With Jared Kushner losing access to Top Secret data, he's out of luck -- I mean, unless people in the White House are indifferent to the rule of law, suspicious of restrictions on their power and discretion, and cavalier about security issues.
— Popehat (@Popehat) February 27, 2018
Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter. [...]H.R. McMaster, President Trump's national security adviser, learned that Kushner had contacts with foreign officials that he did not coordinate through the National Security Council or officially report. The issue of foreign officials talking about their meetings with Kushner and their perceptions of his vulnerabilities was a subject raised in McMaster's daily intelligence briefings, according to the current and former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.Within the White House, Kushner's lack of government experience and his business debt were seen from the beginning of his tenure as potential points of leverage that foreign governments could use to influence him, the current and former officials said.They could also have legal implications. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has asked people about the protocols Kushner used when he set up conversations with foreign leaders, according to a former U.S. official.
In a new AI-versus-lawyer matchup, the lawyers were bested when trying to accurately spot issues in non-disclosure agreements.Tasked with spotting issues in five real NDAs from companies including Cargill and Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the software from LawGeex outperformed the attorneys with an average of 94 percent accuracy, according to their study. The attorneys had an average accuracy rate of 85 percent.The attorneys assessed all five NDAs in an average of 92 minutes, while the software took only 26 seconds."Participating in this experiment really opened my eyes to how ridiculous it is for attorneys to spend their time (as well as their clients' money) creating or reviewing documents like NDAs which are so fundamentally similar to one another," Grant Gulovsen, a participating attorney, said in a statement. "Having a tool that could automate this process would free up skilled attorneys to spend their time on higher-level tasks without having to hire paralegal support."
Liberty and responsibility are inseparable. At first glance, this might seem like a paradox due to responsibility being an inherent constraint on liberty. Responsibility is the absence of flexibility and free-flowingness. However, those who truly want liberty also want the self-responsibility entailed.If they do not pick up the burden of being responsible, then the world falls into a chaotic place.In each person being their own master, that person also has to accept that the actions they take produce real consequences. That person then has to choose carefully what actions they take as they are the owner of the consequences. Without a fair sense of responsibility, self-directed individuals would not be able to produce a prosperous society.Having to carry the burden of consequences forces each individual to pick up their own weight and make each corner of their world a better place. For if they do not pick up the burden of being responsible, then the world falls into a chaotic place, a place of disregard. It is in this sense that responsibility is a necessary component of liberty.
Measures of economic, technological and military strength show that Western liberal democracies are prospering and growing--from a very high base. IISS's The Military Balance 2018 data shows that the US, other NATO members, Japan, South Korea and Australia made up over 60% of planned global defence expenditure in 2017, with Russia and China combined making up less than 14% (leaving aside whether real or PPP measures are most representative). Western countries continue to innovate and adapt at a tempo as fast as at any time in the last 150 years. If this is decline, I want more.On the flip side, it's true that China's rapid development over recent decades has enabled the Chinese government to lift millions of its people out of poverty. Good. Growth has also allowed China to invest in a range of military systems that give it an ability to project power in its own territory, its neighbours' territories and into disputed areas between them--like the East China Sea and the South China Sea.Along with this, China and Russia (and even more obviously Iran and North Korea) have more than their share of weaknesses and vulnerabilities that undermine their strengths.You wouldn't know this by listening to commentators and former politicians, whose historical determinism seems more Marxist than Karl's own. They outline the inevitability of China's rise, along with the equally inevitable decline of the decadent, distracted West. 'Resistance is useless' seems to be the T-shirt they think we need. Luckily that's not true.China now, as throughout its history, has multiple internal tensions and pressures. Like the Qin, Han or Manchu emperors of the past, Chinese leaders fear that internal tensions could lead to social and political unrest that will end their rule. They continue to feel insecure about their borders. An abbreviated list of some of the major pressures the Communist Party leadership confronts includes:*Unrest driven by ethnic differences between Han Chinese populations and local populations like Uyghurs and Tibetans*Corruption and fraud that takes people's savings and brings the party into disrepute*Air, water and land pollution and contamination affecting human and environmental health*Bad debts in a financial system distorted by government requirements to take on bad loans and prop up state-owned businesses*Excess capacity in construction and manufacturing that creates the conditions for unrest as people lose jobs*Growing social media connectivity that absorbs growing amounts of state resources and people to control and censor so that debates don't threaten Communist Party rule*A rapidly ageing population that doesn't have the means to support itself in retirement owing to the lack of a social safety net*The potential collapse of North Korea, whether through its own contradictions or miscalculated military action, causing millions of hungry, desperate North Koreans to move into China, combined with environmental damage from North Korean use of nuclear weapons.Russia is even more troubled and a weaker state by most measures. Space prevents a longer list, so let's simply note the following: corruption; political repression; economic weakness; a declining, ageing population; chronic health problems including alcoholism and depression; and tensions with most of its neighbours--which include China, the Balkans, Central Asia and Western Europe.
