I don’t see any good news out there today. I wonder if things are just going to continue getting worse until fascism completely takes over our country. It’s already true that we are a failing democracy; and it’s not clear whether we can recover.
We still have some hope that the federal courts can rescue us, but the Supreme Court is making that less likely with each passing day. Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about the latest nightmare decision from SCOTUS in the birthright citizenship case, and reactions to that decision are still dominating today’s news and opinion, and there are differing opinions about the fallout from the decision.
I also want to highlight some immigration horror stories that demonstrate how fascism really is coming to America, as Dakinikat suggested yesterday.
Yesterday, in a 6–3 decision in Trump v. Casa, the United States Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration in a case involving an executive order that purports to eliminate birthright citizenship.
Confusingly, the Court’s decision wasn’t about the constitutionality of the birthright-citizenship order. Instead, the case proceeded on the assumption that the order was unconstitutional. The only question for the justices was about remedy: What kind of relief should federal courts provide when a plaintiff successfully challenges a government policy?
The lower courts had, in several birthright-citizenship cases across the country, entered what are known as “universal” or “nationwide” injunctions. These injunctions prevented the executive order from applying to anyone, anywhere—even if they were not a party to the case. The Trump administration argued that nationwide injunctions were inappropriate and impermissible—injunctions should give relief only to the plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit, no one else.
In a majority opinion by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration and put nationwide injunctions to the torch. That’s a big deal. Not only does it represent a major setback to the states and advocacy groups that brought the lawsuit, it also amounts to a revolution in the remedial practices of the lower federal courts.
But it is not, as the dissenting Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would have it, “an existential threat to the rule of law.” It won’t even mean the end of sweeping injunctions in the lower federal courts. To the contrary, the opinion suggests that relief tantamount to a nationwide injunction will still be available in many cases—including, in all likelihood, in the birthright-citizenship case itself.
Cat of Morocco by Isy Ochoa
The author, Nicholas Bagley, is a law professor at the University of Michigan and in the past served as legal counsel to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. He writes that Barrett’s decision was based on history. Nationwide injunctions did not become commonplace until fairly recently in U.S. history; therefore she argued that ‘The federal courts thus lack the power to issue nationwide injunctions. Period. Full stop.” Bagley’s take:
In my book, that’s a positive development. In 2020 testimony to the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Senate, I argued that nationwide injunctions “enable opportunistic behavior by politically motivated litigants and judges, short-circuit a process in which multiple judges address hard legal questions, and inhibit the federal government’s ability to do its work. By inflating the judicial role, they also reinforce the sense that we ought to look to the courts for salvation from our political problems—a view that is difficult to square with basic principles of democratic self-governance.”
Although the Supreme Court divided along partisan lines, with the liberal justices dissenting, I don’t see this as a partisan issue. (The outrageous illegality and sheer ugliness of President Donald Trump’s executive order that lies underneath this fight may go some distance to explain why the three liberals dissented.) Nationwide injunctions are equal-opportunity offenders, thwarting Republican and Democratic initiatives alike. Today, it’s Trump’s birthright-citizenship order and USAID spending freezes. Yesterday it was mifepristone, the cancellation of student debt, and a COVID-vaccine mandate. Why should one federal judge—perhaps a very extreme judge, on either side—have the power to dictate government policy for the entire country? Good riddance.
ven as it ended nationwide injunctions, the Supreme Court left the door open for other forms of relief that are not nationwide injunctions—but that look a whole lot like them. That’s good news for opponents of the birthright-citizenship order.
You’ll need to read the rest at The Atlantic to understand Bagley’s arguments.
The Supreme Court issued its birthright citizenship ruling this morning and it’s worse than just about everyone feared it could be.
The Court’s ruling is composed of two main parts.
The first is its declaration that it is possible that the president can contradict the plain-text reading of the Constitution by issuing an executive order doing away with birthright citizenship.
The second is that lower courts can no longer issue nationwide injunctions against blatantly unconstitutional policies imposed by the executive. Injunctions must now be created on a patchwork basis.
I want to impress upon you how dangerous this is. SCOTUS has empowered the president to impose whatever he likes—irrespective of its constitutionality—and then prevented judicial overview except at the localized level.1 Meaning that we will now have two sets of laws. One that operates in Red America and one that Operates in Blue America.
Separate, but unequal. A house divided against itself.
I think the majority believes it is being clever—that it has found a way to pretend to give Trump a win while (they tell themselves) ackshually delaying a substantive verdict.
But what they have done is not mere make-believe. They have set in motion a calamity.
Mr. Angel, Sir, Some Other Dude Done It, Elisheva Nesis, Israeli artist
I’m going to give you a bit more, because this article is behind a paywall. Last notes that the case before the SCOTUS was not about birthright citizenship, so they didn’t need to deal with that, and they didn’t specifically do that. That question will require further litigation.
The Supreme Court could have jumped ahead and simply ruled that the action proposed by the president’s executive order was unconstitutional. This would have meant widening the scope of the specific question in Trumpv.Casa. But scope gets widened all the time.2 The Supreme Court is the Supreme Court. It can do whatever it wants.
The fact that the majority chose to delay answering this question is, all on its own, a statement. My theory is that at least two members of the majority do not believe that the birthright citizenship order is constitutional—but they want to delay making that judgment as long as possible.
And so, by constructing this new idea—that universal stays are now verboten—they tell themselves that they have handed Trump a tactical victory but set him up for a strategic defeat on the substance of his EO later on.
The Supreme Court majority thinks it’s being clever by playing within the rules. They’re actually being fools, because Trump isn’t playing within the rules. Their conception that injunctions should be limited just to the parties in each particular case works only if (1) similar cases will be decided similarly, and (2) the government knows this fact and won’t try to break the law. But the government is, right now, in the process of finding ways to ignore the courts—including the Supreme Court—with as little political price as possible. And the government has shown already—repeatedly—that it will break the law.
