12 July 20
Got a nice burst of very small donations last night and this morning. We could really use a few larger ones to get the progress bar moving again.
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Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
Founder, Reader Supported News
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12 July 20
Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker
Toobin writes: "On Friday night, Donald Trump commuted the prison sentence of Roger Stone, his associate and political mentor of more than three decades."
n March 21, 1973, President Richard Nixon and John Dean, the White House counsel, conferred in the Oval Office about ways to keep the Watergate scandal from consuming the Administration. The two men weighed the possibility of a pardon or commutation for E. Howard Hunt, one of the Watergate burglars. “Hunt’s now demanding clemency or he’s going to blow,” Dean said. “And, politically, it’d be impossible for, you know, you to do it.” Nixon agreed: “That’s right.” Dean continued, “I’m not sure that you’ll ever be able to deliver on clemency. It may be just too hot.” Neither Nixon nor Dean had especially refined senses of morality or legal ethics, but even they seemed to understand that a President could not use his pardon power to erase charges against someone who might offer testimony implicating Nixon himself in a crime. To do so, they recognized, would be too unseemly, too transparent, too egregiously corrupt. And, in fact, Nixon never gave a pardon, or commuted a sentence, of anyone implicated in the Watergate scandal.
But, on Friday night, Donald Trump commuted the prison sentence of Roger Stone, his associate and political mentor of more than three decades. Last year, Stone was convicted of obstruction of justice, lying to Congress, and witness tampering in a case brought by Robert Mueller, the special counsel. William Barr, the Attorney General, had already overridden the sentencing recommendation of the prosecutors who tried the case—a nearly unprecedented act—and Stone was ultimately sentenced to forty months in prison. But Barr’s unseemly interference in the case was somehow not enough for the President, so Trump made sure that Stone would serve no time at all. The only trace of shame in Trump’s announcement was that he delivered it on a Friday night—supposedly when the public is least attentive.
In light of the long relationship between Trump and Stone, the commutation represents a consummate act of cronyism; and yet it is far worse than that. Trump has already exercised his clemency powers to reward political allies who have run into trouble with the law, pardoning the likes of Joe Arpaio, the racist sheriff from Arizona, and Dinesh D’Souza, the right-wing propagandist. (According to a count by Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School, thirty-one of Trump’s thirty-six acts of clemency have been based on personal or political connections.) But Trump had not, until now, used pardons and commutations to reward defendants who possessed incriminating information against him. The Stone commutation isn’t just a gift to an old friend—it is a reward to Stone for keeping his mouth shut during the Mueller investigation. It is, in other words, corruption on top of cronyism. As Amy Berman Jackson, the judge in Stone’s case, said, in sentencing him, “He was not prosecuted, as some have complained, for standing up for the President. He was prosecuted for covering up for the President.” And now Stone has been rewarded for covering up for the President.
One of the touchstones of authoritarian political cultures is the use of the criminal-justice system to reward friends and punish enemies. To put it another way, in healthy societies, the work of law enforcement is conducted according to neutral principles, applied equally. The Stone commutation represents a culmination (if not, necessarily, the final one) of Trump’s efforts to dismantle the legacy of the Mueller investigation. The Attorney General, as Trump’s loyal vassal, has moved to undo Mueller’s prosecution of Michael Flynn, Trump’s short-tenured national-security adviser. (In a case brought by Mueller, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying in an interview with F.B.I. agents.) In the same vein, Barr has launched a criminal probe of the initial F.B.I. investigation into the ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian interests. These actions are not the even-handed application of criminal law, but rather the indulgence, by the Department of Justice, of the President’s grievances with his enemies. The power to prosecute (and withhold prosecution) is among the most formidable that belong to any government, and the exercise of that power is a fair test of the legitimacy of any ruling authority. Here and now, Trump and his enablers are failing disastrously.
Under the Constitution, the power to grant clemency is a core function of the Presidency. For this reason, there is no real option for prosecutors, or even members of Congress, to impose consequences on Trump for the commutation. But, as the saying goes, in the United States, the people still rule, and they will have a chance to render the verdict on Trump’s commutation, and his entire sordid Presidency, on November 3rd.