Adm. Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, told a Senate panel Tuesday that the Trump administration is not doing enough to counter Russia's attempts to meddle in future U.S. elections through the use of cyberattacks."Clearly, what we've done hasn't been enough," Rogers bluntly declared during a Senate armed services committee hearing.In particular, Rogers said the administration's decision to not immediately implement congressionally mandated sanctions against Russia sends a signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin that the Kremlin can continue to wage cyber warfare against the U.S. and other countries."Not just the sanctions but more broadly, my concern is, I believe that President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion there's little price to pay here, and that therefore I can continue this activity," Rogers told Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
Cambridge Analytica is a data company that specializes in what's called "psychographic" polling, which means it uses data collected online to create personality profiles for voters. It then uses that information to target individuals with content tailored to their specific profile.Last December, Mueller requested that Cambridge Analytica turn over internal documents as part of his investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.The thread connecting Russia, the Trump campaign, and Cambridge Analytica is Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser who was forced to resign after he reportedly lied to Vice President Mike Pence and the FBI about his phone conversations with a Russian envoy in 2016.A series of reports last July by the Wall Street Journal's Shane Harris, Michael Bender, and Peter Nicholas revealed that Peter Smith, a pro-Trump GOP operative, sought to acquire 30,000 deleted emails from Hillary Clinton's private server. Two of the groups Smith reached out to had connections to Russia.Smith told Harris that he was in regular contact with Flynn, who at the time was still working closely with Trump's campaign. Harris also reported on intelligence assessments that outlined the efforts of Russian hackers to retrieve Clinton's emails and pass them on to Flynn, who would then share them with the Trump campaign.Via an August 2017 Associated Press report, we also know that Flynn was later forced to disclose "a brief advisory role with a firm related to a controversial data analysis company that aided the Trump campaign."That "data analysis" company was Cambridge Analytica.We don't know what data Flynn might have shared with the Russians (or vice versa). Nor do we know if -- or to what extent -- the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russians to help their disinformation operation.What we do know is that Russia was actively meddling in the 2016 presidential election in order to help Trump win the White House. We also know that part of its operation relied on manipulating Facebook's algorithms to target specific voters.And this is precisely the sort of work that Cambridge Analytica and Brad Parscale were hired to perform for the Trump campaign.
BREAKING: Robert Mueller officially dismissed 22 charges against Rick Gates.
— Millennial Politics (@MillenPolitics) February 27, 2018
What's it mean? The man delivered the goods.#ItsMuellerTime pic.twitter.com/Q6mKLk1pvO
"Something has changed with the way that strains of intolerance have moved from the shadows and seeped into the mainstream," said Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL's CEO. "And then not being called out by people at the highest levels of authority in a way that happened before."Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories FREE SIGN UPOne of the reasons such vitriol has reached a new plateau of public discourse, Greenblatt said, is that it's frequently disseminated by US President Donald Trump on social media."I think what's new is today we have a situation where literally the presidential Twitter account is retweeting memes that originate on sub-reddits that are developed by some of the worst segments of society," Greenblatt went on. "The president's retweeting of white supremacists and anti-Semitic memes during the campaign and, more recently, sharing tweets from a UK racist group -- those are alarming. Those tweets and rhetoric have emboldened and given encouragement to the worst anti-Semites and bigots."