An emboldened Trump administration plans to aggressively challenge blocks on the president’s top priorities, a White House official said, following a major Supreme Court ruling that limitsthe power of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions.
Government attorneys will press judges to pare back the dozens of sweeping rulings thwarting the president’s agenda “as soon as possible,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.
Priorities for the administration include injunctions related to the Education Department and the Department of Government Efficiency, as well as an order halting the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the official said.
“Thanks to this decision, we can now promptly file to proceed with numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis,” President Donald Trump said Friday at a news conference in which he thanked by name members of the conservative high court majority he helped build.
Trump on Friday cast the narrowing of judicial power as a consequential, needed correction in his battle with a court system that has restrained his authority.
Scholars and plaintiffs in the lawsuits over Trump’s orders agreed that the high court ruling could profoundly reshape legal battles over executive power that have defined Trump’s second term — even as other legal experts said the effects would be more muted. Some predicted it would embolden Trump to push his expansive view of presidential power.
“The Supreme Court has fundamentally reset the relationship between the federal courts and the executive branch,” Notre Dame Law School Professor Samuel Bray, who has studied nationwide injunctions, said in a statement. “Since the Obama administration, almost every major presidential initiative has been frozen by federal district courts issuing ‘universal injunctions.’”
Immigrants rights’ advocates on Friday filed a nationwide class action lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship, just hours after the Supreme Court partially blocked nationwide injunctions challenging Trump’s order.
The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Legal Defense Fund and other groups, was brought on behalf of a class of babies subject to the executive order, along with their parents. It charges the Trump administration with flouting the Constitution, congressional intent, and longstanding Supreme Court precedent.
Bohemio et el gato, Luis Garcés
It is also a direct response to the Supreme Court’s decision earlier Friday that puts new limits on nationwide injunctions, and reflects a new legal pathway that groups will likely turn to when challenging the Trump administration’s unlawful actions.
In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the high court struck down nationwide injunctions against Trump’s birthright citizenship order, narrowing their scope to provide relief to the specific plaintiff who is suing in a case rather than anyone who would be affected by the order. In addition to drawing sharp criticism from constitutional experts, the court’s decision is a major blow to pro-democracy groups that have been successfully challenging Trump’s lawlessness through the use of injunctions.
But the justices left the door open to challenging the administration in other ways, like class action lawsuits. The ACLU and its cohorts wasted no time using this legal pathway.
In a statement, the groups behind the new lawsuit noted that three lawsuits previously obtained nationwide injunctions protecting everyone subject to Trump’s executive order, but the Supreme Court’s decision narrowed those injunctions and potentially leaves children without protections.
“Every court to have looked at this cruel order agrees that it is unconstitutional,” Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and lead attorney in this case, said in a statement. “The Supreme Court’s decision did not remotely suggest otherwise, and we are fighting to make sure President Trump cannot trample on the citizenship rights of a single child.”
Read the rest at HuffPost.
Immigration Horror Stories
First, two incidents in California, which is still under Trump’s thumb with his commandeering of the National Guard and his stationing marines in Los Angeles and with masked ICE gangs roaming the streets. We aren’t getting as much coverage about the situation in California, but protests and ICE raids are still going on.
Federal agents blasted their way into a residential home in Huntington Park, California, on Friday. Security-camera video obtained by the local NBC station showed border patrol agents setting up an explosive device near the door of the house and then detonating it – causing a window to be shattered. Around a dozen armed agents in full tactical gear then charged toward the home.
Jenny Ramirez, who lives in the house with her boyfriend and one-year-old and six-year-old children, told NBC through tears that it was one of the loudest explosions she heard in her life.
“I told them, ‘You guys didn’t have to do this, you scared by son, my baby,’” Ramirez said.
Ramirez said she was not given any warning from the authorities that they wanted to enter her home and that everyone who lives there is a US citizen.
The raid comes as federal agents have ramped up immigration enforcement in Los Angeles and across southern California over the last few weeks. Huntington Park is in Los Angeles county. Immigrants have been swept up in raids at court houses, restaurants and straight off the street. Some of the people targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) have been US citizens. In one incident, Ice agents detained a Honduran woman seeking asylum and her children, one of which was a six-year-old boy who had been diagnosed with leukemia.
The agents who raided Ramirez’s home in Huntington Park on Friday also reportedly sent a drone into the house after setting off the explosive device.
Two cats on a colorful cushion, woodcut by Theophile Steinlen
Dramatic video shows the moment federal agents blew up the front door of a residence in Huntington Park early Friday morning, using a drone to search room by room for a man they say rammed a federal vehicle last week during immigration raids.
“They were right here with their rifles and we heard some screaming up in the front but we couldn’t see because everything was blocked, but it was pretty shocking,” said Lourdes Salazar.
That man, Jorge Sierra-Hernandez, was not home at the time, but his girlfriend and two young children were, leaving them shaking with fear due to the aggressive tactics of those agents.
He is now back home with his family after turning himself in Friday.
After the break-in and drone search:
Once the drone went out, at least nine agents moved in with guns drawn. They eventually escorted Ramirez and her children outside.
“They didn’t identify themselves until I came out, they told me they were from Homeland Security, from ICE,” said Ramirez.
She said pleaded with them to give her an explanation, but instead of giving her an answer, they said “when we find him he’s going to know why.” [….]
The agents claimed that Ramirez’s car ran into a truck carrying federal agents. It’s not clear if it was deliberate. The agents were also angry because protesters were throwing rocks at them during the incident. Why does that justify terrorizing a mother and two small children? DHS and ICE are on an out-of-control power trip.
A 32-year-old U.S. citizen was released from federal custody Thursday evening after her family said she was wrongfully detained by agents during an immigration enforcement operation in downtown Los Angeles.
