| Treasury Department sent information on Hunter Biden to expanding GOP Senate inquiry Posted: 06 Feb 2020 08:18 AM PST  The Treasury Department has complied with Republican senators' requests for highly sensitive records about Hunter Biden and his associates and has turned over "'evidence' of questionable origin" to them, according to a Democrat on a committee conducting the investigation.
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| Polls show Biden's campaign could be hitting the wall Posted: 06 Feb 2020 12:42 PM PST  The state of Biden's campaign is far shakier than his longtime lead in the national polls would suggest. In fact, it may already be on its last legs.
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| Russians quarantined in Siberia over the coronavirus are livestreaming their workouts, posting photos of their dinner, and modeling 'prisoner clothes' Posted: 07 Feb 2020 04:33 AM PST  The Russians were evacuated from Wuhan and are being monitored in a facility in Tyumen, Siberia, for two weeks.
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| 'I'm the sheriff, who are you?': Sheriff stops fake cop car in its tracks Posted: 07 Feb 2020 12:22 PM PST  Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard noticed something unusual about what he thought was a police car, but turned out to be a copycat.
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| Officials: TSA agent tricked traveler into baring herself Posted: 07 Feb 2020 07:54 AM PST  A federal Transportation Security Administration agent tricked a traveler into twice showing him her breasts as she went through security at one of the world's busiest airports, California's attorney said. Attorney General Xavier Becerra said Johnathon Lomeli, 22, was working at Los Angeles International Airport in June when he used fraud or deceit to falsely imprison the woman. Lomeli was arrested early Thursday at his home.
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| 30 Side Table Designs That Do All the Things Posted: 06 Feb 2020 10:41 AM PST |
| Orange County Has Released More Than 2,000 Criminal Illegal Immigrants in Recent Years Due to California’s Sanctuary Law Posted: 06 Feb 2020 06:43 AM PST  Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes released data this week showing how California's SB54 sanctuary law allowed for over 2,000 illegal immigrants with outstanding ICE detainers to be released from custody over the last two years, with 411 of those later rearrested for additional charges.Barnes's data drew praise from acting ICE Director Matthew Albence, who released a statement Wednesday saying that "this is exactly what ICE has said time and again.""These policies do nothing but ensure that criminals are released back into the community, where many re-offend, instead of being turned over to ICE," Albence said. "These are preventable crimes, and more importantly, preventable victims. As the data released by Sheriff Barnes clearly demonstrates, all communities are safer when local law enforcement works with ICE."California's SB 54 restricts law enforcement from notifying, transferring, and communicating with ICE regarding certain offenders. The Trump administration has petitioned the Supreme Court to strike down the statuteBarnes's data shows that in 2019, 1,015 illegal immigrants were released from Orange County Jail with outstanding ICE detainers, with 238 of those — over 23 percent — later rearrested on additional charges. In 2018, a total of 1,106 inmates were released without notification given to ICE, and 173 of those ended up being rearrested by local law enforcement.Barnes said the data proved that "SB 54 has made our community less safe" and that "the two-year social science experiment with sanctuary laws must end." He also slammed the policy as leaving police unable "to protect our immigrant community.""The law has resulted in new crimes because my deputies were unable to communicate with their federal partners about individuals who committed serious offenses and present a threat to our community if released," he said.
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| Officials: TSA agent tricked a traveler into twice showing him her breasts Posted: 07 Feb 2020 06:57 AM PST  A federal Transportation Security Administration agent tricked a traveler into twice showing him her breasts as she went through security at one of the world's busiest airports, California's attorney said.
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| Latest coronavirus study implicates fecal transmission Posted: 07 Feb 2020 04:42 PM PST  Diarrhea may be a secondary path of transmission for the novel coronavirus, scientists said Friday following the publication of the latest study reporting patients with abdominal symptoms and loose stool. The primary path is believed to be virus-laden droplets from an infected person's cough, though researchers in early cases have said they focused heavily on patients with respiratory symptoms and may have overlooked those linked to the digestive tract. A total of 14 out of 138 patients (10 percent) in a Wuhan hospital who were studied in the new paper by Chinese authors in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) initially presented with diarrhea and nausea one or two days prior to development of fever and labored breathing.