The Conference Board says its consumer confidence index rose to 130.8 in February, highest since November 2000 and up from 124.3 in January.The business research group's index measures consumers' assessment of current conditions and their outlook for the next six months. They feel better about today's economy than they have since March 2001. Their outlook also improved.Tax cuts passed into law last year are starting to show up in workers' paychecks. "As people slowly absorb the details of the tax reform package, opinion polls suggest that it is becoming significantly more popular," Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities, wrote in a research note.A strong job market is boosting confidence. The unemployment rate has stayed at a 17-year low 4.1%.
"One of the things I'm proud of in my administration was the fact that--and I think these things are connected--we didn't have a scandal that embarrassed us," he then said."There were mistakes, we'd screw up. But there wasn't anything venal in eight years. I know that seems like a low bar," Obama said to laughter."Generally speaking, you didn't hear about a lot of drama inside our White House," he continued, insisting it was because he selected people with the right temperament.
The Basic Care line, which has its own page within the Amazon site, offers a range of products, including ibuprofen, allergy medicine, laxatives, hair regrowth treatments and nicotine gum.Prices for many items are significantly cheaper than traditional pharmacies, such as CVS (CVS), Walgreens (WBA), Rite Aid (RAD) -- even Walmart, analysts at Raymond James said in a December report. For instance, Basic Care ibuprofen cost $7.50 for 500 tablets, while Walmart (WMT) charged $8.23 and Walgreens $15.49. A bottle of Basic Care laxatives cost $7.39, compared to $8.04 at Walmart and $11.99 at CVS. [...]Amazon is also trying to convince the medical community to buy commonly used products -- such as rubber gloves, syringes, gauze, surgical gowns, stethoscopes and dental bibs -- from its AmazonBusiness site, which launched three years ago. It brought on Chris Holt, who has long worked in the health care supply chain field, to lead the health care initiative. In addition to employing a sales team, the division has been attending industry conferences and events to raise its profile.While this business line isn't as complex as pharmaceuticals, it still required Amazon to get licenses in various states before it could sell certain medical supplies. This set off a flurry of speculation that the company was moving one step closer to selling prescription drugs, but an Amazon spokesperson clarified that the licenses were for products, not medication.Amazon is betting that those who buy supplies for medical practices -- as well as for educational and government offices -- will be comfortable shopping online. Its business site offers additional functions, such as allowing multiple users on a single account, requiring approvals from supervisors and enforcing spending limits. But it also allows users to quickly compare prices for a variety of vendors."We want to create an experience similar to the way people shop at home," said Lori Torerson, an Amazon spokeswoman.
"Assault weapons bans reduced the number of school shooting victims by 54.4 percent," Mark Gius of Quinnipiac University writes in the journal Applied Economics Letters. "All other gun-control laws--concealed-carry laws, private-sale background checks, and federal dealer background checks--had no statistically significant effect on school shootings."Gius has received positive attention from conservative media for previous studies finding concealed-carry laws and assault weapons bans do not have a significant effect on a state's gun-related murder rate. (In many states, handguns are responsible for far more deaths than assault rifles.)But his subsequent research shows mass shootings are a different matter.In a 2014 study that analyzed data covering the years 1982 to 2011, he found "both state and federal assault weapon bans have statistically significant and negative effects on mass shooting fatalities."In addition, he found the federal ban, which was in place from 1994 to 2004, was linked to fewer injuries from mass shootings. State-level bans were not, which suggests they are less effective in preventing harm (not surprisingly, since determined shooters can easily bring such weapons across state lines).
Gius' 2017 study focused exclusively on school shootings. Focusing on the years 1990 to 2014, he examined the effect of the federal assault weapons ban, federal background checks for gun purchases from dealers (in effect from 1994), and three types of state-level laws: assault weapons bans, "concealed carry" laws, and background checks for gun sales made by one individual to another individual."The only gun control measure that had a statistically significant effect on the number of school shooting victims was the assault weapons ban," he writes. "When the assault weapons ban, state or federal, was in effect, the number of school shooting victims was 54.4 percent less than (when it was not in effect)."
[T]he world economy is now firing on all cylinders. Every region is now following the US post-2008 roadmap of aggressive monetary stimulus and bank recapitalization, but with long delays that have ranged from three years in Japan and China to six years in Europe and even longer in large emerging economies such as India, Russia, and Brazil.