According to her attorney, Andrea Velez was released on bond after being detained by immigration enforcement agents on Tuesday and then charged with assaulting a federal officer. The Department of Homeland Security said Velez “forcefully obstructed an ICE officer,” but her family said that’s not the case.
Estrella Rosas documented the frantic moments as she saw her sister being thrown to the ground before being arrested and forced into an unmarked car by unidentified officers near 9th and Main Street in downtown Los Angeles.
Woman with a cat, by Marijan Trepše.
“We dropped off my sister to go to work like we always do, all of a sudden, my mom in the rearview mirror she saw how a man went on top of her. Basically, dropped her on the floor and started putting her in handcuffs and trying to arrest her,” said Rosas, recounting the arrest.
In the video, Velez’s mother and sister can be heard pleading for help. “That’s my sister. They’re taking her. Help her, someone. She’s a U.S. citizen,” said Rosas.
In the criminal complaint, prosecutors alleged that during an immigration enforcement Tuesday morning, “Velez stepped into an officer’s path and extended one of her arms in an apparent effort to prevent him from apprehending a male subject he was chasing and that Velez’s outstretched arm struck that officer in the face.”
In her court appearance Thursday, Velez did not enter a plea in federal court. Velez’s family said she was just walking on her way to work as a marketing designer and did nothing wrong.
Both sisters are U.S. citizens, but these days that doesn’t seem to matter.
The Trump administration announced an end to temporary legal protections for Haitian migrants in the United States, leaving hundreds of thousands of people at risk of deportation.
The temporary protected status for Haitian nationals in the United States, granted after a 2010 earthquake near Port-au- Prince caused up to 200,000 deaths, will terminate Sept. 2, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Friday.
“This decision restores integrity in our immigration system and ensures that Temporary Protective Status is actually temporary,” DHS said in a statement Friday. The “environmental situation in Haiti has improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home,” DHS said, and Haitian nationals may “pursue lawful status” through other means if they are eligible.
The statement did not elaborate on why it considered Haiti safe for citizens.
That’s because Haiti is not safe.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government continues to advise Americans against all travel to Haiti, which has been under a state of emergency since March 2024 because of “kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and limited health care.” The State Department’s travel advisory adds that “mob killings and assaults by the public have increased” and that crimes including “robbery, carjackings, sexual assault and kidnappings for ransom” are common.
Bedtime Story, by Jeanette Lassen
The U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince this week noted that some domestic air travel had resumed, and urged Americans to leave the country “as soon as possible.”
In a federal register notice of the decision, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi L. Noem said she decided to terminate the TPS designation for Haiti “because it is contrary to the national interest to permit Haitian nationals … to remain temporarily in the United States.”
“Widespread gang violence in Haiti is sustained by the country’s lack of functional government authority. This breakdown in governance directly impacts U.S. national security interests, particularly in the context of uncontrolled migration,” she said in the notice. While the situation in Haiti was “concerning,” she wrote, “the United States must prioritize its national interests.”
I’m getting the feeling that Trump realizes his days as “president” are numbered, and he has decided to do as much evil as he possibly can while he’s still in power.
Last night, while the decent people in the country were focused on the devastating hurricane approaching Texas, Trump overwhelmed our concern for our fellow Americans with a Friday news dump from hell.
President Trump signed a long-awaited directive on Friday that precludes transgender individuals from joining the military but gives Defense Secretary Jim Mattis wide discretion in determining whether those already in the armed forces can continue to serve.
Mr. Mattis’s decisions will be based on several criteria, including military effectiveness and budgetary concerns, a senior White House official said in briefing reporters.
1927 Jane Rogers Interior Scene
Left unclear was how many of the thousands of transgender service personnel estimated to be in the military might keep serving. By putting the onus on Mr. Mattis, the president appeared to open the door to allowing at least some transgender service members to remain in the military.
Dana W. White, the chief Pentagon spokeswoman, said that Mr. Mattis had received the guidance but did not indicate how he would proceed.
On Friday night, minutes before Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas, Donald Trump issued the first presidential pardon of his administration to Joe Arpaio, the longtime Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff whose record of proudly tough, sometimes brutal, and ultimately illegal policing of Latino immigrants made him among the nation’s most admired and reviled lawmen.
In 2011, a federal judge ordered Arpaio to stop targeting Latino drivers. He refused. In July, a judge found he had willingly resisted that order, and could serve up to six months in jail for criminal contempt. He had yet to be sentenced, and the pardon ends the possibility that the 85-year-old Arpaio will see jail time.
Herbert Badham (Australian artist, 1899-1961) Breakfast Piece
In a tightly worded two-paragraph statement, Trump praised Arpaio’s “admirable service to our nation.” The statement doesn’t mention his conviction, or the various human rights scandals that plagued his 24-year tenure as the sheriff of Arizona’s most populous county, which includes Phoenix. The county spent tens of millions defending Arpaio in court from various charges and settling cases resulting from inhumane jail conditions.
“Pardoning Joe Arpaio is a slap in the face to the people of Maricopa County,” Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton wrote on Friday night. “Sheriff Joe Arpaio targeted and terrorized Latino families because of the color of their skin. He was ordered by a federal judge to stop and he refused. He received a fair trial and a justifiable conviction, and there’s nothing the President can do to change that awful legacy and the stain he had left on our community.”
I also highly recommend reading this Slate piece on Trump’s suggestion he would pardon Arpaio by Mark Joseph Stern, written Aug. 15: White Nationalist Rule Is Already Here.
As a number of people have pointed out, Trump’s pardon of Arpaio is also a further attack on the judiciary by a lawless “president.” He went ahead with the pardon without even consulting the Justice Department. Others have noted that this action by Trump sends a message to all his criminal cronies that they can lie to the FBI and Special Counsel Mueller and in return he will pardon them.