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| Senate Report Criticizes Response to Russian Meddling and Partly Blames McConnell Posted: 06 Feb 2020 12:00 PM PST  WASHINGTON -- Republican congressional leaders' refusal to publicly acknowledge Russian election interference in 2016 contributed to a watered-down response by the Obama administration in the midst of the presidential campaign, a Senate report released Thursday found.Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. and the Senate majority leader, reacted skeptically after receiving an intelligence briefing in September 2016 about the Russian interference, a former Obama administration official said in the report. "You security people should be careful that you're not getting used," McConnell told Lisa Monaco, the White House homeland security adviser under President Barack Obama, at the time, according to the report.The bulk of the report focuses its criticism on the Obama administration and the "heavily politicized environment" that prevented a more forceful response to the Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. But the inclusion of McConnell's skepticism in a report from a Republican-led Senate committee could give the accusations new life.Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden, have previously accused McConnell of stopping the Obama administration from speaking out more forcefully against Russian interference. McConnell has long denied those allegations, pointing to a bipartisan letter that congressional leaders released in late September 2016.The response to Russia's meddling presented a difficult political calculus for McConnell: A public acknowledgment before the election might have deterred Moscow and improved voters' trust in the outcome, but none of that was assured, and it also could have cost Republicans the White House.According to the report, numerous Obama administration officials said some members of Congress at the September 2016 briefing "resisted the administration request that a bipartisan statement be made regarding Russia being responsible for interference activities." It was at that briefing where McConnell told Monaco that she should be careful with the intelligence.The full report from the committee, led by Sen. Richard M. Burr, R-N.C., wavers on the effect any high-level U.S. government warning would have had on Russia's campaign of election sabotage. The Kremlin's operations continued even as the Obama administration began discussing them publicly, Senate investigators found."After the warnings, Russia continued its cyberactivity to include further public dissemination of stolen emails, clandestine social media-based influence operations, and penetration of state voting infrastructure through Election Day 2016," the report said.The committee said that the Obama administration was worried that its warnings to Russia could potentially undermine voters' confidence in the election, which would itself help the Russian effort. The government was also hampered by what it did not know, including the full extent of the Russian ability to manipulate election systems.The report also contained some new details about the Obama administration's efforts to halt the Russian interference campaign. The administration delivered five direct warnings to "various levels of the Russian government," including messages from Obama to President Vladimir Putin of Russia, the report said.Obama warned Putin in a note that "the kind of consequences that he could anticipate would be powerfully impactful to their economy and far exceed anything that he had seen to date," the report said, citing an interview with Susan E. Rice, Obama's national security adviser at the time.Some of the material in the report is redacted, including the timing of the first warning that many in the administration received, in the form of briefings from the CIA director at the time, John O. Brennan.Even as they presented the report's findings as bipartisan, Democrats and Republicans on the committee highlighted the still-acrimonious partisan divide over the 2016 campaign in their responses.Burr aimed his criticism at the Obama administration, accusing officials of sharing too little information inside the government."Frozen by 'paralysis of analysis,' hamstrung by constraints both real and perceived, Obama officials debated courses of action without truly taking one," Burr said.Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the committee, blamed partisan politics in part for the flawed response in 2016 and warned that they are still a barrier to fighting Russia's continuing interference in U.S. politics."I am particularly concerned, however, that a legitimate fear raised by the Obama administration -- that warning the public of the Russian attack could backfire politically -- is still present in our hyperpartisan environment," Warner said.In a supplement to the report, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said the failure in the midst of the campaign to make a "bipartisan public acknowledgment of the ongoing attack by Russia" had serious implications.Such a statement, Wyden wrote, might have prompted the news media to give more context in their reporting of disclosures by WikiLeaks about the Clinton campaign, most importantly noting "their release was part of a Russian influence campaign" designed to assist Trump, then the Republican presidential nominee."An acknowledgment of Russian influence operations, particularly operations intended to help Donald Trump, would have reflected poorly on the candidate and his campaign," Wyden wrote. "But that should not have been a reason for the administration and members of Congress to withhold from the public warning of an ongoing attack by a foreign adversary."The committee report includes a range of recommendations to ensure the government is better prepared to react to a foreign influence campaign in future elections. Legislation enacted last year requires the director of national intelligence to present regular assessments of such threats before elections, the report noted.Senators also called for the executive branch to be more forthcoming with the public, particularly if foreign influence operations -- called "active measures" by the Russians -- are underway."In the event that such a campaign is detected, the public should be informed as soon as possible, with a clear and succinct statement of the threat, even if the information is incomplete," the report said.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Trump: Mulvaney is staying, but "not happy" with Vindman Posted: 07 Feb 2020 03:26 AM PST  The president spoke to reporters on the White House South Lawn Friday morning en route to North Carolina.
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| The next Tiananmen Square? Chinese citizens are demanding increased free speech after the death of a coronavirus whistleblower doctor. China is censoring their calls. Posted: 07 Feb 2020 10:43 AM PST  Viral hashtags — "The Wuhan government owes Li Wenliang an apology," "I want freedom of speech," and "We want freedom of speech" – were seen by millions before being censored.