Even among some of Donald Trump's allies, there is a sense of astonishment at the White House's handling of Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. "It's like no one took down the Gambino family," Steve Bannon told Chris Whipple in a book adaptation the Hive published this week. "Mueller's doing a roll-up just like he did with the Gambinos. [Paul] Manafort's the caporegime, right? And [Rick] Gates is a made man!" Indeed, Mueller, who led the F.B.I. takedown of the infamous crime family in the early 1990s, famously cutting a deal with Sammy the Bull to flip on mob boss John Gotti, appears to be executing what some have called a "Gambino-style roll-up."
The International Energy Agency (IEA) says the United States will overtake Russia as the world's biggest crude oil producer by 2019 at the latest, as U.S. shale output continues to grow.
And given Trump's public track record in the face of proximate danger, his words instead ended up underscoring a separate truth: His actions have, at times, read differently than his tough talk.The most frightened that Trump has ever seemed in public was perhaps a moment during a campaign rally in Dayton, Ohio, in March 2016.The then-candidate was in the midst of speaking about manufacturing, when a man hopped the barrier behind him and rushed the stage. Trump stopped speaking, looked nervously behind him and grabbed and started to duck behind his lectern.He was then swarmed by Secret Service agents, who steadied him.
Beginning in 1955, National Review provided a public platform for the champions of libertarian thought like Max Eastman and Frank Meyer, traditionalist ideas like Russell Kirk, and uncompromising anti-communism like Whittaker Chambers.With Frank Meyer's help, Buckley developed the idea of fusionism, a blending of the three major strains of conservatism, and persuaded conservatives to stop fighting each other and focus on the real enemies--Soviet communism abroad and overweening federal government at home.Buckley took as his model the liberal New Republic. In a memorandum for investors, he called his new publication "a formative journal" that would "change the nation's intellectual and political climate" just as the Nation and the New Republic helped usher in "the New Deal revolution."The time was right, he said, for a magazine--and a movement--that would oppose ever bigger government, expose eager social engineers, and challenge those who counseled coexistence with communism, intellectual conformity, the elimination of the market economy, and world government.National Review was only the first political step by Buckley to build a movement. Next came the formation of Young Americans for Freedom that served as the ground troops for Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater's "glorious disaster" in the 1964 presidential election and Ronald Reagan's capture of the presidency in 1980.
He'd have been proud of this podcast.Buckley was also a founder of the Conservative Party of New York that nominated and helped elect James Buckley in 1970 to the Senate. Undoubtedly, his most audacious political act was to run in 1965 for mayor of New York City, the citadel of liberalism.In that race, he threw down a conservative gauntlet to demonstrate that conservatism was not dead and buried, despite the overwhelming Goldwater defeat, but very much alive. He presented a conservative alternative to working-class Irish and other ethnic Catholics repelled by the ever more liberal policies of the liberal Democrats who dominated New York City politics.On Election Day, an impressive 13.4 percent (341,226) of the electorate voted for Buckley. Political analyst Kevin Phillips, author of the landmark work, "The Emerging Republican Majority," cited Buckley's vote as a "harbinger" of the new majority that elected Richard Nixon in 1968.The apogee of Buckley's political efforts came in 1980 with the election of Reagan as the most conservative president in modern times. By his own admission, Reagan had learned much of his conservatism by reading National Review and forging a close friendship with its editor-turned-presidential adviser.
[W]ashington Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee quickly shut him down, telling Trump exactly what his constituents think of that plan.Trump claimed only a "very small" number of teachers would be armed. But Inslee pointed out that Trump had recommended 20 percent of all teachers be given weapons."I have listened to the people who would be affected by that," Inslee said. "I have listened to the biology teachers, and they don't want to do that at any percentage."He recalled "the first-grade teachers who don't want to be pistol-packing first-grade teachers." And he noted that law enforcement officers don't have the time or ability to spend months training teachers to use guns."Educators should educate, and they should not be foisted upon this responsibility of packing heat in first-grade classes," Inslee said.And he suggested that "we need a little less tweeting here, and a little more listening.