The Islamic State terror group on Monday claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on churchgoers in Russia's predominantly Muslim Dagestan region.At least five people were killed and four wounded when a gunman opened fire with a hunting rifle on people leaving a Sunday service at a Russian Orthodox church in the Dagestan city of Kizlyar.
But you can't be single https://t.co/4quB6K2PlV
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) February 19, 2018
As acting attorney general, Bork appointed a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski. He then issued a regulation that "the president will not exercise his constitutional powers to effect the discharge of the special prosecutor or to limit the independence that he is hereby given." It went on to specify that the special prosecutor could be terminated only for "extraordinary improprieties," and even then, Nixon could do it only with a "consensus" of the House and Senate majority and minority leaders, and the chairmen and ranking members of the chambers' judiciary committees. Bork codified these restrictions in federal regulations, and told the news media that Nixon had agreed to them.With doubts sown about Nixon's commitment to the rule of law, Bork devised a solution that brought the branches of government together; rather than waiting for Congress to regulate the firing of prosecutors, he seized the initiative and invited Congress in from the start. His maneuver deftly sidestepped the most serious constitutional problems with legislation, because the executive branch voluntarily was bringing Congress into the picture. Unfortunately, the Bork regulations have lapsed.Both of us have been head of the solicitor general's office, where Bork served. But more important, each of us has struggled with these problems for a long time. One of us, Mr. Starr, investigated President Bill Clinton under the Independent Counsel Act; the other, Mr. Katyal, drafted the special counsel regulations in the Clinton administration that now govern the appointment of Mr. Mueller. We come at this from different sides of the aisle but share the conviction that President Trump's Justice Department should issue modern-day Bork regulations.
To commemorate Rollins' seminal 1957 album, Way Out West, which receives a deluxe vinyl reissue this week, RealClearLife caught up with the world's greatest improviser over the phone. Without ever dipping into sentiment or maudlin remembrance, he offered his thoughts on the power that spiritual thinking, and how when you've been around long enough you don't just believe anymore--you know. [...]We just covered an exhibit at the Rubin Museum about the second Buddha, Padmasambhava, whose disciples projected his treasure teachings into the future. They would hide his messages in art about him, scrolls and whatnot. So years after he wasn't around anymore, people would be discovering his teachings.I've been interested in these thoughts early on. I remember getting involved with the Rosicrucians, which is not Eastern, though they claim to be from way back. They're a European mystical organization. That was my first attempt to understand and read some of this stuff. Then I went into Buddhism. But mainly, I study yoga, and consider myself a yogi. I'm in sympathy and empathy with a lot of Buddhist philosophy and thought, but I was never... because it's really the same thing.What I discovered it this, Joffe--that there's only one truth. That's all. And that goes to all human endeavors on this planet. There's a lot of different sects, but the truth is the same. One of my favorite things I believe in is the Golden Rule, and recently somebody sent me something that goes like this--what you do not wish upon yourself, do not do to others. You know who said that? Confucius. It goes back forever. As long as human beings been out here, some people have seen the light, and that's the truth. It's one resolve down to one truth. So that's where I'm at.But I'm still studying, I'm still learning. I'm reading Swami Vivekananda now, who was a very wise man that was here in the States around the end of the 19th Century. You know, I'm on the wrong side of 87, and right now I'd rather give.In giving, be it your time to me or your archives to the Schomburg, you don't ever seem to be sentimental about your career. When recently asked about your playing alone on The Williamsburg Bridge, you resisted the bait to get sentimental. That was learning who you were for me as a kid because I watched The Simpsons and Bleeding Gums Murphy played on the Springfield Bridge, a story I soon found out was plucked directly out of your mythology. Few people have been able to assert themselves into our subconscious so directly, and that's a gift, too. How do you do so without being overly sentimental about old memories and stories?Life goes by so fast, and there's so much to learn. As a musician, that takes most of your life, when you're trying to learn to be a performer. It takes up a lot of your life. You really don't have a lot of time to meditate and contemplate, things just happen. At this stage in my life, I don't have to think too much about any of that stuff. But I did have to live more of a sentimental life when I had to think about making a new record, getting a magazine cover and stuff. That's fine. This was my karmic journey, this was me. I was born Sonny Rollins to go through my karma and live the life that I've lived. I understand that now, and I accept everything, because I believe in karma, and I'm sure you do, too.