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| New photos emerge from Kobe Bryant crash site Posted: 07 Feb 2020 03:22 PM PST  New pictures showing the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant, his 13 year-old daughter Gianna and seven others have been released.The photos are part of a report the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released further detailing its investigators findings into the 26 January crash that led to Mr Bryant's death. New details on the location and state of the wreckage following impact and on the helicopter's engine status just before impact were included in the report.
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| Cyborgs, trolls and bots: A guide to online misinformation Posted: 07 Feb 2020 07:55 AM PST  Cyborgs, trolls and bots can fill the internet with lies and half-truths. Understanding them is key to learning how misinformation spreads online. As the 2016 election showed, social media is increasingly used to amplify false claims and divide Americans over hot-button issues including race and immigration.
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| A tech side effect: Many residents of China say wearing face masks to avoid the coronavirus has made it impossible to unlock their phones with Face ID Posted: 06 Feb 2020 08:18 AM PST  Some residents are venting their frustrations on social media.
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| Colorado transgender teen pleads guilty to murder in school revenge case Posted: 07 Feb 2020 03:44 PM PST  A transgender teenager accused of opening fire with a friend in a Denver-area charter school in May to exact revenge on classmates who bullied him pleaded guilty on Friday to murder and attempted murder charges, prosecutors said. Alec McKinney, 16, who has been held without bond since the May 7 rampage that left one student dead and eight others wounded, pleaded guilty to 17 criminal counts, including conspiracy and weapons charges, said Douglas County District Attorney George Brauchler. McKinney is accused along with Devon Erickson, 19, of carrying out the shooting at the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) School in Highlands Ranch, Colorado.
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| Rep. Tulsi Gabbard Wants to Legalize Drugs (As in All Drugs) Posted: 07 Feb 2020 08:33 AM PST  For Gabbard, drug policy is a question of personal autonomy and free choice. "When it really comes right down to it, that's what this issue is about. It's about choice."
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| Coronavirus puts Shanghai into a coma Posted: 07 Feb 2020 07:42 AM PST  For more than a week, the rare resident of Shanghai who dared venture outside has encountered something unfamiliar: a surreal peace and quiet. The deadly coronavirus epidemic has brought much of China to a standstill, but perhaps nowhere has the change been more stark than in the country's biggest and most vibrant city. Gone are the traffic jams, crowded sidewalks and businessmen hurrying to work, replaced by eerily empty roads, shuttered bars and businesses, and only the occasional pedestrians -- always behind a protective mask.
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| The Coronavirus Outbreak Could Derail Xi Jinping’s Dreams of a Chinese Century Posted: 06 Feb 2020 03:18 AM PST  The coronavirus outbreak presents the greatest threat yet to Xi Jinping's ambition for a Chinese century
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| Trump says it's 'illegal' for Pelosi to tear up his State of the Union address. Experts say that's not true Posted: 07 Feb 2020 01:16 PM PST  "Because Speaker Pelosi's copy is not a government record, she did not violate the law by ripping it up," said Professor Douglas Cox.
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| Drug lord Escobar's hit man dies of cancer in Colombia Posted: 06 Feb 2020 11:37 AM PST  Pablo Escobar's most notorious hit man, known by the nickname "Popeye," died on Thursday at 57 after a life of crime he celebrated on YouTube, Colombia's prison authorities said.
