was applauded and high-fived by the Firm’s summer associate committee and leadership rather than reprimanded.”
In another incident, a partner allegedly “demanded that three female summer associates sing and dance to a Care Bears song (an event captured on video).” These three summer associates were allegedly told that they must humiliate themselves in this way “to receive verbal offers to join the Firm as associates.”
During a limo ride to a firm event, male Jones Day lawyers allegedly played a game called “Fuck, Marry, Kill,” in which they “named coworkers from the office and proposed to whom they would do each of these things.” At the event itself, a male associate allegedly “called several of his female colleagues ‘cunts,’” yet the lawsuit claims that he remains employed by the firm.
More disgusting allegations at the link.
Now for those longer reads:
This one is political. The New York Times, April 3: Attacks by White Extremists Are Growing. So Are Their Connections.
Léonard Tsugouharu Foujita (aka 藤田 嗣治, Fujita Tsuguharu) 1950s Self Portrait
In a manifesto posted online before his attack, the gunman who killed 50 last month in a rampage at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, said he drew inspiration from white extremist terrorism attacks in Norway, the United States, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
His references to those attacks placed him in an informal global network of white extremists whose violent attacks are occurring with greater frequency in the West.
An analysis by The New York Times of recent terrorism attacks found that at least a third of white extremist killers since 2011 were inspired by others who perpetrated similar attacks, professed a reverence for them or showed an interest in their tactics.
The connections between the killers span continents and highlight how the internet and social media have facilitated the spread of white extremist ideology and violence.
In one instance, a school shooter in New Mexico corresponded with a gunman who attacked a mall in Munich. Altogether, they killed 11 people.
Please go read the whole thing. I think this is an important story. How are these white supremacist networks any different from the on-line “radicalization” of Islamic terrorists? The interest has made it much easier for crazy people to find and communicate with others like them.
The New Yorker: The Day the Dinosaurs Died, by Douglas Preston
I loved this article! I can’t possibly do it justice with a few excerpts. It’s about a paleontology grad student, Robert De Palma, and his discovery of a rich fossil bed in North Dakota that may shed light on the rapid extinction of dinosaurs. Here’s a taste:
By Zviad Gogolauri
On August 5, 2013, I received an e-mail from a graduate student named Robert DePalma. I had never met DePalma, but we had corresponded on paleontological matters for years, ever since he had read a novel I’d written that centered on the discovery of a fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex killed by the KT impact. “I have made an incredible and unprecedented discovery,” he wrote me, from a truck stop in Bowman, North Dakota. “It is extremely confidential and only three others know of it at the moment, all of them close colleagues.” He went on, “It is far more unique and far rarer than any simple dinosaur discovery. I would prefer not outlining the details via e-mail, if possible.” He gave me his cell-phone number and a time to call.
I called, and he told me that he had discovered a site like the one I’d imagined in my novel, which contained, among other things, direct victims of the catastrophe. At first, I was skeptical. DePalma was a scientific nobody, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Kansas, and he said that he had found the site with no institutional backing and no collaborators. I thought that he was likely exaggerating, or that he might even be crazy. (Paleontology has more than its share of unusual people.) But I was intrigued enough to get on a plane to North Dakota to see for myself.
DePalma’s find was in the Hell Creek geological formation, which outcrops in parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming, and contains some of the most storied dinosaur beds in the world. At the time of the impact, the Hell Creek landscape consisted of steamy, subtropical lowlands and floodplains along the shores of an inland sea. The land teemed with life and the conditions were excellent for fossilization, with seasonal floods and meandering rivers that rapidly buried dead animals and plants.
Ludwig Kohrl (1858-1927)
The Hell Creek Formation spanned the Cretaceous and the Paleogene periods, and paleontologists had known for at least half a century that an extinction had occurred then, because dinosaurs were found below, but never above, the KT layer. This was true not only in Hell Creek but all over the world. For many years, scientists believed that the KT extinction was no great mystery: over millions of years, volcanism, climate change, and other events gradually killed off many forms of life. But, in the late nineteen-seventies, a young geologist named Walter Alvarez and his father, Luis Alvarez, a nuclear physicist, discovered that the KT layer was laced with unusually high amounts of the rare metal iridium, which, they hypothesized, was from the dusty remains of an asteroid impact. In an article in Science, published in 1980, they proposed that this impact was so large that it triggered the mass extinction, and that the KT layer was the debris from that event. Most paleontologists rejected the idea that a sudden, random encounter with space junk had drastically altered the evolution of life on Earth. But as the years passed the evidence mounted, until, in a 1991 paper, the smoking gun was announced: the discovery of an impact crater buried under thousands of feet of sediment in the Yucatán peninsula, of exactly the right age, and of the right size and geochemistry, to have caused a worldwide cataclysm. The crater and the asteroid were named Chicxulub, after a small Mayan town near the epicenter.