Well, you believe in reincarnation, too.Oh, definitely.Have you thought about how you might exist in the air or the electrons of a next life?No, I don't think too much about that, because that's not my business. If I'm gonna waste my time on Earth thinking about what I'm gonna come back as, a man or an animal, that's wasting my time on Earth. And it's short. Life is short. We don't have a lot of time out here. My time out here has to be The Golden Rule, I know what I'm supposed to do now. I have to be a kind person, I have to give more than take, and that's hard in this world.By the way, I don't believe in reincarnation, I accept reincarnation. I don't believe, I know. That's a better way to put it. I often wish I'd said that when I've talked to people. Do you get my mind there?
As accounts of past sexual indiscretions threatened to surface during Donald J. Trump's presidential campaign, the job of stifling potentially damaging stories fell to his longtime lawyer and all-around fixer, Michael D. Cohen.To protect his boss at critical junctures in his improbable political rise, the lawyer relied on intimidation tactics, hush money and the nation's leading tabloid news business, American Media Inc., whose top executives include close Trump allies.Mr. Cohen's role has come under scrutiny amid recent revelations that he facilitated a payment to silence a porn star, but his aggressive behind-the-scenes efforts stretch back years, according to interviews, emails and other records.They intensified as Mr. Trump's campaign began in the summer of 2015, when a former hedge-fund manager told Mr. Cohen that he had obtained photographs of Mr. Trump with a bare-breasted woman. The man said Mr. Cohen first blew up at him, then steered him to David J. Pecker, chairman of the tabloid company, which sometimes bought, then buried, embarrassing material about his high-profile friends and allies. [...]An examination of the efforts to shield Mr. Trump from aspects of his own past shows how Mr. Cohen maneuvered in the pay-to-play gossip world -- populated by porn stars and centerfold models, tabloid editors and lawyers with B- and C-list entertainment clients -- that came to unusual prominence in an American presidential election.Mr. Cohen exploited mutual-self interest. By heading off trouble involving Mr. Trump's history with women, he accrued loyalty points, the ultimate currency with Mr. Trump. He dealt with lawyers who could win fat cuts of any settlements women might reach with American Media or with Mr. Trump. [...]
After Mr. Cohen joined the Trump Organization in 2006, the role that Mr. Trump wanted him to play was clear: a combination of aggressive spokesman and lieutenant who would take on the real estate mogul's antagonists. It was a job Roy Cohn, a New York lawyer best known for advising Senator Joseph McCarthy, had done decades earlier for Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen's work for his boss was often a mystery even to others in his office, but his devotion was clear.In talking with Mr. Cohen, Mr. Frommer mentioned Mr. Pecker. Years earlier, Mr. Frommer had sold American Media the exclusive rights to a suggestive photograph of Arnold Schwarzenegger -- which it did not publish -- and he knew the company's chief executive.Mr. Frommer recalled Mr. Cohen's saying, "Yeah, I know Pecker." Mr. Frommer added, "That's where the conversation calmed down."Mr. Pecker and Mr. Trump, a staple of the American gossip media since the 1980s, have a friendship that goes back decades. The relationship benefited Mr. Trump throughout the campaign as The Enquirer lionized him and hammered rivals like Ted Cruz, Ben Carson and, finally, Hillary Clinton.Mr. Cohen formed his own bond with Mr. Pecker, keeping in touch with him and Dylan Howard, a top executive, throughout the campaign.