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| Creepy Pete Posted: 07 Feb 2020 05:15 PM PST  It has to be said: There is something plain amazing about Pete Buttigieg's run for the presidency. His last election was for mayor of a very small city. No offense to South Bend, Ind., but being the nation's 308th largest city is not something to brag about. Until the Iowa caucus Buttigieg never won the support of more than 9,000 people in an election. Pete Buttigieg did this by outlasting, out-fundraising, and out-debating former governors and a California senator, and lapping billionaire entrepreneurs. He beat a national front-runner and essentially tied the runner-up to the 2016 Democratic nomination. From unknown to serious contender for the presidency in less than a year: This is real Mr. Smith stuff, a tribute to the everyman nature of democracy.To repeat myself, this is amazing, amazing stuff.But also, it's really creepy.Right?A few nights ago, the Iowa meltdown was just starting to dawn on us. Officially the Iowa Democrats were telling us that they had verified precisely zero percent of the votes.And while we pondered that fact, this man, "Mayor Pete" emerged on cable news to dispel the utter confusion and uncertainty and declare himself the victor, based on his own tabulation. Think about that for a minute.This is a man from nowhere who seems to have spent a great deal of time in the last few years managing his own Wikipedia page. His popularity is widely attributed to the work of a single media genius, Lis Smith. And as he was declaring himself the winner, a flurry of reports were being filed that there were some questionable financial connections between the developer of the Iowa vote-counting app and the Pete Buttigieg campaign.Doesn't that fact pattern make your skin crawl? Just a little? But it wasn't just that a man no one had heard of a few months ago was now a self-authenticating leader of the Democratic field. It was the way he became that leader. "Tonight, an improbable hope became an undeniable reality," he said, introducing himself.What could he mean by that? In fact, with zero tabulated results, the improbable hope was quite deniable. Now with 100 percent of results in, it looks like Bernie Sanders won the most votes, but somehow Pete Buttigieg obtained more delegates owing to the Iowa Caucus terms of service -- which seems to run hundreds of pages long in describing how tiebreaks and rounding works, and happens to have worked almost entirely in Pete Buttigieg's flavor.The stagecraft was weird. If the demographic polling we've all read is correct, then the line of seven or eight African-American supporters behind him during his Iowa victory speech represents, by my math, 180 percent of his African-American support nationwide. In fact, those in that line seemed to constitute most of the African Americans in the room, which made you wonder how it was they were placed so directly in the sight lines of the television cameras. I bet that was a very delicate mission for the person tasked with it.The surreal and eerie quality of the speech was enhanced by the fact that he declared himself the winner in prose that was so fundamentally empty. "We had the belief that in the face of exhaustion and cynicism and division, in spite of every trampled norm and every poisonous tweak," he said, "that a rising majority of Americans was hungry for action and ready for new answers."What action? What answers? What is this? The whole timbre and cadence of his speech seemed to be modeled after the rhetoric of Barack Obama. But it lacked all the reassuring notes of specificity that seemed to prove Obama was an actual human being, inhabiting a corporeal body in the same space-time continuum that I inhabit.Buttigieg's speech, on the other hand, resembled a kind of mad-lib speech in which none of the blanks had been filled. Obama was promising not just "action" but to turn back the rising sea levels. How did Pete Buttigieg manage to beat Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar, and a dozen other people with more charm (such as Andrew Yang) with this utter pablum?I'm not saying for sure that Pete Buttigieg is a robot or a phenomenon of massive psychotic projection. I can't prove that. All I can say is that when he came out on stage in Iowa, I felt like we were undergoing a coup.Bernie Bros have started calling him "Mayor Cheat" -- which is funny. But I now think of him as "Creepy Pete." No one can explain to me with any narrative satisfaction how he ended up on television in the position he is in. But here he is, bidding to be our leader. It's amazing. It's incredible. So incredible that I just want to check with all my readers and all their friends: Why are we crediting this as our reality?
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| An anti-Putin blogger was murdered in a French hotel, and the killing has the hallmarks of the Russian hit squad causing chaos in Europe Posted: 06 Feb 2020 05:28 AM PST  Imran Aliev, a 44-year-old Chechen blogger who opposed both Vladimir Putin and Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, was murdered in Lille last week.
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| Former US drone operator recalls dropping a missile on Afghanistan children and says military is ‘worse than the Nazis’ Posted: 07 Feb 2020 10:18 AM PST  A former US drone operator is speaking out against the atrocities he says he was forced to inflict during his time in the armed forces and says the American military as 'worse than the Nazis'.Brandon Bryant was enlisted in the US Air Force for six years. During his time with the military, he operated Predator drones, remotely firing missiles at targets more than 7,000 miles away from the small room containing his workspace near Las Vegas, Nevada.
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| Man who ran down 2 students faces manslaughter charges Posted: 07 Feb 2020 11:13 AM PST  A man was charged with manslaughter Friday in the deaths of two suburban Oklahoma City high school cross-country athletes whom he hit with his truck as they ran on a sidewalk just a day after his own son was killed in a traffic accident. Max Leroy Townsend, 57, is accused of running over six Moore High School cross-country runners in front of the school Monday afternoon, killing senior Rachel Freeman and sophomore Yuridia Martinez. Townsend was also charged Friday with leaving the scene of a fatality accident, driving under the influence causing great bodily injury, and leaving the scene of an accident causing personal injury, District Attorney Greg Mashburn said.
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| Coronavirus' danger is made worse by the control China has over U.S. health care Posted: 06 Feb 2020 01:34 AM PST ![Coronavirus' danger is made worse by the control China has over U.S. health care]( "Coronavirus' danger is made worse by the control China has over U.S. health care") The basic building blocks of U.S. health care are now under the control of the Chinese Communist Party.
