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John Brennan, Free Speech, And The Coming Constitutional Crisis
Trump crosses another line
John Brennan, Free Speech, And The Coming Constitutional Crisis
Trump crosses another line
On Wednesday, President Trump revoked former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance. The reason, according to the White House’s official statement, was “the risks posed by his erratic conduct and behavior.”
Brennan, now a private citizen, is an outspoken critic of the president. More than any other former national security or intelligence leader, he’s attacked Trump’s patriotism and character, using the president’s favorite mediums: television and Twitter.
Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of “high crimes & misdemeanors.” It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???
— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) July 16, 2018
Ex-officials retain clearance so that, if current officials ask them for help, they can access classified information. But they’re not active intelligence consumers, receiving daily briefs or directing assets. Trump is the first president to cut a former CIA Director out of that network.
It provoked quite a reaction.
Retired Admiral William McRaven, a former leader of Joint Special Operations Command, defended Brennan in the Washington Post, warning Trump:
If you think for a moment that your McCarthy-era tactics will suppress the voices of criticism, you are sadly mistaken.
13 retired intelligence leaders — including CIA Directors and Deputy Directors who served under Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Reagan — offered a similar criticism. …
Elizabeth Warren Could Make a Great Run for President as an Anti-Corruption Crusader
She’s got a plan to drain the swamp that is Donald Trump’s Washington. If she takes it on the campaign trail, that’s terrific.
Senator Elizabeth Warren speaks at a town-hall event in Massachusetts on August 8, 2018.
Elizabeth Warren’s proposed sweeping anti-corruption legislation—which would, among other things, ban members of Congress and White House aides from owning individual stocks—has generated speculation about her plans for 2020. “Elizabeth Warren’s anti-corruption push seen as latest sign she’ll run for president,” read the Boston Herald headline. Warren has done her best to keep the spotlight on the proposed legislation, but the idea of a national crusade against corruption in 2020 presents an appealing prospect for America. We could use a good old-fashioned campaign against official wrongdoing and the abuses of privilege that warp our politics and our governance.
Campaigning against corruption is as honorable an American political tradition as you will find. Teddy Roosevelt ran more than a century ago as a fierce anti-corruption crusader. “Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people. From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside,” he declared. “Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare they have become the tools of corrupt interests, which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.”
If Elizabeth Warren does decide to run on an anti-corruption platform, that would be terrific. Just as Zephyr Teachout is gaining traction (and a New York Times endorsement) for her “Champion Against Corruption” campaign for New York State attorney general, a national campaign against the corruption of Donald Trump’s White House and the Congress that sustains it could be just the ticket in 2020. …
DEGREE OF OPTIMISM: “I believe we can break the stranglehold that the wealthy and well-connected hold over our government. I believe we can get democracy working again.” —Elizabeth Warren
From the fires of revolution, Ukraine is reinventing government
Since the 2014 revolution, Ukrainian activists have set about using technology to prevent abuses of power – by building the world’s most transparent platform for government spending.
Smoke billows from the burning tyres in Kiev’s central square on “Bloody Thursday”, February 20, 2014. At least 77 people lost their lives.
At the gate of Mezhyhirya, the estate Viktor Yanukovych built with the money he stole from the people of Ukraine, a stall is selling rolls of toilet paper printed with the face of Vladimir Putin. Beside them are three large, flat, plastic loaves of bread, painted gold. Viktor Nestulia, director of innovation projects at Transparency International Ukraine, taps one with his finger. “When they came here after the revolution of dignity, they found a loaf made of solid gold, so this is a copy,” he says. “That’s what it is here. You will see.”
He’s not wrong. Inside Mezhyhirya, we pass a yacht pier, a shooting range, a boxing gym, an ostrich farm, a petting zoo, a man-made lake, a greenhouse complex, a helicopter pad, several fountains, at least five guest houses and a mansion where every surface drips with decorative gold (although minus the two-kilo ornamental bloomer, which was stolen in 2015). In the echoing concrete garage where Yanukovych kept his vintage cars and jeeps, I count 36.
Yanukovych’s car collection sits in its garage.
Yet what makes the scene truly sickening is the fact that, until the former President – who rented the 140-hectare estate for 314 hryvnia, or roughly £10, an acre – fled to Russia on February 22, 2014, no-one knew any of this was here.
There were rumours, of course. Journalists interviewed staff and flew drones over the site. (To refute the claims, Yanukovych took friendly reporters into one of the guest houses and told them it was where he lived.) But nothing was ever confirmed, so when, after months of anti-corruption protests, Ukrainians finally saw Mezhyhirya for themselves, they were astonished. Crowds took the half-hour drive from Kiev to gawp at the luxuries their taxes had bought – although Yanukovych continued to deny this was what he had done. Interviewed by the BBC in 2015, he dismissed the idea as “political technology”. The ostriches, he claimed, “just lived there.”
Four years later, Ukraine is not cured of corruption. Bribery remains a way of life. …
Things We Worry About, And The Insane Ways They’ve Changed
It seems like everyone’s worried, right now. It’s not that we haven’t been worrying all our lives – that’s human nature. What has changed is the things we currently need to worry about. We’ve changed. Our lives have changed. The world has changed.