Tulip mania wasn't irrational. Tulips were a newish luxury product in a country rapidly expanding its wealth and trade networks. Many more people could afford luxuries - and tulips were seen as beautiful, exotic, and redolent of the good taste and learning displayed by well-educated members of the merchant class. Many of those who bought tulips also bought paintings or collected rarities like shells.Prices rose, because tulips were hard to cultivate in a way that brought out the popular striped or speckled petals, and they were still rare. But it wasn't irrational to pay a high price for something that was generally considered valuable, and for which the next person might pay even more.Tulip mania wasn't a frenzy, either. In fact, for much of the period trading was relatively calm, located in taverns and neighbourhoods rather than on the stock exchange. It also became increasingly organised, with companies set up in various towns to grow, buy, and sell, and committees of experts emerged to oversee the trade. Far from bulbs being traded hundreds of times, I never found a chain of buyers longer than five, and most were far shorter. [...]
When the crash came, it was not because of naive and uninformed people entering the market, but probably through fears of oversupply and the unsustainability of the great price rise in the first five weeks of 1637. None of the bulbs were actually available - they were all planted in the ground - and no money would be exchanged until the bulbs could be handed over in May or June. So those who lost money in the February crash did so only notionally: they might not get paid later. Anyone who had both bought and sold a tulip on paper since the summer of 1636 had lost nothing. Only those waiting for payment were in trouble, and they were people able to bear the loss.No one drowned themselves in canals. I found not a single bankrupt in these years who could be identified as someone dealt the fatal financial blow by tulip mania. If tulip buyers and sellers appear in the bankruptcy records, it's because they were buying houses and goods of other people who had gone bankrupt for some reason - they still had plenty of money to spend. The Dutch economy was left completely unaffected.
Mr. Mueller essentially nuked a gnat. No serious person questioned any of this."I don't believe they interfered. That became a laughing point; not a talking point, a laughing point. Any time I do something, they say 'Oh, Russia interfered,'" Trump said. "It could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey."Over the past year, Russia's interference in the 2016 election, and the federal investigation into that interference and the possibility that the Trump campaign had abetted it, have been a sore spot for the president. He's called the Russia investigation a "hoax," a "political witch hunt" and "fake news." He said it was a "joke," a "ruse," and "phony." "The Democrats made up and pushed the Russian story as an excuse for running a terrible campaign," Trump insisted. Even after January of 2017, when American intelligence agencies released a report concluding that Russia had interfered in the election on Trump's behalf, both the president and his allies continued to insist that the story was untrue. In his confirmation hearing to be attorney general, Jeff Sessions would not even acknowledge that Russia had interfered. "I have done no research into that. I know just what the media says about it," Sessions testified.Trump allies weren't the only ones expressing skepticism over the Russia story. "There has been a very extreme dearth of evidence to actually support the claims that have come from the U.S. government," the journalist Glenn Greenwald told Democracy Now in January of 2017. "Unfortunately, there is very little skepticism being applied to the agencies that have repeatedly misled and deceived and lied to the American public."Special Counsel Robert Mueller's indictment of 13 Russian nationals associated with the Internet Research Agency, better known as the Russian "Troll Farm," on charges related to interfering with the 2016 election, leaves little doubt as to the Kremlin's intentions.
In a string of 10 Twitter messages -- which began after 11 p.m. Saturday and ended around noon Sunday, and which included profanity and misspellings -- Trump opened a window into his state of mind, even as Trump's representatives at a global security conference in Germany advised jittery allies to generally ignore the president's tweets.Trump's latest attacks built on remarks last week in which he misrepresented the evidence revealed by Mueller. He tweeted falsely, "I never said Russia did not meddle in the election." He blamed President Barack Obama's administration for doing "nothing" to stop the intrusion. Trump rebuked national security adviser H.R. McMaster for publicly saying the evidence of Russian interference was "incontrovertible."And he held the FBI responsible for last week's devastating shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school that left 17 dead. Trump tweeted that the bureau was committing so many resources to the Russia probe that it missed "all of the many signals" about the shooter.One topic Trump avoided in his missives was punishment of Russia. [...]Trump sent the messages from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., where he was ensconced for two days. He spent much of the time watching cable news, venting to friends about the Russia investigation and complaining that it has been driving so much press coverage, according to people who have spoken to him. The president also surveyed Mar-a-Lago Club members about whether he ought to champion gun control measures in the wake of last week's school massacre in nearby Parkland, telling them that he was closely monitoring the media appearances by some of the surviving students, according to people who spoke with him there.