President Trump, seen through a window, speaks with Anthony S. Fauci after a briefing in April. (photo: Jabin Botsford/WP)
Fauci Sidelined by White House as He Steps Up Blunt Talk on Pandemic
Yasmeen Abutaleb, Josh Dawsey and Laurie McGinley, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "For months, Anthony S. Fauci has played a lead role in America’s coronavirus pandemic, as a diminutive, Brooklyn-accented narrator who has assessed the risk and issued increasingly blunt warnings as the nation’s response has gone badly awry."
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Yasmeen Abutaleb, Josh Dawsey and Laurie McGinley, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "For months, Anthony S. Fauci has played a lead role in America’s coronavirus pandemic, as a diminutive, Brooklyn-accented narrator who has assessed the risk and issued increasingly blunt warnings as the nation’s response has gone badly awry."
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Demonstrators participate in a protest against police brutality on June 14, 2020 in Miami, Florida. (photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Abolish Qualified Immunity
Mukund Rathi, Jacobin
Excerpt: "Qualified immunity is the legal doctrine with deep roots in white supremacy and the Jim Crow era that allows police to get away with wanton brutality over and over again. It’s time to abolish qualified immunity."
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Mukund Rathi, Jacobin
Excerpt: "Qualified immunity is the legal doctrine with deep roots in white supremacy and the Jim Crow era that allows police to get away with wanton brutality over and over again. It’s time to abolish qualified immunity."
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A school in Baltimore, MD. (photo: AP)
'That's Crazy': Reopening Schools Is Possible, but We're Doing It Wrong
Zack Stanton, Politico
Stanton writes: "There's a right way to reopen America's schools. It requires a clear-eyed look at the data. It demands a balanced discussion of the benefits and costs—to students, parents and educators. And it looks very little like the path America is on."
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Zack Stanton, Politico
Stanton writes: "There's a right way to reopen America's schools. It requires a clear-eyed look at the data. It demands a balanced discussion of the benefits and costs—to students, parents and educators. And it looks very little like the path America is on."
READ MORE
Protesters demanded justice for George Floyd in Washington, D.C. on May 31. (photo: Samuel Corum/AFP/Getty Images)
Robert Mackey, The Intercept
Mackey writes: "Through deceptive editing, two recent campaign ads for President Donald Trump falsely portray law-abiding Black Lives Matter protesters who acted to prevent violence as dangerous thugs plotting to 'unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.'"
The Trump campaign ads mislead viewers by distorting the meaning of video recorded during a protest in Washington, D.C. on May 31 by Safvan Allahverdi, a reporter for Turkey’s state-owned Anadolu news agency.
As Allahverdi explained in a Twitter caption for his 92-second clip, the incident he caught on camera that day showed black protesters taking it upon themselves to head off trouble, by tackling and disarming a white man clad in black who was using a hammer to break up pieces of the sidewalk into potential projectiles.
After they subdued the man, the group of mainly black protesters dragged him to a line of police officers and insisted that he be arrested.
Ten days later, however, the Trump campaign released an ad that used images from the news footage — of the man hammering the pavement and part of the scuffle after he was tackled — to offer voters a glimpse of the “chaos in the streets” former Vice President Joe Biden would supposedly permit by failing “to stand up to the radical leftists fighting to defund and abolish the police.”
The ad, which superimposed video of Biden kneeling at a church in Delaware last month on to the snippets from Allahverdi’s footage, is based on a pair of lies: that the protesters who tackled the man were bent on violence and that Biden, who had already stated, “I don’t support defunding the police,” would enable their reign of terror.
Allahverdi, who said later that the demonstration that afternoon had “started as one of the most peaceful protests I’ve ever seen,” told me in a direct message that the Trump campaign had not asked him for permission to use his footage.