The news dump also included the “resignation” of White House Nazi Sebastian Gorka.
Sebastian Gorka, an outspoken and combative defender of President Donald Trump’s national security agenda, has left his position as a White House counterterrorism adviser, two administration officials told CNN.
1938 Sandra Bierman (American artist)
The news, which came late Friday evening, was widely expected in the West Wing, which has now seen high-profile departures on successive Fridays for several weeks.
Gorka was one of Trump’s most prominent cheerleaders, frequently hitting the airwaves to defend the President’s policies and public statements.
But his role outside of television hits was unclear. He did not play a major policymaking role, according to administration officials, and was not a member of the National Security Council.
Two White House Nazis down (Bannon and Gorka), two more to go–Stephen Miller and Trump.
It looks like Trump also plans to end Obama’s program to help immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children.
President Donald Trump appears likely to pull the plug on DACA, the Obama-era program allowing young people who came to the U.S. illegally as children to remain here, several government officials said Friday.
Administration officials said Friday that the Homeland Security secretary, Elaine Duke, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions discussed the program with senior officials Thursday during a meeting at the White House. Sessions has been a consistent opponent of the program.
As many as 1 million immigrants could be affected.
Trump is said to be weighing whether to let DACA gradually expire or end it immediately, but the officials said it is not yet clear which option Trump may choose.
Fuck everyone who voted for this cruel monster and everyone who voted third party.
The storm slammed onto shore Friday evening as a powerful Category 4 hurricane and powered its way north of Corpus Christi.
Carl Larsson, Lady Reading Newspaper
Shortly after midnight, the storm made a second landfall along the northeastern shore of Copano Bay and downgraded once again to a Category 3 storm, the National Weather Service reported.
Initial reports suggested the staggering strength of the storm.
At least 10 people were treated for injuries at a local jail in the town of Rockport, about 31 miles northeast of Corpus Christi, after the roof of a senior citizens’ complex collapsed, local media reported.
Part of a local high school also collapsed, and a portion of the exterior of a hotel peeled off in the heavy winds, KXAN reported.
“People are trapped inside at least one collapsed building. We can’t get rescue teams to them right now,” Rockport City Manager Kevin Carruth told KIII News.
Emergency officials reported large numbers of downed trees and more than 86,000 people around the state without power.
Harvey arrived near Corpus Christi as a Category 4 hurricane, according to the National Hurricane Center, the first major hurricane to make landfall in the United States in a dozen years. A few hours later, the hurricane made a second landfall near Copano Bay as a Category 3 hurricane. Harvey lost strength as it moved inland over south Texas, and was downgraded to Category 1 early Saturday morning, sustaining winds at 90 miles per hour. The hurricane will likely keep slowing down and become a tropical storm later Saturday, the center said.
But the danger is far from over. Even as it weakens steadily, Harvey’s slow-motion churn is expected to create life-threatening conditions for the next several days as torrential rain continues until Wednesday, according to the National Hurricane Center. Harvey is predicted to dump 15 inches to 30 inches of rain on southern Texas, with some parts getting as much as 40 inches, leading to “catastrophic” flooding. Storm-surge flooding may reach nine to 13 feet above ground along parts of the Texas coast between Port Aransas and Port O’Conner.
“Even though #Harvey has made landfall, the rainfall threat is only beginning,” the National Hurricane Center said in a tweet Friday night.
The flooding could leave neighborhoods underwater for days and, as previous hurricanes have done, surface sewage, coffins, and even alligators seeking safety on higher ground.
Dear Brave Souls, Please join me in strong prayer for the people at the coastline of Texas, Corpus Christi, San Antonio, Houston and all surrounds.
Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated in the devastation of wind and flood of a hurricane that made landfall earlier tonight, putting out electricity, flooding the land and homes, washing away so much, fouling the water in many places.C
Please especially prayer for the poor who often have little to no resource to evacuate [no car or stores of food to take with.]
Please pray for all pregnant women and those trying to help them who are scared.
Please pray for all the old and frail in hospital and nursing homes and those who care for them with great heart.
Please pray for all children and inocentes
Please pray for all the horses, dogs and cats and other companions of feathers and fur, as well as wild birds and the fourleggeds
Please pray for help to come, shelter to come, clean water to come, food to come as quickly as possible.
Please help those without papers not be afraid to evacuate, to safeguard their lives utterly.
I send love and my tears to bless this prayer… Texas being Mexico long ago, and the land still loved as well as its people who are often farmers and fisherpeople, small business people, many often in the villages surrounding the larger towns listed above, living often in many of the old ways of our ancestors still.
May all be kept safe, may all be fed and watered that is, the human beings and the animals,
may the storm’s 130 mph wind exhaust itself as it walks screeching overland,
may the winds die,
may the flood waters that have reached over 6′ tall at this writing, recede in ways least damaging to all creatures, humans and structures.
And may the foundations and pillars of fundaments be secure,
may the guardian trees whose roots and earth have been soaked with the rains and thereby softened, drive their roots even deeper, and remain standing in these winds.
May all be held close and know that strangers pray every health onto them now, and in coming days…
This we ask in the name of all that is Holy and of Source without source.
And with love beyond love,
dr.e
The good news is that the Russia investigation is progressing.
At issue is an effort by Peter Smith, a Trump-supporting GOP operative and private equity executive, to track down Hillary Clinton’s infamous 30,000 or so deleted emails during the fall of 2016.
Paul Cezanne, The artist’s father reading his newspaper
The effort, described on the record to Harris by Smith (the 81-year-old man died a week and a half after their interview), entailed outreach to several hacker groups, including at least two that Smith believed to be Russian-tied, to see if they had hacked the emails and could release them.
The emails — which Clinton said she deleted because they were personal and unrelated to her work as secretary of state — never surfaced. And Smith didn’t work for the Trump campaign.