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| Death of Chinese doctor fuels anger, demands for change Posted: 07 Feb 2020 02:29 AM PST  The death of a whistleblowing doctor whose early warnings about China's new coronavirus outbreak were suppressed by the police has unleashed a wave of anger at the government's handling of the crisis -- and bold demands for more freedom. Ophthalmologist Li Wenliang was among a group of people who sounded the alarm about the virus in late December, only to be reprimanded and censored by the authorities in central Hubei province. After Li's death was confirmed early Friday, the 34-year-old was lionised as a hero on social media, while officials were vilified for letting the epidemic spiral into a national health crisis instead of listening to the doctor.
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| Did Russian-Made Missiles Strike an Israeli Stealth F-35 in 2017? Posted: 07 Feb 2020 12:54 PM PST  Probably not. Here's what we know.
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| Trump is already attacking Mitt Romney, ignoring aides urging him to let it go Posted: 05 Feb 2020 09:17 PM PST  Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) didn't give the White House or the Republican National Committee, run by a niece, advance warning that he would announce his vote to convict President Trump for abuse of power on Wednesday, but he knew the blowback was coming. And it came quickly. Donald Trump Jr. was the first Trump to attack Romney, saying the Senate GOP should expel Romney — which won't happen — and mocking him for wearing "mom jeans."The president, who hates defections and had wanted to poach at least one Senate Democrat for acquittal (he got none), held his fire for a few hours. Then on Wednesday evening he posted an attack video in which the narrator says Romney, a lifetime Republican and the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, is "posing as a Republican" and was "exposed by news reports as a Democrat secret asset." The ad also contrasts Trump's 2016 victory with Romney's 2012 loss. It doesn't mention impeachment."Whether the thirst for vengeance against Romney is sustained will hinge on Trump, who has long smarted from the Utah Republican's criticism of him and takes pride in hitting back at perceived and real enemies," The Washington Post reports. "Party and campaign officials said privately that they hoped Trump wouldn't obsess over the lone defection and move on from impeachment," and "a senior Trump campaign official said the longer the Romney news cycle drags on, the worse it is for the president, because it focuses attention on his impeachment."Senate Republicans shrugged off Don Jr.'s call to cancel Romney, but Romney's eight-minute floor speech announcing his decision did not paint his GOP colleagues in a flattering light, either."The grave question the Constitution tasks senators to answer is whether the president committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor. Yes, he did," Romney told a nearly empty Senate chamber. "The president is guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust.""I am aware that there are people in my party and in my state who will strenuously disapprove of my decision, and in some quarters, I will be vehemently denounced," Romney added. "I am sure to hear abuse from the president and his supporters. Does anyone seriously believe I would consent to these consequences other than from an inescapable conviction that my oath before God demanded it of me?"More stories from theweek.com Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel contextualize Trump's unholy prayer breakfast 'pity party' Report: White House considering dismissing Vindman from National Security Council How history will view Trump's impeachment
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| Texas executes man convicted of killing five family members in 2002 Posted: 06 Feb 2020 04:12 AM PST  Abel Ochoa, 47, was executed with lethal injection and pronounced dead at the state's death chamber in Huntsville at 6.48 p.m. CST (1248 GMT), 17 years after a jury found him guilty of capital murder, according to a statement by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Ochoa was the third inmate in the United States and the second in Texas to be executed in 2020. Texas, which executed nine people in 2019, has executed more prisoners than any other state since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
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| Could Bloomberg Win the Democratic Nomination? Posted: 07 Feb 2020 09:08 AM PST  Could Mike Bloomberg capture the Democratic Party's presidential nomination? I've ridiculed the possibility in the past, and with good reason: Bloomberg has taken stances that are anathema to progressives, and I'm not talking about his cheerleading for capitalism or the way he personifies Wall Street lucre like a walking Monopoly Man. He also waited far too late to enter the race and blithely skipped the early states.Nate Silver's forecasting model at FiveThirtyEight gives Bloomberg a less than 1 percent shot at the nomination. But betting markets disagree: As the degree of Joe Biden's failure in Iowa became apparent, Bloomberg's prospects surged. At PredictIt.org, for instance, Bernie Sanders is the heavy favorite, selling at 43 cents for a potential payoff of a dollar. Bloomberg runs a strong second, at 23 cents. Biden is in fourth place, at a pathetic 14 cents. Bettors appear to be envisioning Ramesh Ponnuru's scenario: Should Biden collapse and leave a clear path to victory for Sanders, those Democrats who do not daydream about November suicide will