De Palma was fascinated by bones even as a child, and he has been finding fossils for his entire life. If you have any interest in prehistory and dinosaurs, please read this article. You won’t be sorry.
The Washington Post, April 3: The last survivor of a slave ship has been identified, and her story is remarkable.
by Suzan Visser
She was captured at about the age of 12 in West Africa and forced aboard the Clotilda, the last slave vessel to arrive in the United States in 1860.
Now researchers have identified Redoshi as the last known African-born survivor of the transatlantic slave trade when she died in 1937, according to a statement released Tuesday by Newcastle University in Great Britain. Renamed Sally Smith in Alabama, she may have been 110 years old at the time of her death.
Until now, researchers believed the last survivor of the transatlantic slave trade was Oluale Kossola, also known as Cudjo Lewis. But, according to research by Hannah Durkin, a lecturer at Newcastle University, Redoshi lived two years longer than Cudjo, who died in 1935.
Durkin said she first saw a reference to Redoshi in the writings of Zora Neale Hurston and began researching her life story from other writings.
In 2018, HarperCollins published Hurston’s manuscript, “Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo,’” 90 years after she wrote it. “Barracoon” detailed the life of Kossola, or Cudjo Lewis, who was just a teenager when he was captured in what is now Benin. Kossola and more than 100 Africans were forced to board the Clotilda in 1860, even though the United States had banned the importation of enslaved people in 1808.
Read the rest at the link.
One more from NBC News: Revolutionary War hero Casimir Pulaski might have been a woman or intersex.
Casimir Pulaski, hero of the Revolutionary War and the pride of the Polish-American community, may need a new pronoun — he may have been a she, or even a they.
By Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938)
Researchers who used DNA to identify Pulaski’s bones are convinced the gallant Pole who died fighting for America’s freedom was either a biological woman who lived as a man, or potentially was intersex, meaning a person whose body doesn’t fit the standard definitions of male or female.
That’s the eye-opening takeaway from a new Smithsonian Channel documentary titled “The General Was Female?,” which premieres Monday and is part of the “America’s Hidden Stories” series.
“One of the ways that male and female skeletons are different is the pelvis,” Virginia Hutton Estabrook, an assistant professor of anthropology at Georgia Southern University, told NBC News. “In females, the pelvic cavity has a more oval shape. It’s less heart-shaped than in the male pelvis. Pulaski’s looked very female.”
While the Pulaski skeleton showed tell-tale signs of extensive horseback riding and a battle wound on the right hand that the general is known to have suffered, the facial structure and jaw angle were decidedly female, Estabrook said.
Read the rest at NBC News.
I hope you’ll find something here that appeals to you. Please share your thoughts and links in the comment thread, and have a great weekend!
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Posted: April 4, 2019 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: alternative energy, U.S. Politics |
Good Morning!!
The Cover Up General strikes again.
Ooops! Bill Barr’s well-laid plan to rescue Trump may be in trouble. Last night The New York Times published a story containing leaks from members of Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation: Some on Mueller’s Team Say Report Was More Damaging Than Barr Revealed.
Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations.
At stake in the dispute — the first evidence of tension between Mr. Barr and the special counsel’s office — is who shapes the public’s initial understanding of one of the most consequential government investigations in American history. Some members of Mr. Mueller’s team are concerned that, because Mr. Barr created the first narrative of the special counsel’s findings, Americans’ views will have hardened before the investigation’s conclusions become public.
Most of the NYT piece appears to have been sourced from DOJ sources, but a little later, The Washington Post released a story that emphasized the concerns of special counsel investigators.
The Washington Post: Limited information Barr has shared about Russia investigation frustrated some on Mueller’s team.
Members of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team have told associates they are frustrated with the limited information Attorney General William P. Barr has provided about their nearly two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether President Trump sought to obstruct justice, according to people familiar with the matter.
The displeasure among some who worked on the closely held inquiry has quietly begun to surface in the days since Barr released a four-page letter to Congress on March 24 describing what he said were the principal conclusions of Mueller’s still-confidential, 400-page report….