But there is a potential connection to the campaign — through Flynn. Smith repeatedly claimed that he was in contact with Flynn about the effort to find Clinton’s emails, per Harris’s sources…
Special Counsel Robert Mueller issued grand jury subpoenas in recent days seeking testimony from public relations executives who worked on an international campaign organized by Paul Manafort, people directly familiar with the matter told NBC News.
This is the first public indication that Mueller’s investigation is beginning to compel witness testimony before the grand jury — a significant milestone in an inquiry that is examining the conduct of President Donald Trump and his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, among others.
It is also further indication that Manafort, Trump’s onetime campaign chairman, could be in serious legal jeopardy.
According to one executive whose firm received a subpoena, Mueller’s team is closely examining the lobbying campaign, which ran between 2012 and 2014. Some of the firms involved in the campaign received subpoenas for documents weeks ago, the executive said, and now the Mueller team is seeking testimony.
That’s all I have for today. What stories are you following? If you are in the path of the hurricane, please stay safe.
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I’ve been somewhat out of the loop for the past few days because I’ve had some kind of weird virus that has made it difficult for me to think. If it weren’t August, I’d wonder if it’s the flu. Everything ached. For a couple of days it felt like my skin actually hurt. Anyway I’ve been vegetating in front of the TV watching Criminal Minds reruns and Lifetime movies. I’m feeling better now, although I’m still sleepy all the time.
Excavations of Neanderthal sites more than 40,000 years old have uncovered a kind of tool that leather workers still use to make hides more lustrous and water resistant. The bone tools, known as lissoirs, had previously been associated only with modern humans. The latest finds indicate that Neanderthals and modern humans might have invented the tools independently.
The first of the lissoir fragments surfaced a decade ago at a rock shelter called Pech-de-l’Azé in the Dordogne region of southwest France. Archaeologist Marie Soressi of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, knew the tool at once, says her colleague Shannon McPherron.
The tools are also known as slickers and burnishers, says McPherron. Soressi contacted luxury-goods manufacturer Hermès in Paris, and found that their high-end leather workers use just such a tool. “She showed them a picture, and they recognized it instantly,” says McPherron. The company’s line includes the wildly popular Birkin handbag, which sells for around US$10,000 and upwards.
McPherron says that a single artefact, however, was not enough for the researchers to draw broad conclusions. “You find one, and there’s always some doubt. You’re worried that it’s not a pattern — that it’s anecdotal behaviour.” But subsequent digs at Pech-de-l’Azé and nearby Abri Peyrony turned up further lissoir fragments, leading the researchers to conclude that Neanderthals made the tools routinely.
Neanderthal bone tools
The researchers say it’s not clear if these kinds of tools were first invented by Neanderthals or modern humans. It’s even possible that modern humans could have learned how to make and use the bone tools from Neantherthals, although most archaeologists believe that Neanderthals learned the skills from humans. From Live Science:
Neanderthals created artifacts similar to ones made at about the same time by modern humans arriving in Europe, such as body ornaments and small blades. Scientists hotly debated whether such behavior developed before or after contact with modern humans.
“There is a huge debate about how different Neanderthals were from modern humans,” said Shannon McPherron, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
Now, McPherron and his colleagues have discovered that Neanderthals created a specialized kind of bone tool previously only seen in modern humans. These tools are about 51,000 years old, making them the oldest known examples of such tools in Europe and predating the known arrival of modern humans.
Republicans who backed the legislation said it was meant to prevent voter fraud, which they claim is both rampant and undetected in North Carolina. Independent voting rights groups joined Democrats and libertarians in suggesting the true goal was to suppress voter turnout, especially among blacks, the young, the elderly and the poor.
“It is a trampling on the blood, sweat and tears of the martyrs — black and white — who fought for voting rights in this country,” said the Rev. William Barber, president of the state chapter of the NAACP. “It puts McCrory on the wrong side of history.” [….]
Barber called the Republican-backed measure one of the worst attempts in the nation at voting reform and said the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People considered the package an all-out attack on existing laws long seen as a model of voter participation….
The legislation signed by McCrory and approved last month by state lawmakers requires voters to present government-issued photo IDs at the polls and shortens early voting by a week, from 17 days to 10. It also ends same-day registration, requiring voters to register, update their address or make any other needed changes at least 25 days ahead of an election. A high school civics program that registers tens of thousands of students to vote each year in advance of their 18th birthdays has been eliminated.
On the same day that North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed a restrictive voter ID bill into law, Clinton criticized the Supreme Court decision that she believes “stripped out the pre-clearance formula that made [the Voting Rights Act] so effective.”
She noted that Texas, Florida and North Carolina are states whose recent voter legislation has shifted the burden, slamming the North Carolina bill as one that “reads like the greatest hits of voter suppression.”
“In the weeks since the ruling, we’ve seen an unseemly rush by previously covered jurisdictions to enact or enforce laws that will make it harder for millions of our fellow Americans to vote,” Clinton said.
Clinton also went after several provisions of the North Carolina bill that she believes place a greater burden on citizens facing discrimination, including limited voting hours, stricter ID requirements and restricted early voting.
CNN reports that Hillary also plans to discuss national security and transparency in an upcoming speech.
Clinton said her appearance at the annual meeting of the American Bar Association marked the beginning of a speaking series she’ll embark upon that will also include an address on the United States’ national security policies next month in Philadelphia.
Clinton said the September address would focus of issues of “transparency and balance.” The former top diplomat had not yet publicaly addressed the classified National Security Agency surveillance programs that were revealed through leaks at the beginning of the summer.
The move into the political realm marks a new phase in Clinton’s post-State Department life, which was previously occupied by speeches to global women’s organizations and a schedule of paid appearances. She is also writing a diplomacy-focused memoir for release in 2014.
The speeches will likely fuel speculation that Clinton is planning to jump into the race for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, where she is considered an early favorite.