We asked our readers to show us side-by-side comparisons of the things they used to worry about, vs. the things they worry about now. The winner is below, but first, the runners-up:
19. Entry by CornishPlasty
18. Entry by rs1
17. Entry by rs1
16. Entry by CornishPlasty
…
There are three types of failure, but only one you should actually feel bad about
FAIL SLOWER
Complex failure, or preventable failure? You decide.
Failing sucks. Whether it’s your first or fiftieth time bombing a presentation, messing up a calculation, or bumbling through an interview, the sting of rejection never quite wears off. And while Silicon Valley gurus preach the importance of “failing fast” (failure, supposedly, being the key to success), it’s easy to take real-life, everyday failures personally. When we screw something up, most of us blame ourselves, feel terrible, then resort to deflection: “It’s not me, it’s them,” we think.
This cycle isn’t just exhausting, it’s useless. Failure presents invaluable learning and growth opportunities, which is why the tech world finds the concept so buzzworthy. But to extract such learnings, we need to analyze not only the failed result, but also the failure itself.
This is the step most people skip, according to Amy Edmondson, a leadership and management professor at Harvard Business School. The key to effectively analyzing our failures, she says, is realizing that not all failures are the same. Per her research, there are three distinct types of failure—some of which should rightly spark self-questioning or embarrassment, and some of which should not.
Preventable failures
The first and most obvious type of failure is the “preventable failure,” which is essentially what it sounds like: a failure that you had the knowledge and ability to prevent. …
The Syrian refugee aiming to become an Olympic swimmer
Eid Aljazairli could not swim when he arrived in Britain from Damascus in 2016. Now he aims for Olympic glory.
Eid Aljazairli: ‘You just go into the water and enter another world.’
Once upon a time, water was Eid Aljazairli’s greatest adversary, a vast expanse that stood between him and a life in Europe. Now, it sustains his greatest ambition.
Aljazairli was a non-swimmer when he fled Damascus and took his chances on a small, barely seaworthy vessel that took him across the Mediterranean. Now he spends four hours each day in a swimming pool and dreams of making it to the Olympics.
“My story starts with the American swimmer Michael Phelps,” the 24-year-old says, sitting in a friend’s flat in north-east London. “I was sitting at home late at night and I saw a video of him on YouTube by chance.
“I saw him swimming and flying. He really inspired me and ignited a passion inside me,” he adds. “After watching two hours of films, I just said to myself: this is something I have to do.”
Aljazairli was training to be an accountant and working as a visual merchandiser, developing floor plans and three-dimensional displays for shops when the Syrian war broke out.
He arrived in Britain from Damascus in 2016, settling first in Scotland and then in the outskirts of London. When he was granted a five-year visa to remain in Britain this January, he moved to a hostel. And started swimming. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
Nadine Strossen, the former president of the ACLU, argues that censorship does more harm than good—especially when it comes to social media platforms. In an interview filmed at the 2018 Aspen Ideas Festival in June, Strossen explains that hate speech is not a recognized legal concept in the United States. “That said,” she continues, “speech that conveys a hateful message—along with speech that conveys any message—may, in a particular context, be punished if it directly causes specific imminent, serious harm.” Strossen goes on to demarcate the difference between free speech and hate speech. Ultimately, she makes a case for leaving the conversation about hate speech to citizens rather than government entities or privately-owned social media platforms.
The Daily Show takes a moment to look at some Trump-free stories, including a brawl in the Ugandan parliament, the royal wedding and California’s legalization of recreational pot.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
CAUTION: Some language may not be appropriate for work or children.
Me commentary on a street show outside of a restaurant.
スリムな大きな箱に入りたいまる。Maru wants to get into the slim large box.
FINALLY . . .
New research suggests evolution might favor ‘survival of the laziest’
Anadara aequalitas was included in new large-data study of fossil and extant bivalves and gastropods in the Atlantic Ocean that suggests laziness might be a fruitful strategy for survival of individuals, species and even communities of species.
If you’ve got an unemployed, 30-year-old adult child still living in the basement, fear not.
A new large-data study of fossil and extant bivalves and gastropods in the Atlantic Ocean suggests laziness might be a fruitful strategy for survival of individuals, species and even communities of species. The results have just been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B by a research team based at the University of Kansas.
Looking at a period of roughly 5 million years from the mid-Pliocene to the present, the researchers analyzed 299 species’ metabolic rates—or, the amount of energy the organisms need to live their daily lives—and found higher metabolic rates were a reliable predictor of extinction likelihood.
“We wondered, ‘Could you look at the probability of extinction of a species based on energy uptake by an organism?'” said Luke Strotz, postdoctoral researcher at KU’s Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum and lead author of the paper. “We found a difference for mollusk species that have gone extinct over the past 5 million years and ones that are still around today. Those that have gone extinct tend to have higher metabolic rates than those that are still living. Those that have lower energy maintenance requirements seem more likely to survive than those organisms with higher metabolic rates.” …
Ed. More tomorrow? Probably. Possibly. Maybe. Not?