Apparently emboldened by getting away with this gross distortion of the truth once, the Trump campaign misused the same video a second time in another ad released last week. In the second ad, which offers a vision of a future world in which the police have been abolished — and calling 911 only gets you the recording: “Due to defunding of the police department, we’re sorry, but no one is here to take your call” — the footage of the man breaking up the pavement and being tackled appears as a caller to the police emergency line hears the automated instruction, “to report a murder, press 2.”
Dave Weigel of The Washington Post was the first to report the misleading use of Allahverdi’s footage in the most recent ad, which suggests, absurdly, that wait times for emergency response to incidents of murder or rape would be 5 days “in Joe Biden’s America.”
The new ad, which places the incident in Washington alongside video of arson in Minneapolis, and images of looting and vandalism, also distorts the meaning of another clip recorded during the recent protests.
In a section of the ad where the 911 caller hears, “If you’re calling to report a rape, please press 1,” the images that appear on-screen show two New York police officers running through a crowd of protesters. That footage appears to have been recorded just above East 14th Street in New York’s Union Square, where, on May 28, the police, including those wearing the distinctive NYPD bike outfit seen in the ad, were caught on camera from multiple angles behaving aggressively and using excessive force to arrest dozens of protesters for civil disobedience as they demanded justice for George Floyd.
The Trump campaign’s choice of footage that appears to have been shot that day is baffling because it shows officers charging into the crowd of demonstrators, offering an image of the overly aggressive policing that had led to calls to reduce police funding rather than a vision of an America on the brink of descending into anarchy without the police.
Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro outside the Planalto Palace in Brasília. (photo: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters)
Brazilian Epidemiologist Slams Bolsonaro's COVID Response as Far-Right President Tests Positive
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "Bad political leadership is a major risk factor for the spread of the pandemic, not only in Brazil, but also in your own country. Bolsonaro has repeatedly denied the importance of the pandemic."
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Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "Bad political leadership is a major risk factor for the spread of the pandemic, not only in Brazil, but also in your own country. Bolsonaro has repeatedly denied the importance of the pandemic."
READ MORE
Deforestation in the Amazon. (photo: Mongabay)
Deforestation Rate Climbs Higher as Amazon Moves Into the Burning Season
Rhett Butler, Mongabay
Excerpt: "Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon climbed higher for the fifteenth straight month, reaching levels not seen since the mid-2000s, according to data released today by Brazil's national space research institute INPE."
Rhett Butler, Mongabay
Excerpt: "Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon climbed higher for the fifteenth straight month, reaching levels not seen since the mid-2000s, according to data released today by Brazil's national space research institute INPE."
The news comes as the region moves into the dry season, when deforestation and forest fires typically accelerate.
INPE’s satellite-based deforestation alert system detected 1,034 square kilometers of forest clearing during June 2020 bringing the twelve-month total to 9,564 sq km, 89% higher than a year ago. The extent of deforestation over the past year is the highest recorded since INPE started releasing monthly numbers in 2007.
The 12-month deforestation rate has risen 96% since President Jair Bolsonaro took office in January 2019.
Under pressure from big companies and the E.U. over rising deforestation and fire risk in the Amazon, the Bolsonaro Administration on Wednesday decreed a 120-day ban on fires in the Amazon. The administration had already deployed the army to the region to try to rein in burning, but fires are already well underway despite it being early in the dry season, according to analysis of satellite data by Amazon Conservation’s MAAP project.
MAAP found there are have been 14 major fires in the Amazon this year through July 2nd. MAAP’s analysis excludes fires in pasture and scrub lands, providing a clearer picture on fires associated with recent deforestation and in existing forest.
Deforestation has been trending upward in the Brazilian Amazon since 2012, but the rate of loss has dramatically accelerated over the past year-and-a-half as the Bolsonaro Administration has relaxed law enforcement, stripped conservation areas and indigenous lands of protection, promoted mining and industrial forest conversion, and tried to pass policies weakening environmental safeguards in the region.
Scientists have warned that the Amazon rainforest may be approaching a tipping point where the forest shifts toward a drier, savanna-like ecosystem. Such a transition could have significant and sustained impacts on local and regional rainfall patterns, while triggering the release of vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.
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