Well there’s some exciting news! It’s becoming more an more clear that Hillary plans to run for president in 2016.
I’m sure you’ve already heard that James “Whitey” Bulger has been found guilty of murder and racketeering, among other charges. It was always a foregone conclusion. The only surprise is that the jury was only able to find him guilty of 11 murders out of the 19 he was charged with. The New York Times:
BOSTON — James (Whitey) Bulger, the mobster who terrorized South Boston in the 1970s and ‘80s, holding the city in his thrall even after he disappeared, was convicted Monday of a sweeping array of gangland crimes, including 11 murders. He faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison.
The verdict delivers long-delayed justice to Mr. Bulger, 83, who disappeared in the mid-1990s after a corrupt agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation told him he was about to be indicted. He left behind a city that wondered if he would ever be caught — and even if the F.B.I., which had been complicit in many of his crimes and had relied on him as an informer, was really looking for him.
“This was the worst case of corruption in the history of the F.B.I.,” said Michael D. Kendall, a former federal prosecutor who investigated Mr. Bulger’s associates. “It was a multigenerational, systematic alliance with organized crime, where the F.B.I. was actively participating in the murders of government witnesses, or at least allowing them to occur.”
Of course there won’t be any punishment for the FBI except for embarrassment, if that troubles them. And there was only minor punishment for the parade of hit men and other criminals who were given generous deals in exchange for their testimony.
Debbie Davis, left, with her mother Olga, right, was the girlfriend of Stephen Flemmi, Whitey Bugler’s gangster partner. She vanished in 1981 and her body was found dismembered in 2000 (Daily Mail)
The families of the victims of the 7 murders Bulger was not convicted of were disappointed and angry.
As a clerk read the verdicts in the lengthy and complicated list of charges, Mr. Bulger looked away from the jury and showed no reaction. He was found guilty of 31 of 32 counts of his indictment, the one exception involving an extortion charge. While the jury of eight men and four women convicted him of 11 murders, they found the government had not proved its case against him in seven others, and in one murder case it made no finding, leading to gasps inside the courtroom by relatives of those murder victims and explosive scenes outside the court.
“My father just got murdered again 40 years later in that courtroom,” said the son of William O’Brien, who is also named William….
Perhaps one glimmer of gratification for Mr. Bulger was that the jury reached “no finding” in the death of Debra Davis, one of two women he was accused of strangling. He has long maintained that his personal code of honor did not allow for the killing of women, although the jury did determine that he had killed the other woman, Deborah Hussey. Ms. Davis was the longtime girlfriend of Stephen Flemmi, Mr. Bulger’s former partner in crime who testified against him. Ms. Hussey was the daughter of another of Mr. Flemmi’s longtime girlfriends.
One of the jurors who voted to convict Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger for a string of gangland crimes described how the more than 32 hours of deliberations were “stressful” and involved “all kinds of dissension.”
“Slamming doors,” Scott Hotyckey told CBS station WBZ-TV. “People leaving. Peolpe wanting to get off the jury.” [….]
Hotyckey, juror number 5, said the evidence was overwhelming.
“If you could believe the testimony, and believe what you heard,” Hotyckey said. “I don’t see how you couldn’t find the person guilty.”
But Hotyckey says not all of the jurors believed the testimony they heard – especially from John Martorano, a former hit man who got a plea deal from prosecutors to testify against Bulger.
“There was one juror that constantly said that his testimony was not believable,” Hotyckey recalled. “(He said) over and over again that you couldn’t believe anything (Martorano) said because of the government.”
A study on rats shows that the brain experiences a huge surge of electricity during the moment of death, suggesting that they are experiencing a higher state of consciousness.
It could explain why people claim to see white light or “life flash before their eyes” during near-death experiences.
Dr Jason Braithwaite from the University of Birmingham says that since this surge is happening in rats, it could also happen in humans.
The lead author of the study, Dr Jimo Borjigin, of the University of Michigan, said: “A lot of people thought that the brain after clinical death was inactive or hypoactive, with less activity than the waking state, and we show that is definitely not the case.
“If anything, it is much more active during the dying process than even the waking state.”
Much more at the link.
Now it’s your turn. What stories have caught your fancy today? Please share your links in the comment thread.
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Yesterday the House narrowly defeated (217-205) an amendment to the defense spending bill (proposed by Michigan Republican Justin Amash) that would have prohibited NSA from collecting metadata on phone calls unless there is evidence that a specific person involved in the call is involved in criminal activity. From Bloomberg:
Implementation of the amendment could have created a new burden on telephone and Internet companies to retain bulk data, in addition to ending the NSA’s blanket collection of phone records. Those possibilities led the White House, Republicans leaders and many congressional Democrats to oppose the proposals, pitting them against lawmakers from both parties who champion civil liberties and privacy….
The provision would have had the potential to cause headaches for information technology companies.
“It could be a significant burden depending on how the government wants us to keep this data and store it,” Trey Hodgkins, a senior vice president for TechAmerica, a Washington-based trade group that represents Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ), AT&T Inc. (T) andCenturyLink Inc. (CTL), said in a phone interview. “You’re talking about potentially extremely huge data sets.”
Another amendment to limit NSA data collection did pass:
The House also adopted an amendment written by Republican Richard Nugent of Florida that sought to prohibit the NSA from using funds in the almost $600 billion Pentagon spending measure to “acquire, monitor or store the content” of electronic communications by “a United States person.”
The Nugent amendment was viewed by some lawmakers as providing political cover for those who didn’t want to vote for Amash’s amendment. While lawmakers voting for the Nugent amendment might appear to be curbing the NSA’s powers, in actuality the amendment wouldn’t change anything, simply restates current law and is “a fig leaf”, said Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat.