be looking for a moderate to back. Bloomberg would appear to be a more plausible contender for that role than Pete Buttigieg, with his student-council earnestness and thin résumé. What's more, the former New York City mayor would be self-funding.There are three big reasons Bloomberg could stage a last-minute rally and make a serious bid for the nomination.One: In the Ponnuru scenario, the Democrats could use every trick in the book, or indeed rewrite the book, to stop Sanders. Step forward, superdelegates! Hail, change in debate rules! The downside risk of this is a replay of the 1968 Chicago convention chaos, this time in Milwaukee. But it's not like even the Bolshiest of Bernie Bros are going to stay home on November 3 if their choice is between a capitalist Democrat and Donald Trump, and the party knows this.Two: Given Biden's continual struggles and Elizabeth Warren's rapid fade, the race could narrow to a Sanders–Bloomberg contest quickly if Buttigieg's momentum were to stall. Some of Warren's fans among technocrats and the highly educated will even defect to Bloomberg, on the grounds that he's the sort of managerial-class mandarin they feel an affinity with. (Warren's anti-capitalist rhetoric is, I think, seen as merely performative by a significant percentage of her devotees.)Three: Money. It's preposterous how rich Bloomberg is. Because of the way his wealth is generated, via subscriptions to his eponymous financial-services terminals, it comes in faster than he can spend it. He could spend $5 billion on this race and emerge from it richer than he was when he entered. Last year, Forbes put his net worth at $55.5 billion; this year he's at $61.7 billion. For comparison, saturation advertising for a blockbuster movie that everyone wants to see runs a studio about $50 million. No one knows what a Bloombergian level of advertising spending on a single idea might look like because it's never been done before. And that's not counting all the other ways money can be useful in a political campaign. As other candidates drop out of the race, Bloomberg will be able to buy up organizers and pollsters and canvassers and everybody else who wants a job in politics. He'll be able to put them up at the Four Seasons, rent them Cadillac Escalades, and feed them so much lobster thermidor it'll make Lego Batman envious. He'll be able to buy up activists and agitators too. Last week he evidently bought a ticket to the Super Bowl for the Houston-area woman, an anti-gun activist, who also starred in the $11 million gun-control commercial he ran during the game. Bloomberg has so far steered clear of using his fortune to tear down fellow Democrats, but the most effective political ads are attacks. If it comes down to him vs. Sanders, a declared enemy of capitalism, will he continue to avoid going negative? And how well would Sanders hold up against $100 million in attack ads?Even setting those factors aside, there's an argument to be made that Sanders is so extreme that there must be a low ceiling on his potential support even within the Democratic Party. For all the outsize influence of the Extremely Online progressive base, there are a lot of Democrats farther to the right: After the 2018 midterms, in which the party retook control of the House, conservatives and moderates accounted for 52 percent of its members.On the other hand, Bernie Bros (and maybe even Joe Biden) may take some comfort from knowing that they can pull out the Democratic Party's favorite weapon at any time and beat Bloomberg over the head with it. As mayor of New York City, Bloomberg loudly defended a police stop-and-frisk policy that disproportionately affected black New Yorkers, who in many cases argued that they were being profiled and harassed. Bloomberg was not only insensitive to criticism, he suggested those who opposed his policy were idiots. "Incidentally, I think, we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little," Bloomberg said in 2013. "It's exactly the reverse of what they're saying. I don't know where they went to school, but they certainly didn't take a math course, or a logic course." Bloomberg continued to defend the policy as recently as last year, even though crime continued to recede after the stop-and-frisk policy was all but eliminated. A single powerful ad in which a black New Yorker recalls the humiliation of being stopped and frisked for no good reason could be worth more than a billion dollars' worth of Bloomberg's spending.
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| The US Army wants its soldiers to be able to see enemies and other deadly threats through walls Posted: 07 Feb 2020 02:50 PM PST  The Army is trying to defeat battlefield unknowns by figuring out how soldiers can see through walls, a capability straight out of science fiction.
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| Elizabeth Smart says she was sexually assaulted by passenger on Delta flight Posted: 06 Feb 2020 10:51 AM PST  Elizabeth Smart has revealed she was sexually assaulted on a Delta flight by a fellow passenger last summer.On Thursday, Smart, who has advocated on behalf of kidnapping victims after she was abducted and sexually assaulted at 14, told CBS This Morning's Gayle King about the incident.
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| Box Kites, Rockets, and Satellites: Our 150-Year Endeavor To Forecast the Weather Posted: 07 Feb 2020 08:28 AM PST |
| Storage unit found, eldest son speaks out: What we know about the missing Idaho kids Posted: 06 Feb 2020 11:10 AM PST  Details continue to trickle out in the case of the two missing Idaho children as mother Lori Vallow missed court deadline a week ago.