Barr told lawmakers that he concluded the evidence was not sufficient to prove that the president obstructed justice.
But members of Mueller’s team have complained to close associates that the evidence they gathered on obstruction was alarming and significant.
“It was much more acute than Barr suggested,” said one person, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity.
And here’s the key information from the WaPo story:
Some members of the office were particularly disappointed that Barr did not release summary information the special counsel team had prepared, according to two people familiar with their reactions.
“There was immediate displeasure from the team when they saw how the attorney general had characterized their work instead,” according to one U.S. official briefed on the matter.
Summaries were prepared for different sections of the report, with a view that they could made public, the official said.
The report was prepared “so that the front matter from each section could have been released immediately — or very quickly,” the official said. “It was done in a way that minimum redactions, if any, would have been necessary, and the work would have spoken for itself.”
Mueller’s team assumed the information was going to be made available to the public, the official said, “and so they prepared their summaries to be shared in their own words — and not in the attorney general’s summary of their work, as turned out to be the case.”
Mueller’s team carefully prepared summaries of their findings that could quickly be released to the public, but Barr chose not to do so. What is he hiding?
Josh Marshall at TPM: Obvious All Along – Cover Up in Plain Sight.
We now have a three or four part chain of events that tells us what was frankly obvious ten days ago but most major media organizations were too cowardly to admit: the so-called “Barr Letter” was an effort to downplay and cover up the findings of the Mueller Special Counsel’s Office.
Barr laid out a series of four categories for redactions which, if interpreted broadly, could lead to most of the report not only never being seen by the public but never being seen even by Congress.
The President went from using the report as a cudgel to threaten retribution against his enemies and professing to eagerly await its release to calling demands for its release a “
disgrace.” Then members of his party voted
unanimously against subpoenaing the report on the House Judiciary Committee. Then last night we had the first two reports that some subset of the members of Mueller’s team (which can actually refer to quite a few different people) believe Barr has mis-characterized the evidence contained in the report.
None of this is remotely surprising.
Barr was essentially hired by the President on the basis of a memo in which Barr argued that it was barely possible for a President to obstruct justice at all.
This morning, FBI Director Chris Wray admitted in a Congressional hearing that he has not had access to Mueller’s report. Why has the person charged with protecting the country from foreign influences not been allowed to see what Mueller found about Russia’s interference in U.S. elections?
I wonder who in the Justice Department and the White House have seen or been briefed on the report?
This morning the Barr cover-up crew is pushing back on the Mueller team leaks by getting MSNBC to carry water for them.
Here’s a response to this bullshit from a Elizabeth de la Vega, who worked with Robert Mueller. She says the MSNBC report is spin coming from the Barr camp.
From Politico this morning: Dems alarmed at fears that Barr misrepresented the Mueller report.
Democrats on Capitol Hill are frustrated by the news that some members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team are privately displeased with Attorney General William Barr’s characterization of their investigatory work, and are ratcheting up their demands for a full public release of the Russia probe’s findings….
The news has already put Democrats into a furor over not seeing even a redacted version of Mueller’s report.
“We are two weeks into this, all we have is Bill Barr’s word for this,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, on CNN’s “New Day” Thursday morning. “And of course that comes from someone who was picked for his hostility to the obstruction case, which appears to be what some of the Mueller team is taking issue with.” [….]
Schiff noted that the reports suggesting Mueller’s team crafted summaries meant to be made public undercuts Barr’s decision to deliver his own analysis of the report.
“Those summaries may be among the most carefully drafted worded parts of the entire report by the Mueller team,” Schiff said. “They know that most Americans aren’t going to read all 400 pages, they are going to look to those top lines, and so they were probably wordsmithed very carefully, which means any deviation by Barr to give perhaps an overly optimistic picture of the president’s behavior particularly as to obstruction would have concerned the members of that team.”
Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) said there’s increased urgency to be concerned Mueller’s report may be destroyed, adding, “The best indicator of future activity is past activity.” He said Barr’s “biased” summary was such an indicator.
The news that Barr’s cover-up boat is leaking badly was just one bad news story that hit Trump yesterday. Check these links if you haven’t already:
NPR: Key House Democrat Formally Asks For Trump’s Tax Returns.
CNN: Read: Key House Democratic chairman letter to IRS requesting Trump’s tax returns.