The bill now goes to the Senate; who knows what will happen next. I hope there will be an open debate on regulating possible abuses that could arise from NSA data collection. If a serious debate takes place, perhaps something positive will eventually come from the Snowden debacle. I’m skeptical, but still hopeful.
USA Today presents arguments from Keith Alexander against completely “blowing up” the NSA’s data collection program.
Gen. Keith Alexander, head of the NSA, has said the collection of data has helped disrupt dozens of terrorist plots. Investigators are not allowed to comb through the data, but can use it when they have identified a foreign suspect through other intelligence collection.
The data allows investigators to then detect networks the suspect may have been tied into, which could lead to other suspects and the uncovering of secret cells.
“The court restricts what we can do with that data,” Alexander said in a recent speech. “We have to show some reasonable, articulable suspicion that the phone number that we’re going to look at is associated with al-Qaeda or another terrorist group.”
Personally, I’d rather see more carefully defined limits on when and how NSA can use the metadata to target specific American citizens and regulations to prevent lower level employees like Edward Snowden from getting access to personal information rather than an overall prohibition on having the data available when needed for an investigation. Whenever there is a “terrorist” event–as in the Boston Marathon bombings, people demand to know why the government didn’t prevent it. The fact is there are already regulations in place that limit NSA from targeting Americans. IMHO, we should improve those rules if necessary, based on a serious and thorough debate.
Here are Glenn Greenwald’s reactions to the vote in case you want to read another of his inaccurate, rabid screeds. Basically, Greenwald says it’s all the Democrats’ fault–especially that horrible, dreadful war criminal Barack Obama, who is roughly equivalent to Peter King and Michele Bachmann.
Further down in the article, poor Glenn has to admit that a majority of House Democrats supported the Amash amendment in the face of nasty mean old Obama saying he would like to have a nuanced discussion of the issues rather than simply shutting down the counterterrorism program entirely. Greenwald also continues to claim, falsely, that NSA collects and analyzes the phone calls of every American, in the face of calmer, more knowledgeable people who have tried to explain to him that the data isn’t examined without a warrant and clear suspicion of criminal activity (famous example of how these allowed a criminal to slip through the cracks: Tamerlan Tsarnaev). But we’re not Russia, so we do have some limits on surveillance of American citizens and legal residents like Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
You know what I’d like to see targeted for more regulation? The FBI’s use of informants and FBI agents’ apparent ability to get away with murder. From Adrian Walker at The Boston Globe: Ibragim Todashev’s shooting needs explanation.
Ibragim Todashev was mysterious in life, but he has fallen into a void in death.
Todashev was fatally shot during an interrogation by Boston-based FBI agents in Orlando on May 22. The Russia native was being asked about his friendship with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the presumed mastermind of the Boston Marathon bombing. Unusual as it is for someone to be shot to death during questioning, silence has reigned in its aftermath. The FBI’s few statements have been more confusing than illuminating.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts made an attempt Tuesday to spur somebody, anybody, into providing clarity. It called on state authorities in Florida and Massachusetts to conduct their own investigations. The questioning was being done by the FBI and Massachusetts State Police, though some reports have indicated a lone FBI officer was in the room when Todashev was shot.
In response, Attorney General Martha Coakley made it clear her office has no intention of getting involved, pleading lack of jurisdiction. Florida officials have maintained all along that they have no standing to investigate. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to think they are about to change their minds.
Walker notes that we have a stunning example of the FBI’s misbehavior with informants in the James “Whitey” Bulger trial, which is going on in Boston right now.
…we should know better than to rush to absolve the FBI, no questions asked. After all, another of Boston’s great villains, James “Whitey” Bulger, is being tried for decades of terrorizing the city while an FBI informant.
And while the verdict on Whitey is still weeks away, the evidence is clear that the FBI aided and abetted his activities for ages. Not just a rogue agent or two, either; much of the agency’s Boston office was involved.
It’s not comforting, either, to examine the FBI’s record on examining its own shootings. According to a New York Times investigation, the FBI has cleared itself in nearly every agency-involved shooting of the past 20 years.
Bodies covered in blankets lay next to the overturned carriages as smoke billowed from the wreckage. Firefighters clambered over the twisted metal trying to get survivors out of the windows, while ambulances and fire engines surrounded the scene.
The government said it was working on the hypothesis the derailment was an accident – although the scene will stir memories of 2004’s Madrid train bombing, carried out by Islamist extremists, that killed 191 people. Sabotage or attack was unlikely to be involved, an official source said….
“It was going so quickly. … It seems that on a curve the train started to twist, and the wagons piled up one on top of the other,” passenger Ricardo Montesco told Cadena Ser radio station.
“A lot of people were squashed on the bottom. We tried to squeeze out of the bottom of the wagons to get out and we realised the train was burning. … I was in the second wagon and there was fire,” he added.
This brief video shows the moment the train derailed and crashed.
SPAIN: At 20.41 on July 24 a Madrid – Ferrol Alvia service derailed on a curve on the approach to Santiago de Compostela. Formed of a Class 730 gauge-convertible electro-diesel Talgo trainset, the 15.00 from Madrid was carrying 218 passengers, according to a joint statement from Spanish train operator RENFE and infrastructure manager ADIF.
The train had 12 vehicles, with an electric and a diesel power car at the ends. The rear power cars appear to have caught fire after the impact, and one of the intermediate coaches was thrown up on to an adjacent road; other cars rolled over or struck a retaining wall. Reports on July 25 indicated that 79 people had died in the accident with many more injured.
The train had left the high speed alignment and should have been slowing in preparation for the stop at Santiago station, about 3 to 4 km from the site of the accident. The speed limit on the curve is understood to be 80 km/h, but Spanish media reported that the train driver had said over the train radio that the train had been travelling at 190 km/h. A video taken from a lineside security camera appeared to show coaches behind the front power cars derailing first, pulling the heavier leading vehicles over as the train rounded the curve.