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| China virus toll hits 717 as cruise ship faces two-week quarantine Posted: 07 Feb 2020 03:32 PM PST  The death toll from China's coronavirus outbreak rose to 717 on Saturday as the country seethes over an epidemic that claimed the life of a popular doctor and created global panic. The toll has now surpassed the number of people who died in mainland China and Hong Kong during the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak, after another 81 people succumbed to the illness in central Hubei province. More than 34,000 people have been infected in China by the new strain, which is believed to have emerged in a market that sold exotic animals in Hubei's capital, Wuhan, late last year.
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| Virginia lawmakers to debate assault weapon ban Posted: 06 Feb 2020 02:06 PM PST  Democratic lawmakers in Virginia are set to try to advance legislation to ban assault weapons despite pushback from members of their own party. A state House committee is scheduled to take up legislation backed by Gov. Ralph Northam on Friday that would ban the sale of certain semi-automatic firearms, including popular AR-15 style rifles. Heated debates over guns have dominated this year's legislative session, as Virginia has become ground zero in the nation's raging debate over gun control and mass shootings.
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| Six Times the Speed of Sound: Will the Air Force Get an SR-72 Spy Plane? Posted: 07 Feb 2020 09:59 AM PST  Better than the SR-71?
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| A California surgeon and his girlfriend were accused of drugging and raping up to 1,000 women. A new DA says the evidence against them was 'manufactured.' Posted: 06 Feb 2020 07:14 AM PST  The county's new district attorney said his predecessor made up the evidence for political gain.
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| Joe Walsh to Back ‘Any Democrat’ Over Trump After Ending GOP Bid Posted: 07 Feb 2020 05:14 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Joe Walsh, the former Tea Party congressman form Illinois, has ended his long-shot Republican primary challenge to President Donald Trump, saying he will work to support "any Democrat" -- even Bernie Sanders."Any Democrat would be better than Trump in the White House," Walsh told CNN on Friday morning. "I would rather have a socialist in the White House than a dictator or a king."Walsh, who hosted a conservative radio program, formerly supported Trump but decided to challenge him for the Republican nomination last summer calling the president "unfit." After Trump received 97% of the vote in the Iowa caucuses this week, and Walsh was unable to get any attention on Fox News and other conservative media outlets, Walsh decided to end his campaign -- but not his attempt to replace Trump.Walsh called Trump "the greatest threat to this country right now.""He can't be stopped within the Republican party," he said, adding, "It's not a party. It's a cult."Walsh said many Republicans have left the party because of Trump, and he urged them to pay attention to the field of Democrats, particularly the moderate candidates, but said he would support any nominee Democrats choose.To contact the reporter on this story: Elizabeth Wasserman in Washington at ewasserman2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Wasserman at ewasserman2@bloomberg.net, Kathleen HunterFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Bloomberg campaign appears to have plagiarized parts of 8 campaign policies Posted: 06 Feb 2020 09:06 PM PST  The Intercept found that several of Michael Bloomberg's 2020 pledges matched other sources word-for-word.
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| Pete Buttigieg Once Wrote a High School Essay About His Idol, Bernie Sanders. Tonight, He'll Debate Him Posted: 07 Feb 2020 02:47 PM PST  Twenty years ago, a chubby and nearly unibrowed high school senior in South Bend, Indiana wrote an essay about his political idol, the then-57-year old…
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| Pelosi says Trump knows nothing about 'faith and prayer' Posted: 06 Feb 2020 08:50 AM PST  During a press briefing, Speaker Nancy Pelosi responding to criticisms of her ripping up the president's State of the Union speech. She also said the president knows nothing about "faith and prayer."