Timothy O’Brien at Bloomberg: I’ve Seen Trump’s Tax Returns and You Still Haven’t.
The Washington Post: Jared Kushner identified as senior White House official whose security clearance was denied by career officials.
USA Today: Trump’s security clearance meddling is much bigger scandal than Benghazi or ‘her emails’.
Miami Herald: Feds are investigating possible Chinese spying at Mar-a-Lago and Cindy Yang, sources say.
The Washington Post: ‘You pay and you get in’: At Trump’s beach retreat, hundreds of customers — and growing security concerns.
So . . . what else is happening? What stories are you following today?
.
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Posted: April 2, 2019 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics |
Candidates for President in 2020. I’m already sick and tired of this campaign.
Good Afternoon!!
The 2020 presidential primaries are nearly a year away, and I’m already sick and tired of the whole ugly mess. There are four well-qualified women running for the Democratic nomination, and the media is largely ignoring them in favor of two white men in their late 70s, and two young white men whose qualifications are negligible. And have you heard that 77-year-old Mike Bloomberg is still thinking about running?
I have already decided that I am going to vote for woman in the primary (assuming they haven’t been driven out of the race by Super Tuesday). Right now I like Kamala Harris, but I’m softening toward Elizabeth Warren.
I’m really troubled by the way the women candidates have been largely ignored in the media coverage. The media bros seem to adore Bernie Sanders, Beto O’Rourke, and the man of the moment Pete Buttigieg. Buttigieg’s claim to fame is being mayor of South Bend, Indiana. O’Rourke served in the House for three two-year terms. How is either of these men qualified to be President of the United States?
Last night Kamala Harris’s campaign announced that she had raised $12 million. Check out these reactions from media bros:
Please note that Ryan Lizza was fired from The New Yorker for sexual misconduct.
Sam Stein (The Daily Beast) and Jonathan Allen (NBC News) tweeted similar claims.
And then there’s the other old guy, Joe Biden. Young people don’t seem to know his history. They just know him as Vice President under Barack Obama. But if he runs, it’s going to be a real mess. In fact it already is getting really ugly. This is from a longer thread on Biden.
Everyone but the youngsters is surely aware that Biden has already tried to run for president twice and failed, that he’s a gaffe machine, and that he often behaves in a creepy way with women. Is it really worth taking a chance on him, especially since he’s 76 years old? But here’s something I hadn’t heard about until recently.
The Hill: Joe Biden’s 2020 Ukrainian nightmare: A closed probe is revived.
Two years after leaving office, Joe Biden couldn’t resist the temptation last year to brag to an audience of foreign policy specialists about the time as vice president that he strong-armed Ukraine into firing its top prosecutor.
In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
Remember this embarrassing photo?
“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled telling Poroshenko.
“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event, insisting that President Obama was in on the threat.
But why did Biden want the prosecutor fired? More from the article:
But Ukrainian officials tell me there was one crucial piece of information that Biden must have known but didn’t mention to his audience: The prosecutor he got fired was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings that employed Biden’s younger son, Hunter, as a board member.
U.S. banking records show Hunter Biden’s American-based firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, received regular transfers into one of its accounts — usually more than $166,000 a month — from Burisma from spring 2014 through fall 2015, during a period when Vice President Biden was the main U.S. official dealing with Ukraine and its tense relations with Russia.
Joe and Hunter Biden
The general prosecutor’s official file for the Burisma probe — shared with me by senior Ukrainian officials — shows prosecutors identified Hunter Biden, business partner Devon Archer and their firm, Rosemont Seneca, as potential recipients of money.
Shokin told me in written answers to questions that, before he was fired as general prosecutor, he had made “specific plans” for the investigation that “included interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden.”
From The New York Times in 2015: Joe Biden, His Son and the Case Against a Ukrainian Oligarch, by James Risen.
When Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. traveled to Kiev , Ukraine, on Sunday for a series of meetings with the country’s leaders, one of the issues on his agenda was to encourage a more aggressive fight against Ukraine’s rampant corruption and stronger efforts to rein in the power of its oligarchs.
But the credibility of the vice president’s anticorruption message may have been undermined by the association of his son, Hunter Biden, with one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies, Burisma Holdings, and with its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, who was Ukraine’s ecology minister under former President Viktor F. Yanukovych before he was forced into exile.
Hunter Biden, 45, a former Washington lobbyist, joined the Burisma board in April 2014. That month, as part of an investigation into money laundering, British officials froze London bank accounts containing $23 million that allegedly belonged to Mr. Zlochevsky.