Here’s the crazy Republican story of the day–so far. I suppose the crazy could still get worse as the day goes on. As you know I was born in Fargo, ND, and I still have a soft spot for my home state; but I’m horrified by what’s happening there right now. Check this out: Pro-life group promotes cannibalism, hands out ‘fleshy’ fetus toys in candy bags to kids at State Fair, according to Freak-Out Nation. Yes, you read that right. They put “realistic” fetus dolls into candy bags for children!
Want a squishy toy fetus with your corn dog? If you’re visiting the North Dakota State Fair, you’re in luck! Last weekend, local anti-choice advocates slipped soft fetal models into kids’ candy bags without parental permission during the fair’s gigantic parade. “I don’t know exactly where I stand on abortion,” one mother told Jezebel, “but I believe in my rights as a parent.”
The North Dakota State Fair boasts a bevy of attractions, including performances by Tim McGraw and Creedence Clearwater Revisited. But Minot Right to Life spent the weekend giving away creepy little fetuses to kids without asking parents’ permission first. “It was really disturbing watching children run around with them,” one recalled. A federal judge recently blocked enforcement of the state’s highly unconstitutional six-week abortion ban; perhaps appealing to elementary schoolers’ interests is the group’s Plan B?
“The Precious One” fetal models are manufactured by Heritage House, a “pro-life supply store,” for $1.50 a pop — cheaper if you buy in bulk. “Its beautiful detail, softness and weight can really move hearts and change minds!” the website promises. A customer service representative told Jezebel that the models are most often given to pregnant women at “pregnancy centers” and kids at school presentations. The customer reviews on the site (it’s like Yelp for fetus-lovers instead of foodies) further imply that the doll-like figures are great for kids. “Children especially like to hold them,” one satisfied customer wrote. “No other item that we hand out has the amazing effect that these fetal models have — instant attachment to the unborn!” said another. “So many times, we hear, ‘Awwwww! That’s adorable!’ Or we just see a girl’s tears begin to form and fall.”
Something is very very wrong with these people.
Here’s one for Dakinikat: Paul Krugman explains (following Obama’s speech on the economy yesterday) why there are no “new ideas” about how to fix the financial crisis–because we knew how to do it from day one: Gimme That Old-Time Macroeconomics.
Both Steve Benen and Ed Kilgore get annoyed at fellow journalists complaining that there aren’t any “new ideas” in Obama’s latest. But why should there be?
It was clear early on that this was a crisis very much in the mold of previous financial crises. Once you realized that financial instruments issued by shadow banks — especially repo, overnight loans secured by other assets — were playing essentially the same role as deposits in previous banking crises, it was clear that we already had all the tools we needed to make sense of what was going on. And we also had all the tools we needed to formulate an intelligent policy response — all the tools we needed, that is, except a helpful economics profession and policymakers with a good sense of whose advice to take.
As Mark Thoma memorably remarked, new economic thinking appeared to consist largely of rereading old books. Brad DeLong says that it was all in Walter Bagehot; I think that this is true of the financial crisis of 2008, but that to understand the persistence of the slump we need Irving Fisher from 1933 and John Maynard Keynes from 1936. But anyway, this is not new terrain.
The trouble is Republicans keep right on insisting we should do what Herbert Hoover did in response to The Great Depression. Because that worked so well…
Okay Sky Dancers! What stories are you focusing on today? Please post your links on any topic in the comment thread.
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Today the U.S. Justice Department and Governor Rick Scott of Florida announced dueling lawsuits over the Florida voter purge. The Miami Sun-Sentinel:
Gov. Rick Scott announced Monday that the state is suing the Obama administration over its refusal to share a Homeland Security database that Scott says Florida needs to adequately clear its voting rolls of any non-citizens who wrongly registered to vote.
“We want to have fair, honest elections in our state, and so we’ve been put in the position that we have to sue to get it,” he told Fox News in an interview just prior to the Department of State announcing it had filed the suit.
But in a letter that seemed certain to intensify the battle between the Scott administration and Washington, the U.S. Department of Justice demanded that Florida halt efforts to purge its voters rolls – telling the state to “immediately cease this unlawful conduct” – and said it was suing the state.
“It appears that the State of Florida is unwilling to conform its behavior to the requirements of federal law,” wrote Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, adding that he had authorized “the initiation of an enforcement action against Florida in federal court.”
The Homeland Security list the Scott wants lists only people with green cards and naturalized citizens. The state has already admitted that the list is inappropriate for the purpose of identifying eligible voters. I suppose Scott wants it so he can make life a living hell for Florida immigrants.
Florida election supervisors have already told Scott that they won’t execute his plan, because it appears that he simply wants to get rid of eligible voters who are likely to vote Democratic.
The ACLU of Florida says the state’s attempt to remove ineligible voters from the rolls violates the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was designed to protect minority groups from voter discrimination. Their claims mirror those made by the U.S. Department of Justice, which earlier this month ordered Florida to cease its controversial program.
“The illegal program to purge eligible voters uses inaccurate information to remove eligible citizens from the voter rolls,” said Howard Simon, Executive Director of ACLUFL, in a statement when the suit was filed Friday. “It seems that Governor Scott and his Secretary of State cannot speak without hiding what they mean in political spin. They mislead Floridians by calling their illegal list purge ‘protecting citizen’s voting rights.’ This is precisely why Congress has re-enacted, and why we continue to need, the Voting Rights Act – to prevent state officials from interfering with the constitutional rights of minorities. We now look to the courts to stop the Scott administration from assaulting democracy by denying American citizens the right to vote.”
The ACLUFL is joined by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (LCCRUL) and the law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP in the suit.
If Rick Scott doesn’t like being told what to based on Federal law, perhaps he should get together with Texas Governor Rick Perry and secede from the union.
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
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