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| Trump’s Press Secretary Whines About Media Lunch Leaks—in New Leaked Email Posted: 06 Feb 2020 07:53 AM PST  The Trump White House is apparently still reeling because the president didn't get anything to eat at the soup-and-sole lunch he hosted for television personalities before Tuesday's State of the Union address."[T]he president of the United States welcomed you to the White House and spent almost two hours answering so many questions that he didn't eat his own lunch," White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham complained about President Donald Trump's personal sacrifice in a confidential email to the attendees—an email that was shared with The Daily Beast on Thursday morning. "He graciously gave you a couple of items on the record and then spoke frankly, honestly, and most importantly in good faith that it was off the record."Grisham, who doesn't follow the practice of delivering White House press briefings, thus obliterating a decades-long tradition by administrations of both parties, continued: "Our only agenda was to give you an idea of what the president was going to say to the country in his third State of the Union address. It was so disappointing that not even an hour passed before we were inundated with inquiries, as someone or perhaps a few in the group chose to leak out most of what was said. What's worse, some of the details were things the president specifically asked you not to share."It seems Grisham and her boss, who banned CNN from the meal, were especially angered by The Daily Beast's report about the lunch—published hours before Trump's speech to Congress—that contained many such details, such as the president's criticisms of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and his vow to block publication of former National Security Adviser John Bolton's tell-all book."To me, it is the height of hypocrisy that a press who bemoans the perceived lack of ethical behavior in this administration, so brazenly violates its own ethical standards," Grisham went on, clearly warming to her subject. "The media cries for more access but cannot adhere to a simple agreed upon standard of off-the-record, which allowed your colleagues who were not in attendance to break the news for you." Delivering a helpful lecture on journalistic ethics, Grisham added: "Call me naïve, but it is my belief that old-fashioned accountability should be applied to a press corps that has sadly failed to hold itself to its very own standards. Accountability is, after all, one of the five core principles of journalism. 'We hold the powerful accountable' is a mantra that many in the press righteously shout from every news desk in this county. I ask—who holds all of you accountable?"And so on and so forth, for several paragraphs more."In closing," Grisham wrote, "I must say that for once I wouldn't mind if this email leaked, but somehow I doubt anyone will want to admit to this complete lapse in integrity."Oh ye of little faith.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Coronavirus: Cruise ship passengers in New Jersey loaded onto ambulances and tested for virus Posted: 07 Feb 2020 05:33 AM PST  Passengers on a cruise ship docked in New Jersey have been seen being placed in ambulances as they are reportedly sent for testing of the deadly new Wuhan coronavirus, according to multiple reports.The passengers in question had a history of having recently travelled to China, one official with the Centre for Disease Control told CNN. The outbreak of the mysterious illness was believed to have originated in a market in Wuhan, China.
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| Russia says Israel nearly shot down passenger plane in Syria Posted: 07 Feb 2020 08:04 AM PST  Russia's Defense Ministry said Friday that Israeli air forces nearly shot down a passenger jetliner in Syria during a missile strike on the suburbs of Damascus a day earlier. The allegation comes as tensions run high in Syria, where fighting has escalated in the northern province of Idlib. Syrian government forces, backed by the Russian military, have clashed with Turkish troops that support the opposition there after failing to observe a cease-fire.
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| Why the World Should Really Fear North Korea's Tunnels Posted: 06 Feb 2020 03:30 AM PST  Tunnels, yes, you read that right.
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| 'Caution I have the coronavirus' prank in Illinois Walmart causes $10k in damage, police say Posted: 07 Feb 2020 12:55 PM PST  Two teens has been charged after pulling a coronavirus prank at a Walmart in Joliet, Illinois, according to police.
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| Fox News warns Fox News about spreading pro-Trump 'disinformation' on Ukraine Posted: 07 Feb 2020 02:58 AM PST  An internal report from the Fox News research department warns that several prominent Fox News guests, aided sometimes by omissions from Sean Hannity, have spread "disinformation" about Ukraine. The briefing, written by senior political affairs specialist Bryan S. Murphy and titled "Ukraine, Disinformation, and the Trump Administration," was first disclosed in a series of tweets from former Fox News freelancer Marcus DiPaola, then obtained in full by The Daily Beast. Murphy compiles reports for the Fox News "Brain Room," a research arm of the network's news division.The report specifically points to "disinformation" on Ukraine from President Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Fox News contributor and Hill columnist John Solomon, and married legal team Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing.DiGenova and Toensing are part of Trump's legal circle and also represent Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash, a fact not disclosed last fall when they were "spreading disinformation" on Fox News and "parroting ... beneficial narratives while employed by Firtash," Murphy wrote. Giuliani had a "high susceptibility to disinformation" from Firtash and former Ukrainian prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko, he added, and Solomon, an opinion columnist typically referred to as an "investigative reporter" by Hannity, "played an indispensable role in the collection and domestic publication of elements of this disinformation campaign." Trump cites Solomon's work, now under review by The Hill, while defending himself in the Ukraine scandal.Mitch Kweit, senior vice president of the Brain Room, told The Daily Beast that "the 200 page document has thousands of data points, and the vast majority have no relation to Fox News — instead it's now being taken out of context and politicized to damage the network." Read more at The Daily Beast.More stories from theweek.com Elizabeth Warren's last chance American democracy is dying Furious Democrats call for Tom Perez's resignation after Iowa fiasco
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| Mike Bloomberg called trans women a 'man wearing a dress' and implied equality 'makes no sense' to Midwesterners Posted: 07 Feb 2020 03:50 PM PST  'Give them the job of going to the Midwest and picking a town and selling to that town the concept that some man wearing a dress," Bloomberg said.
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