Read the rest at the NYT. Tell me this wouldn’t be an issue if Biden runs.
BTW, Hunter Biden was also kicked out of the Navy for using cocaine and had an affair with his brother’s widow.
I’ll leave you with links to a few more articles on Biden’s baggage.
Michelle Goldberg at The New York Times: The Wrong Time for Joe Biden. He’s not a sexual predator, but he is out of touch.
Molly Roberts at The Washington Post: It doesn’t matter what Joe Biden meant to do.
Maureen Callahan at The New York Post: ‘Gropey Uncle’ Joe Biden has always been creepy and should stay out of 2020 race.
Rebecca Traister at The Cut: Joe Biden Isn’t the Answer.
Katherine Miller at Buzzfeed: Everyone Already Knows How They Feel About Joe Biden Touching Women.
And it’s not just women that Joe touches inappropriately. Check out the expression on that guy’s face.
I want to call attention to this important piece by Irin Carmon at New York Magazine about how The Washington Post backed off an investigation of sexual harassment and assault at 60 Minutes: What Was the Washington Post Afraid Of?
The afternoon of March 7, 2018, was go time, or so we believed. Inside a glass huddle room at the Washington Post, its walls covered with headlines from journalistic coups of the past, we began dialing numbers on a speakerphone and pressing send on carefully drafted, bullet-pointed emails. For nearly four months, investigative reporter Amy Brittain and I, then a freelancer, had been working on a follow-up to our November front-page story about sexual-harassment allegations against Charlie Rose. In the wake of our story, Rose had been fired from his gigs as a CBS This Morning anchor and 60 Minutes correspondent, and his PBS show had been canceled.
This new article had 27 additional allegations against Rose and three instances in which CBS management had been warned about him, but it went further. Our editor, Peter Wallsten, had encouraged us to ask who had known about Rose’s conduct and protected him, and whether he’d been enabled by a culture — assuming we had the reporting to back it up, of course. Answering that question had led to the then–60 Minutes boss and former network chairman Jeff Fager, who had repeatedly championed Rose at the network. That was awkward because 60 Minutes had been the Post’s partner for a just-wrapped yearlong investigation of the roots of the opioid crisis.
Jeff Fager
The Post had nonetheless kept both Amy and me on the story and, to ensure the integrity of the process, reassigned us to editors on the national desk who had never worked with Fager. So the isolation of the huddle room wasn’t just to bar distraction. It was a firewall — between us and the reporters and editors who’d just spent months in the trenches with the very men we had found ourselves investigating.
By that day in March, our draft had passed muster with layers of editors all the way up to the Post’s legendary executive editor Marty Baron and his deputy, Cameron Barr, as well as the paper’s lawyers. Now it was time for Amy and me to find out what Fager and other CBS brass had to say about the fruits of our reporting.
The material about Fager was never published by the Post, but Ronan Farrow later wrote about the allegations at the New Yorker and Fager was fired. It’s a long article, but please read the whole thing it if you have time.
The White House is ramping up attacks on Puerto Rico. Check out this video:
The Washington Post: White House spokesman twice calls Puerto Rico ‘that country’ in TV interview.
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley twice referred to Puerto Rico as “that country” during a television appearance Tuesday in which he defended a series of tweets by President Trump lashing out at leaders of the U.S. territory.
In two bursts of tweets — one late Monday night and another Tuesday morning — Trump complained about the amount of federal relief money going to the island and called its politicians “incompetent or corrupt.”
He also claimed that Puerto Rico “got 91 Billion Dollars for the hurricane,” a figure that actually reflects a high-end, long-term estimate for recovery costs. Only a fraction of that has so far been budgeted, and even less has been spent.
As he pressed to defend Trump’s contentions, Gidley sought to make the case that the leaders of the territory, whose residents are U.S. citizens, have mishandled the aid they’ve received thus far.
“With all they’ve done in that country, they’ve had a systematic mismanagement of the goods and services we’ve sent to them,” Gidley said. “You’ve seen food just rotting in the ports. Their governor has done a horrible job. He’s trying to make political hay in a political year, and he’s trying to find someone to take the blame off of his for not having a grid and not having a good system in that country at all.”
Talk about blaming the victim!
I have a few more links to share, but I’m going to end now and get this posted. I’ll post more in the comment thread. I’m sorry this is so late! What stories are you following today?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments