NOW DO THE THING WHERE THE rIGHT PRETENDS TO CARE ABOUT SYRIANS...:

But But I was told this immigration enforcement is about "people jumping the line / not following the law." Sure seems like its about race and religion! https://t.co/JpCQGrbabQ

— Tim Miller (@Timodc) July 31, 2019

ALL THE BATTLEGROUNDS ARE RED:

THE MEASURE OF A MAN:

Davon Jones doesn't have to look far to see the irony in US President Donald Trump's tweets that Baltimore is a "rat and rodent infested mess." His apartment owned by the president's son-in-law has been invaded by mice since he moved in a year ago.

"I don't know how they come in," Jones says. "Every time I catch them, they come right back."

Jared Kushner's family real estate firm owns thousands of apartments and townhomes in the Baltimore area, and some have been criticized for the same kind of disrepair and neglect that the president has accused local leaders of failing to address. Residents have complained about mold, bedbugs, leaks and, yes, mice -- plenty of mice. And they say management appears in no hurry to fix the problems.

IT'S ABOUT US, NOT HIM:

We have come to accept a level of insult and abuse in political discourse that violates each person's sacred identity as a child of God. We have come to accept as normal a steady stream of language and accusations coming from the highest office in the land that plays to racist elements in society.

This week, President Trump crossed another threshold. Not only did he insult a leader in the fight for racial justice and equality for all persons; not only did he savage the nations from which immigrants to this country have come; but now he has condemned the residents of an entire American city. Where will he go from here?

Make no mistake about it, words matter. And, Mr. Trump's words are dangerous.

These words are more than a "dog-whistle." When such violent dehumanizing words come from the President of the United States, they are a clarion call, and give cover, to white supremacists who consider people of color a sub-human "infestation" in America. They serve as a call to action from those people to keep America great by ridding it of such infestation. Violent words lead to violent actions.

When does silence become complicity? What will it take for us all to say, with one voice, that we have had enough? The question is less about the president's sense of decency, but of ours.

As leaders of faith who believe in the sacredness of every single human being, the time for silence is over. We must boldly stand witness against the bigotry, hatred, intolerance, and xenophobia that is hurled at us, especially when it comes from the highest offices of this nation. We must say that this will not be tolerated. To stay silent in the face of such rhetoric is for us to tacitly condone the violence of these words. We are compelled to take every opportunity to oppose the indecency and dehumanization that is racism, whether it comes to us through words or actions.

EXPRESSING LOLITA:

DOGS TO THE WHISTLER:

The accusation that Cummings and Sharpton actively hate "Whites" -- not America generally, but only "Whites" -- stood out. And white supremacist contributors to the hate site "Stormfront" picked up on the wording as well, taking it as a signal that the president is on their side.

"Is this the first time DJT has explicitly stood up for White folks?" one asked. "Or has he apologized yet? More of this, Donnie, and you might win next year!" (The president has not apologized.)

Others on the site agreed, echoing the sentiment that Sharpton hates white people, with some adding that all black people hate white people and that the feeling is "mutual." One added a hopeful note about what Trump's comments mean: "For an American President to call a black person racist will hopefully embolden thousands of Whites to do the same against other non-Whites." Yet another said Trump got "bonus points" for his tweet capitalizing the word "Whites," as is often a custom in these forums.

As has been repeatedly observed, many white supremacists who contributor to forums like Stormfront are skeptical and critical of the president because of his relationships with Jewish people. Anti-Semitism, Nazism, and Holocaust denial run deep in these circles, and while Trump has sometimes employed anti-Semitic rhetoric, he doesn't go nearly as far as some of these bigots would like and he has Jewish family members. In the discussion of Trump's remarks, some of the Stormfront contributors continued to express skepticism about the president for being "close to the jews," but they welcomed his attack on Sharpton and "blacks in general."

CUTTING TO THE BONE:

Take one other seemingly clear-cut example of racism: the use of the n-word to describe African Americans. Polls show that Democrats and Republicans increasingly disagree on whether the n-word is offensive. Indeed, the percentage of Republicans who consider the word offensive or unacceptable has actually declined in recent years.

The Post reports that just one-third (33 percent) of Trump voters now consider it racist to use the n-word. By comparison, 86 percent of Hillary Clinton voters believe it is racist to use the n-word.

IF YOU WERE THE ARCHITECT OF TRUMPONOMICS, YOU'D STICK TO RACISM TOO:

Remnant regular and Cato Institute trade expert Scott Lincicome returns to the show for his periodic trade update, and to discuss whether the "national conservatism" assessment of trade is correct.

DONALD WHO?:

THE rIGHT HAS NO INTEREST IN HELPING VENEZUELANS:

The U.S. Senate will leave for a six-week break without passing a bill to grant Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for Venezuelans even though the House of Representatives passed a similar measure last week.

Two Democratic senators, Bob Menendez of New Jersey and Dick Durbin of Illinois, attempted to pass the House's TPS bill by unanimous consent on the Senate floor Tuesday. The move, which is essentially a voice vote, bypasses Senate procedure in an attempt to pass legislation quickly, but it fails if one senator opposes it.

Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee opposed Menendez and Durbin's request, so the fast-track effort to pass TPS failed.

THE FEW, THE PROUD, THE TRUMPBOTS...:

WITCH HUNTS ARE A FUNCTION OF WITCHES:

The hashtag #MoscowMitchMcTreason is trending one day after the Kentucky Republican gave an impassioned speech on the Senate floor in response to accusations of being a Russian sympathizer.

More specifically, McConnell took umbrage with MSNBC host Joe Scarborough and Washington Post opinion columnist Dana Milbank, who called him "Moscow Mitch" and "a Russian asset." 

These comments came after McConnell blocked two measures aimed at preventing foreign interference in U.S. elections. 

In his roughly 25-minute speech Monday afternoon, McConnell called out media outlets for hosting "hyperventilating hacks" and compared attacks on him to "modern-day McCarthyism."

IN FAIRNESS TO THE GOP...:

As the Democratic presidential candidates gather to debate in Detroit this week, they have reason to be confident: At this moment in time, essentially any of them could beat President Donald Trump come November 2020.

Democrats are ahead in essentially every national poll. Trump trails all five of the Democrats' leading White House contenders, and his numbers are even worse in some critical swing states like Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, the generic congressional ballot tilts even further to the left than it did on the eve of the 2018 midterms. If the 2020 elections were held today, voters--including many who have voted Republican often in the past--would likely hand Democrats the White House.

Why? Because 2020 is shaping up to be a referendum on the president's personality--which is bad news for conservatives. If the election is all about Trump the person--as embodied in his ongoing fight with the so-called "Squad" of four far-left Democratic Congresswomen--the right will not likely have a large enough coalition to win.

AND A RETURN TO ORIGINALISM:

If there is going to be a solution to the problem of mass gun violence in America, it is going to have to come from the federal government. The states cannot save us, no matter how nobly they try.

That seems to be the prime policy lesson of the mass shooting horror that took place Sunday at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California. A 19-year-old man besotted with white supremacy and armed with an assault rifle opened fire, killing three people -- including a 6-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl.

California has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation -- including an assault weapons ban -- but that didn't matter. Just weeks before Sunday's massacre, the shooter bought his semiautomatic rifle in neighboring Nevada, where the gun remains legal. A 2017 study revealed that, in the weeks after gun shows are held in Nevada, gun-related deaths and injuries in California jump 70 percent.

That isn't a problem California can solve on its own.

JOBS NON-NATIVES WON'T DO:

New research reports that, while 17.2 percent of Americans believe Trump's election "is a reflection of God's will," 27.7 percent believe he is "working for the devil." That same percentage replied affirmatively to the statement: "The devil is using Donald Trump for his purposes."

'NUFF SAID:

HE DOESN'T GET TO RUN AGAINST HILLARY AGAIN:

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

 "The press focused on the performance and the optics instead of on the substance," said Jerry Nadler, chairman of the Judiciary Committee. "Mueller said we were attacked by the Russians, the Trump campaign cooperated in many ways with that attack, they welcomed it, in many ways they worked with it."

Democrats already knew all this, of course. But just as Trump's recent racist outbursts forced renewed attention to his bigotry, Mueller made Congress squarely confront the president's lawlessness and disloyalty to the country he purports to lead. Once he testified, congressional Democrats could no longer punt on the impeachment question by saying that they were waiting to hear from him.

And even if Mueller's appearance didn't change many minds, it galvanized some voters. Dina Titus, a Nevada Democrat, told me that in recent days, "The constituent calls that I have been getting have just increased, both in number and intensity, saying: 'Enough is enough. It's time for him to go.'" On Monday, she came out for beginning an impeachment inquiry.

Perhaps even more significant than the growing number of calls for impeachment is a lawsuit filed by the Judiciary Committee on Friday. The filing, demanding access to grand jury material from the Mueller investigation, says that the committee "is conducting an investigation to determine whether to recommend articles of impeachment." In other words, the Judiciary Committee, which would oversee any potential impeachment, announced, with surprisingly little fanfare, that an impeachment inquiry is already underway.

NOTHING FIRES UP THE TRUMPBOTS LIKE RACE AND CORRUPTION:

That what-has-he-got-to-lose approach comes because Trump won just 8 percent of the African American vote in 2016 while Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton won 89 percent, according to exit polling. Latinos and Asian voters also overwhelmingly supported Clinton, while Trump won 57 percent of white voters' support and Clinton won 37 percent. It was the support of white voters, who were very animated by Trump's restrictionist immigration policies, that handed him the election.

One Republican political strategist and longtime Trump critic warned that these race-based tactics may not be as effective for Trump in this upcoming election cycle as they were in 2016, when Trump had the advantage of running against Clinton, whom conservatives have loved to hate for decades.

"Trump's reelection will be about him -- his personality and his language. He will be the focal point instead of the Democratic nominee," said John Weaver, a GOP political consultant who worked as the chief strategist for Gov. John Kasich's presidential campaign in 2016 and for Sen. John McCain's two presidential bids. "The more offensive he is, the harder it is to earn the support of suburban women, college-educated voters, young people and people of color. It is a mass issue. There are only so many people who fit into the profile of finding the president's language not offensive, or at least, excusable."

That could present challenges for the Trump campaign as it attempts to chart a narrow path to victory through states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, all of which Trump won in 2016 by less than 1 percentage point, or roughly 80,000 votes, while losing the overall popular vote.

HE HAD TO THINK ABOUT IT?:

When Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib accused Republican Rep. Mark Meadows of racism earlier this year, one of his "best friends," House Oversight Committee chairman and Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings immediately jumped to his defense.

When Cummings was attacked on similar grounds by President Donald Trump over the weekend, it took a bit longer for Meadows to publicly repay the favor. On Saturday and Sunday, Trump went after Cummings on Twitter, calling the veteran Democratic lawmaker a "racist" and his district a "disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess."

Trump's comments hung in the air for days, sparking yet another conversation about the President's race-focused rhetoric. Republicans largely stayed silent, including Meadows, whose warm relationship with Cummings prompted questions about his reticence to defend his friend.

When Meadows finally did issue a reply, it came two days later and second-hand, delivered live on air by CNN contributor and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum. The statement was a perfect distillation of the way Republicans have tip-toed around Trump's inflammatory language about race -- and avoided criticizing the President directly.

UAE FIRST!:

Two weeks before Trump was scheduled to deliver the energy policy speech, Thomas Barrack, a California investment tycoon with extensive contacts in the Middle East and who later helped oversee Trump's inauguration, provided a former business associate inside the United Arab Emirates with an advance copy of the candidate's planned remarks. The associate then told Barrack he shared them with UAE and Saudi government officials, after which Barrack arranged for language requested by the UAE officials to be added to the speech with the help of Trump's campaign manager at the time, Paul Manafort.

HONEST, FOR ONCE:

"If the Democrats are going to defend the Radical Left 'Squad' and King Elijah's Baltimore Fail, it will be a long road to 2020," Mr Trump wrote on Monday.

IT'S AN IMPEACHMENT REFERRAL:

The division between the two volumes is not for ease of understanding. Practically, it reflects the shift from the two retrospective tasks of the Special Counsel's charge--to investigate responsibility for the 2016 Russian election attack and any Trump campaign links to it--to a third, real-time task: to prosecute anyone who might obstruct the investigation as it progressed. As the main person criminally obstructing it turned out to be the President, this required its own volume.

Almost metaphysically, however, the two volumes divide across a change of state created by Trump's inauguration as President. With that institutional event, both Trump's person and his actions changed status, and so did the nature of the evidence collected. The "candidate," then "president-elect," became President of the United States, a being with alternative powers, privileges, and opportunities for criminality. His contacts with Russia became less legally culpable as they could pass for statecraft, and Mueller stopped documenting relevant evidence of rewards to the Kremlin and communications with Putin. Most neglectfully, Mueller did not subpoena or interview Trump, the knower at the center of the evidentiary threads, because he now sat in the office of the President. On the other side of the inaugural chasm, however, Trump's comments about the FBI investigation, and hints to its agents as well as its targets, became far more culpable, as he would now appear as the "boss" of all federal police action and thus a puissant obstacle to its independent duties--and, with his pardon power, the undoer of all threat of punishment to those likely to be convicted of federal crimes.

The most discussed finding of the Mueller report forms the legal crux of Volume II: that President Trump may have committed criminal acts of obstruction of justice in ten separate instances. But it also finds that it cannot say so legally, nor prosecute these crimes on its own. The Special Counsel's office considered itself bound by a Justice Department guideline that Presidents cannot be indicted for crimes, and articulates a prosecutorial-ethical norm that prosecutors must not publicly accuse of crime anyone who cannot immediately be indicted. Volume II strongly implies that Congress, instead, is the venue in which our government should pursue the President's crimes of obstruction, using the Special Counsel's hundreds of pages of evidence and documentation as a roadmap. It implies that federal prosecutors, too, may wish to charge these crimes of obstruction once Trump, the person, is no longer President.

The evidence and recommendations of Volume II have dominated subsequent discussion of the Mueller report. The implications are clear enough to rivet all opponents of Trump's presidency.  Robert Mueller, a Republican lawman, with the most conservative temperament and following the most conservative legal reasoning, concludes that President Trump cannot be proven innocent of crimes of obstruction of justice. Trump misused the powers of the Presidency to protect his own family, his confederates, and himself. He tampered with witnesses and attempted to subvert the course of justice through executive power--crimes of obstruction that exceed those for which Nixon was impeached and resigned and Clinton was impeached and remained. If you care at all about obstruction of justice and the powers of the law and police, these crimes are extreme, and certainly impeachable.

However, most of us don't care much about hindrances of the powers of law and police except when they're on the trail of larger crimes against society. Al Capone did not singularly outrage society by avoiding taxes. The State is right to pursue collateral crimes when the real crimes, whether through skill, accident, or lack of legislative anticipation, are unpunishable or not yet on the books. If Trump and his campaign did not actually cheat in the election; if they were not disloyal; if they did not welcome, encourage, and benefit from a foreign attack on the United States; if they won fairly, operated independently, and were not open to blackmail by the Kremlin, and did not seem to pay off with benefits to Russian foreign policy--then Trump's obstruction of government investigations could seem like what Attorney General Barr has implied it to be: a partly understandable, personal peculiarity of a generally paranoid person.

That is why Volume I of the Mueller report matters more than Volume II. The remarkable result of Volume I is to confirm that two and a half years of investigative reporting was correct: the Kremlin contacts with the Trump campaign were real and substantive, and they fit in at key junctures with the Russian attack on the election. It looks as if the Russian attack and the Trump campaign coordinated. They betrayed the country and its electorate, Republicans and Democrats. And the actual situation, as far as the Mueller investigation was able to show, was much clearer and easier to follow than the press had been able to prove.

In briefest summary: Mueller discovered that candidate Trump was the one who reached out initially, in 2015 and 2016, to particular, named officials in the Kremlin to ask for real estate favors and benefits. They then reached out in return in 2016, once Trump had become the Republican candidate, to offer assistance in winning the election. The head of Trump's presidential campaign began sending back their internal polling and targeting information to Kremlin intermediaries, and in apparent response to Trump's public call to Russia to "find" Hillary Clinton's "secret" emails, Kremlin-backed hackers stole emails from Clinton's campaign. Through WikiLeaks, Russia released the stolen emails in ways timed to harm Clinton's campaign and aid Trump's--timing of which candidate Trump may have had knowledge. Upon election, both the Trump side and the Kremlin sought to build out channels of secret communication, through which the Trump staff promised material benefits once Trump was in office. These are documented by the Mueller report as facts.

DONALD LITE:

Although Ratcliffe's website says he "put terrorists in prison," NBC News found no evidence he ever prosecuted a terrorism case.

— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) July 29, 2019

LUNKER:

Career WAR of the average HoF CF: 71.1

Career WAR of Mike Trout thru age-27: 70.9https://t.co/535VYHJbVE

— Baseball Reference (@baseball_ref) July 29, 2019

WHAT IS IT ABOUT EYE DOCTORS IN POLITICS?:

How did a small-town eye doctor mastermind an anti-immigration movement premised on racism? Listen to What Next, Slate's daily news podcast. 🎧 This week's guest is immigration lawyer, @HMAesq https://t.co/SbvUZcPMIs

— Slate Podcasts 🎧 (@SlatePodcasts) July 29, 2019

NEVADA DOES NOT HAVE A WELL REGULATED MILITIA EITHER:

California has some of the most stringent gun laws in the country, including a ban on the type of rifle that a shooter used to kill three and wound 15 at the garlic food festival in Gilroy on Sunday.

But the gunman had legally purchased the "assault-type rifle", in the style of an AK-47, from the neighboring state Nevada on 9 July before carrying it illegally over state lines into California, highlighting what some gun control advocates say is a loophole in the way laws operate, state by state. [...]

"The reach of the California law ends at our border," California's attorney general, Xavier Becerra, told the San Francisco Chronicle, "and so we cannot control what other states do, and that's what makes it so tough. We may have progressive gun laws, but if other states don't match us, we have to rely on the ability to catch" the person. [,,,]

"The gun used by the Gilroy shooter was an AK-47 type assault rifle. This weapon is illegal to buy or possess in California, which appears to be why the shooter crossed into Nevada to buy the gun," said Senator Dianne Feinstein in a statement. "The assault weapons ban legislation I introduced earlier this year would have prevented that sale from happening. It's time for Congress to debate this bill and vote on it."

DONALD'S WAHHABI LOBBY:

Two of President Trump's closest advisers pushed hard for a firm trying to circumvent the safeguards meant to keep Saudi Arabia from building a nuclear weapon. 

That's one of the many conclusions of a year-long investigation by the House Oversight Committee, which found that Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and former inaugural committee chair Tom Barrack worked to enrich themselves and their colleagues in the nuclear energy sector. A centerpiece of the effort: helping American companies land contracts in Saudi Arabia--at least in one case, without the guardrails needed to keep the Saudis from making weapons-grade nuclear fuel.

Flynn and Barrack used their relationships with the White House--as well as with officials from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Russia--to advance their personal interests and the interests of executives at the nuclear firm IP3. The CEO of the firm, Admiral Mike Hewitt, began working with Flynn and Barrack in the fall of 2016 in an attempt to influence the incoming Trump administration's Saudi Arabia policy, according to the House Oversight report. The effort drew in a host of other officials in the Trump administration, including Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

"The Trump Administration has virtually obliterated the lines normally separating government policymaking from corporate and foreign interests," the report states. "Documents show the Administration's willingness to let private parties with close ties to the President wield outsized influence over U.S. policy towards Saudi Arabia."

IF YOU GIVE A TRUMPBOT AN ASSAULT WEAPON... (PROFANITY ALERT):

The post's caption advised reading a white supremacist, misogynist, and anti-Christianity book advocating for a kind of social Darwinism in which the values of strength and power supplant moral codes to form ideas of right and wrong. "Why overcrowd towns and pave more open space to make room for hordes of mestizos and Silicon Valley white t[***]s?" he wrote. 

WHAT ABOUT THE THIRD AMIGO, DONALD?

Seeking to secure a visit to Israel by Russian President Vladimir Putin ahead of the September 17 election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is said to be pressuring the Jerusalem municipality and other government bodies to expedite the inauguration of a memorial in the capital to those who perished in the Nazi siege of Leningrad during World War II.

THE HERO TRUMPBOTS DESERVE:

Donald Trump has always had a bit of Walter Mitty in him. But on Monday morning, in a speech to first responders and others impacted by the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, he took his fantastical memory of himself to new and not-at-all-appropriate heights.

"I was down there also, but I'm not considering myself a first responder," Trump said. "But I was down there. I spent a lot of time down there with you." [...]

So, what was Trump actually doing on September 11, 2001?

One thing he was doing was getting on the phone with WWOR's Alan Marcus to talk about the attacks and their aftermath. It was in that interview that Trump said this about a property -- 40 Wall Street -- that he owned:

"40 Wall Street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and it was actually, before the World Trade Center, was the tallest--and then, when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second-tallest. And now it's the tallest."

Yeah. He really said that.

THAT'S WHAT THE rIGHT MEANS BY VERMIN:

In 2014, Maryland's 7th district, where Trump said "no human would want to live," housed some 32,000 Jews, 4.46% of the population in the district. According to data in the Jewish Federations of North America's Berman Jewish Data Bank, this district would rank in the top 65 of America's 435 congressional districts with the largest Jewish population. [...]

For the last two decades, Cummings has partnered with the Baltimore Jewish Council in backing the Elijah Cummings Youth Program in Israel (ECYP), a two-year leadership fellowship that aspires to build leadership and bridges between the African-American and Jewish communities.

Some 200 students have participated in the program, with its centerpiece being a month spent in Israel. The students live at the Yemin Orde Youth Village south of Haifa and are paired, as its promotional literature says, "with displaced teens from over 24 countries, including Ethiopia, Israel, South America, Europe and the former states of the Soviet Union."

Among its most well-known alumni is CNN's New Day Weekend co-host Victor Blackwell, who delivered an emotional retort to Trump on Saturday.

"The president says about Congressman Cummings' district that no human would want to live there," he said. "You know who did, Mr. President? I did - from the day I was brought home from the hospital, to the day I left for college. And a lot of people I care about still do."

Appearing to fight back tears, Blackwell continued: "There are challenges, no doubt. But people are proud of their community. I don't want to sound self-righteous, but people get up and go to work there, they care for their families there, they love their children who pledge allegiance to the flag just like people who live in districts of congressmen who support you, sir. They are Americans, too."

Blackwell, who was in the ECYP's first class and was the MC of a fund-raiser for the program two years ago, said that this program "made me a better man, made me a better journalist, and it gave me some of the most formative experiences and longest friendships of my life."

According to the ECYP web page, "The Israeli and American students tour historic sites in Israel, such as Jerusalem, the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. While in Israel, these young ambassadors attend workshops on diversity, Israeli culture, group dynamics and leadership. The Israel experience allows ECYP students the opportunity to gain independence, develop a respect and appreciation for other cultures, and reflect on their self-worth and character."

Howard Libit, executive-director of the Baltimore Jewish Council, said that the program has sent a dozen students to Israel each summer for the last two decades to "promote better African American-Jewish relations."

After returning from 3½ weeks in Israel, including a Shabbat spent in Ashkelon - Baltimore's twin city - the students return and speak in churches, schools and organizations in the community about their experience in Israel, he said. Cummings, Libit said, is fully involved in the program, participates in all the candidate interviews, regularly attends events and board meetings, and donates speaking honorariums to the project.

ALL THE BATTLEGROUNDS ARE RED:

The Republican pathway for recapturing House control in next year's election charges straight through the districts of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents, especially freshmen. Judging from early but formidable cash advantages those lawmakers have amassed, ousting them won't be easy.

Each of the 62 freshmen House Democrats has raised more money than their top opponent. The same is true for all 31 Democrats from districts President Donald Trump had won in 2016 and for all 39 Democrats who snatched Republican-held seats last November.

In nearly all cases it's not even close. While there's overlap among the categories, most of these Democrats' war chests are multiples of what their leading challengers have garnered. 

JUST SO WE'RE CLEAR HERE...:

 In January, Kirk Cox, speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, cited biblical scripture when he came out against a proposed bill that would lift late-term abortion restrictions. 

"You knit me together in my mother's womb," he said, quoting Psalm 139. "You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born." 

But for many leaders in the Jewish faith, such interpretations are problematic and even insulting. [...]

The strongest argument in the Hebrew Bible for permitting abortion comes from Exodus, Chapter 21, Verse 22-23: "If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take a life for a life." 

In this passage, "gives birth prematurely" could mean the woman miscarries, and the fetus dies. Because there's no expectation that the person who caused the miscarriage is liable for murder, Jewish scholars argue this proves a fetus is not considered a separate person or soul. 

The Little Spirits Garden is a landscaped garden dedicated to the memory of children lost during pregnancy. It was completed in 2012, and sits within the grounds of the Royal Oak Burial Park, a cemetery in Victoria, British Columbia.

Within it are a series of long, concrete plinths, with small grey houses resting on them - these are "spirit houses", and each one commemorates a lost child. There are about 400 houses in the garden, with space for up to 3,000.

Doctors put bereaved parents, like Debbie, in touch with the team that runs the garden, if they think it will benefit them. The service is free and is supported by donations.

If a child is cremated, ashes can be scattered in a special section of the garden, or placed in an ossuary - a vault which sits underneath a pavilion.

Whether or not the child is cremated, parents are given a spirit house.

These are made of refined concrete. They also have a small womb symbol inscribed inside, a motif repeated throughout the design of the garden.

The concrete is designed with indentations, so that over time moss will grow over it.

Families can customise their houses with their own designs, or leave them bare, with just a named inscription.

"It's really difficult when you have a miscarriage and you don't have a body, because there isn't a physical object," says Debbie.

"The Little Spirits Garden provides that object for you, which is the house."

As she only found out about the garden after her second miscarriage, she made sure she got a house to mark the first too - as well as the subsequent seven.

"I have a lot of real estate in this garden," she says.

"The feeling I got from it was a sense of validation - this sense that someone can see what I feel. You can look at this and call it your daughter's spirit house. It felt so good to be able to have a home for her."

She visits her nine houses regularly.

"I go on their birthdays - their due dates - and the days that they passed. I go there for Mother's Day, Father's Day, Easter, Valentine's Day. My husband and I need to connect with the children we would have otherwise celebrated with," says Debbie.

"To be given a spirit house is the most generous, loving, kind thing that one human being can do for another. Because the sad thing about miscarriages or stillbirths is that it's such a taboo to discuss it. This garden is a kind of place where you are free to feel what you need to feel and grieve the way you want to grieve."

The garden was designed by Canadian landscape architects Bill Pechet and Joseph Daly. The inspiration came from Bill Pechet's time in Japan, where he lived for two years. While there he was struck by a Buddhist tradition known as Jizo - the practice of creating a small, votive statue to mark the death of a child.

These are usually placed in temples, which have cemeteries attached to them. During festivals they are adorned with clothing, typically little bonnets woven by parents, and they are all brought out together to form a pageant.

"I found this inspiring, so tender and beautiful to see these creations," says Bill. "I was struck by the sense of magnitude when these were displayed together on special occasions, showing a collective loss in society."

He wondered if something similar could work in Canada.

"I realised that the Spirit Garden would have to be an ecumenical space, because we are a pluralistic society in Canada. I would need a symbol that was inclusive, and the house is a universal symbol of protection, and non-denominational."

His team held a series of workshops to test what people thought of the idea, inviting parents who had lost children, counsellors and religious leaders.

There was some resistance, Bill remembers - especially from those of the Christian faith, who were taken aback by the Japanese origin of the idea - but he persisted.

"My inner monologue at the time told me our entire country is based on immigration and adopting ideas from the rest of the world," says Bill.

Eventually everyone came round to the idea, and the garden became a reality.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

Don't let anybody fool you: We are engaged in an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump's "high crimes and misdemeanors," to quote the Constitution. The inquiry began on Friday, July 26. No fireworks, no fanfare -- omitted for fear of frightening the natives. But the message was loud and clear in the House Judiciary Committee's court petition for access to redacted material in the Mueller report, and its intention to compel testimony from relevant witnesses.

Articles of impeachment have been formally referred to the Judiciary Committee for its consideration, House counsel Douglas Letter said in the Friday filing to U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. That consideration, the committee has now informed the court, is underway, as is consideration of whether to recommend its own articles of impeachment.

Savvy House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to spare the Democrats in red and purple congressional districts from facing electoral revolt, gave Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler the go-ahead without first holding a floor vote on whether to conduct hearings into the president's impeachment. 

IT'S A RICO CASE:

As Donald J. Trump was preparing to deliver an address on energy policy in May 2016, Paul Manafort, his campaign chairman, had a question about the speech's contents for Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a top campaign fund-raiser and close friend of Mr. Trump.

"Are you running this by our friends?" Mr. Manafort asked in a previously undisclosed email to Mr. Barrack, whose real estate and investment firm does extensive business in the Middle East.

Mr. Barrack was, in fact, coordinating the language in a draft of the speech with Persian Gulf contacts including Rashid al-Malik, an Emirati businessman who is close to the rulers of the United Arab Emirates.

The exchanges about Mr. Trump's energy speech are among a series of interactions that have come under scrutiny by federal prosecutors looking at foreign influence over his campaign, his transition and the early stages of his administration, according to documents and interviews with people familiar with the case.

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Investigators have looked in particular at whether Mr. Barrack or others violated the law requiring people who try to influence American policy or opinion at the direction of foreign governments or entities to disclose their activities to the Justice Department, people familiar with the case said.

The inquiry had proceeded far enough last month that Mr. Barrack, who played an influential role in the campaign and acts as an outside adviser to the White House, was interviewed, at his request, by prosecutors in the public integrity unit of the United States attorney's office in Brooklyn.

A CHICKEN IN A FOX COOP:

"Trump is getting a distorted view of the country from what he sees on a right-wing talk show. This content then fuels his racist tendencies and his never-ending campaign continues."@brianstelter breaks down how the President's attack on Baltimore came after a Fox News segment. pic.twitter.com/4mFcK9pCzC

— Reliable Sources (@ReliableSources) July 28, 2019

HOMEGROWN:

Pretty remarkable for modern baseball. https://t.co/NtoRNslSFl

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) July 28, 2019

MICK COULD ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT NOW:

Mulvaney's district has a higher poverty rate than Cummings' district! https://t.co/Uj8HjUSaAX

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) July 28, 2019

FAMILY TRADITION:

The Trump family's gold-rush story began when Fred, as he was known, left Germany at the age of 16 with little more than a suitcase. He headed to New York to work as a barber before venturing west in search of riches. Following stints in Seattle and now-defunct Monte Cristo, the gold fever carried him to Bennett, where he and partner Ernest Levin built the Arctic Restaurant, which touted itself as the best-equipped in town.

It was open around the clock with "private boxes for ladies and parties," according to an advertisement in the Dec. 9, 1899 edition of the Bennett Sun newspaper. The boxes typically included a bed and scale for weighing gold dust used to pay for "services," according to a three-generational biography by Gwenda Blair, who traced the origins of the Trump family's wealth. Of course, in the rough-and-tumble frontier towns of that era, the Arctic's business model built on food, booze and sex was common.

The Arctic sat a stone's throw from Bennett Lake in the heart of the township, amid a row of similar establishments and a sea of white canvas tents set up by prospectors. It was constructed of milled lumber and stocked fresh oysters, extravagant luxuries in a place where supplies were brought over arduous overland routes.

"I would advise respectable women travelling alone, or with an escort, to be careful in their selection of hotels at Bennett," according to a letter penned by "The Pirate" in the Yukon Sun on April 17, 1900. For single men, the Arctic offered excellent accommodations but women should avoid it "as they are liable to hear that which would be repugnant to their feelings and uttered, too, by the depraved of their own sex."

Trump quickly saw where the real profits lay amid the gold-rush frenzy. An estimated 100,000 prospectors set out for the Klondike, of which only a third actually made it, and a mere 4 percent ever struck gold. Given those odds, Trump's willingness to lay down his pick was "a shrewd move," according to Blair. "He was mining the miners."

Bennett was a key hub for prospectors, who trudged from Alaska across frozen mountains and floated rickety rafts down the treacherous rapids of the Yukon River to Dawson City in search of elusive gold. The town lost its allure with the construction of a railway link from Skagway, Alaska to Whitehorse, allowing miners to bypass Bennett.

In response, Trump dismantled the restaurant and its precious lumber and rebuilt it in Whitehorse. A photo in Blair's book shows a mustachioed Fred Trump in a white apron. He's standing at the bar near a wall of drapes behind which women, known as "sporting ladies," entertained miners in privacy.

HE ONLY SEEMS RACIST BECAUSE HE IS:

"I'm not reading between the lines. I'm reading the lines." https://t.co/K0ZXWxA9gp

— David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) July 28, 2019

W CERTAINLY HAD THE GREATEST CABINET SINCE WASHINGTON, DONALD THE WORST:

Before becoming DNI, Jim Clapper had worked in U.S. intelligence for nearly fifty years and personally headed two of the nation's 17 intel agencies. By comparison, John Ratcliffe was the mayor of Heath, Texas, pop., 8000. https://t.co/tHKA7B3uCp

— Garrett M. Graff (@vermontgmg) July 28, 2019

Reminder that Jared Kushner is a Baltimore slumlord https://t.co/jiGjVpXuej

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) July 28, 2019

DEFILING TRAINS IS UNFORGIVABLE:

Beyond parody. https://t.co/hRYuZDaZ95

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) July 28, 2019

LAUGHINGSTOCK:

Change in confidence in US president from Obama in 2016 to Trump in 2018 (Pew)

Germany: -76%
Sweden: -76%
France: -75%
Canada: -58%
Australia: -52%
UK: -51%
Japan: -48%
Russia: +8% https://t.co/O37hF3J4Um

— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) July 28, 2019

SO MUCH WINNING:

 Four major automakers have reached a deal with California air regulators to gradually increase fuel efficiency standards, rejecting Trump administration efforts to relax tailpipe pollution regulations.

The agreement between the California Air Resources Board and the automakers -- Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW -- covers about 30% of new cars and SUVs sold in the United States. It presents a direct challenge to the Trump administration's plans, expected to be formally announced later this summer, to roll back tougher tailpipe pollution standards put in place under President Obama.

JOBS YELLOW VESTS WON'T DO:

Despite an unemployment rate of over 8 percent -- the highest in Europe after Italy, Spain and Greece -- over a quarter of a million jobs are unfilled. Businesses can't find people to work as plumbers, engineers, waiters, cooks. The list goes on.

PROBABLY NOT GETTING THEIR 2020 ENDORSEMENT, EH?:

  

In case anyone missed it, the president of the United States had some choice words to describe Maryland's 7th congressional district on Saturday morning. Here are the key phrases: "no human being would want to live there," it is a "very dangerous & filthy place," "Worst in the USA" and, our personal favorite: It is a "rat and rodent infested mess." He wasn't really speaking of the 7th as a whole. He failed to mention Ellicott City, for example, or Baldwin or Monkton or Prettyboy, all of which are contained in the sprawling yet oddly-shaped district that runs from western Howard County to southern Harford County. No, Donald Trump's wrath was directed at Baltimore and specifically at Rep. Elijah Cummings, the 68-year-old son of a former South Carolina sharecropper who has represented the district in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1996.

It's not hard to see what's going on here. The congressman has been a thorn in this president's side, and Mr. Trump sees attacking African American members of Congress as good politics, as it both warms the cockles of the white supremacists who love him and causes so many of the thoughtful people who don't to scream. President Trump bad-mouthed Baltimore in order to make a point that the border camps are "clean, efficient & well run," which, of course, they are not -- unless you are fine with all the overcrowding, squalor, cages and deprivation to be found in what the Department of Homeland Security's own inspector-general recently called "a ticking time bomb."

In pointing to the 7th, the president wasn't hoping his supporters would recognize landmarks like Johns Hopkins Hospital, perhaps the nation's leading medical center. He wasn't conjuring images of the U.S. Social Security Administration, where they write the checks that so many retired and disabled Americans depend upon. It wasn't about the beauty of the Inner Harbor or the proud history of Fort McHenry. And it surely wasn't about the economic standing of a district where the median income is actually above the national average. No, he was returning to an old standby of attacking an African American lawmaker from a majority black district on the most emotional and bigoted of arguments. 

THE WOKE rIGHT:

One would have thought that conservatives would recoil in horror that Trump is turning his back on practically everything they have spent the last half a century fighting for and rededicate themselves to looking for ways to restore the "conservative value of limited government." But one would be wrong. In a conservative version of wokeness, they are positively giddy about the possibilities for deploying state power that Trump has opened for them.

At a recent gathering of conservative luminaries in Washington, D.C., even as the University of Pennsylvania's Amy Wax lamented the failure of non-Western immigrants who litter and talk too loudly to culturally assimilate into America, Yarom Hazony, an Israeli citizen and author of The Virtue of Nationalism, who is fast becoming the intellectual godfather of the neo-right, intoned that it was time for conservatives to "declare independence...from what they call classical liberalism." Given that Thomas Jefferson essentially relied on classical liberalism when he asserted in the Declaration of Independence that the government's job was to protect the God-given and inalienable rights of individuals but otherwise leave them alone to pursue their life, liberty, and happiness as they saw fit, Hazony's wording was explicitly calculated to invite conservatives to turn their back on America's founding. But did the audience break into chants of "send him back"? No. It applauded in approval.

Not to be outdone, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a former libertarian who has taken to delivering fire-and-brimstone sermons against the evils of market capitalism that would put the jeremiads of the loudest mullahs against the ills of capitalistic usury to shame, declared to a rousing ovation that the "main threat to your ability to live your life as you choose, does not come from the government, but the private sector." If an immigrant had said anything like that, Schlafly would have wasted little time branding them unfit for America.

It gets worse.

The emerging consensus among smart-set conservatives is that if there is anything wrong with Trump's protectionism, it's that it is not radical enough. Trump, apparently, is still too concerned about global supply chains and productivity. What the country needs, Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance argues, is an ambitious industrial policy dedicated to rebuilding the lost manufacturing base of the heartland, combined with massive infusions of government cash to reverse "family decline, childhood trauma, opioid abuse, community decline." Conservatives, Vance believes, need to "be willing to use politics and political power to accomplish those goods."

It is not just the economic realm that conservatives want to remake by deploying "political power," but the social as well.

New York Post editor Sohrab Ahmari, a recently converted Catholic, electrified some conservative quarters when he suggested in First Things that it was time for Christian conservatives not just to dispense with politeness and decency when dealing with liberal enemies that have turned "elite institutes" into "libertine and pagan" strongholds, but also the bogus notion of state neutrality in matters of religion. Such notions, he suggested, were preventing them from using the government to "defeat [the liberal] enemy" and promote their faith in a bid to "[enjoy] the spoils in the form of a public-square reordered." In plain English, Ahmari is spurring conservatives to dispense with this foolishness about separating church and state--so that they can use the state to impose their religion.

THE TERROR OF THE TRUMPBOTS:

State Sen. Sylvia Allen (R), speaking at AZ's GOP HQ, warns of the 'browning of America.'

'The median age of a white woman is 43. The median age of a Hispanic woman is 27. We are not reproducing ourselves, the birthrates... It's because of immigration.'pic.twitter.com/tUjbMAaexl

— Nico Pitney (@nicopitney) July 27, 2019

DUDE, HE ONLY MEANT THE BLACKS:

Not that it really matters but Cummings' district has above-average college education rates and home prices, along with a pretty good mix of urban and suburban areas (even some rural), and well-off, working-class and middle-class areas. https://t.co/33mH7JreHw https://t.co/8VWBWVkRRD

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) July 27, 2019

DONALD FAILS THE TEST:

NOTE THAT THE BOTS ALL AGREE WITH HIM:

It's interesting that after all the hot takes, Trump and his team are very clear that they believe racism (rather than anything to do with the economy) is the core of his electoral appeal. https://t.co/fcAzeusVmu

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) July 27, 2019

CORRUPTION, NOT TREASON:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell squashed two bills intended to ensure voting security on Thursday, just one day after former special counsel Robert Mueller warned that Russians were attempting to sabotage the 2020 presidential elections "as we sit here." [...]

The plans would likely burden the two largest electronic voting machine vendors in the United States, Election Systems & Software and Dominion Voting Systems, with new regulations and financial burdens. Together, the companies make up about 80 percent of all voting machines used in the country and both have far-reaching lobbying arms in Washington D.C. Many of those lobbyists have contributed to the McConnell campaign, reported Sludge last month, an investigative outlet that focuses on money in politics.

Sludge found that Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck lobbyist David Cohen, who has worked on behalf of Dominion Voting Systems this year, donated $2,000 to McConnell during this time. Brian Wild, who works with Cohen and has also lobbied Dominion, gave McConnell $1,000.

Around the same time, on February 19 and March 4 Emily Kirlin and Jen Olson, who have lobbied on behalf of Election Systems & Software over the last year donated $1,000 to McConnell each.

RACISM IS ALL HE HAS TO OFFER:

Trump has decided the answer to "How I spent my summer vacation" will be sending racist tweets, primarily because that was the thing that he felt like doing at those moments, contradicting the pleas of most of his fellow Republicans.

Yet these impulsive thumb-rants amount to some of the most important and revealing communications of Trump's presidency. For one thing, they convey the beliefs that have undergirded his career. As Victor Blackwell points out, Trump reserves terms like "infest" and "infestation" -- which most people use only to describe diseases or vermin -- exclusively for non-whites. As much hate as he might generate for a target like, say, the mainstream media or transnational institutions, he would never describe the New York Times as an infestation.

Trump's professional career began in his father's and his systematically discriminatory housing empire. Excluding African-Americans was the basis of the Trump business model. He did not merely engage in periodic acts of discrimination, but insistently violated federal law and went to war with the Department of Justice rather than amend his ways. Trump's association of African-Americans with crime and filth, and the assumption they must be cordoned off from other Americans, is a conviction so deep it cannot be uprooted.

Trump has brought these patterns of thought with him to the presidency. 

BIG ONES:

While Jared Kushner was visiting Iraq with a bulletproof vest over his blazer and failing to find $7 billion to finance his phallic eighty-story glass tower on Fifth Avenue, tenants in two of his Lower Manhattan buildings were dealing with a more prosaic problem.

Rats. Big ones.

"One of the neighbors opened the door to take out the garbage and a rat jumped on her leg," says a rent-stabilized tenant at 156 Sullivan Street in the South Village who doesn't want to give his name because he's "nervous that the landlord might do something."

"I can see there's rats running around all over the place," he told the Voice, referring to the enclosed alley next to the building where the garbage cans are kept. "A lot of times, you can see the bags move because the rats are in there eating."

Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law, is arguably the president's top adviser. With no previous experience in government, he now holds roles stretching from Middle East diplomacy to overseeing a commission on opioid addiction, from discussing who knows what with Russian oligarchs to promoting the administration's Wall Street wing over the white-nationalist visions of Stephen Bannon. The son of a politically connected New Jersey developer, he has bought his way to being a leading New York City residential landlord over the last five years: He's spent more than $400 million amassing more than fifty buildings, most of them in the East Village. Kushner claims to have divested some of his real estate holdings since joining the Trump administration but has been very vague about how or which ones. A spokesperson for Kushner's Westminster Management declined to comment on the ownership and divestment issues.

Kushner acquired the 156 Sullivan Street building in 2012. There were problems with rodents before then, the tenant says, but "the rats have gotten a lot worse since they bought the building."

I am proud our campaign headquarters is in Rep. Elijah Cummings' district. Baltimore has become home to my team and it's disgraceful the president has chosen to start his morning disparaging this great American city.

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) July 27, 2019

DUDE, YOU WERE AMERICAN ALL ALONG:

Reminded of this powerful moment with Elijah Cummings from last week.

"What does that mean when a child is sitting in their own feces, can't take a shower? Come on, man. What's that about? None of us would have our children in that position. They are human beings." pic.twitter.com/Loo2F1riHA

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 27, 2019

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

Mueller's testimony before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees was a watershed moment. At this point, it is up to Congress to act on the evidence of multiple counts of obstruction of justice committed by the president, and to continue our investigation into whether he has committed other high crimes and misdemeanors. [...]

While many people believe that beginning an impeachment investigation can begin only with a vote of the full House of Representatives, this is not true. Article I authorizes the House Judiciary Committee to begin this process.

As members of the House Judiciary Committee, we understand the gravity of this moment that we find ourselves in. We wake up every morning with the understanding of the oath that binds us as members of Congress, and the trust that our constituents placed in us to uphold that oath. We will move forward with the impeachment process. Our investigation will seriously examine all the evidence as we consider whether to bring articles of impeachment or other remedies under our Article I powers.

Our Constitution requires it. Our democracy depends on it.

IT'S A RICO CASE:

Trump, his company and three of his children must face a class-action lawsuit alleging multilevel marketing fraud https://t.co/qYxoYclXGv

— Bloomberg Politics (@bpolitics) July 27, 2019

FUNDING WAHHABISM:

In the summer of 2018, congressman-turned-lobbyist Jim Moran was trying to recruit his former colleagues to put pressure on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Moran was doing so on behalf of one of his clients, the government of Qatar. And he had a pot of money, left over from years of donations to his reelection campaigns, that he could steer to his lobbying targets.

Throughout June and July, Moran, a "senior legislative advisor" at the firm McDermott Will & Emery, reached out to at least a dozen House and Senate members of both parties as part of the effort. He provided them with suggested text for the letter, which he hoped the legislators would send to the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. urging him to ease travel restrictions between Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

One of the congressmen Moran pitched was Rep. Charlie Crist (D-FL). On June 15, 2018, Moran's assistant emailed Crist's chief of staff with a draft letter they hoped the congressman would send under his name. Moran's staff even followed up with suggested edits.

Crist obliged. On June 20, he sent a letter to the Saudi ambassador that lifted huge portions verbatim from Moran's suggested language. 

A month later, Moran wrote a $1,000 check to Crist's reelection campaign. But the money didn't come from Moran personally. Instead, the former congressman used his campaign committee, which remains active to this day, more than four years after he left the House. It was the first time Moran, either personally or through his campaign committee, had contributed to Crist. Neither Moran nor Crist responded to requests for comment. 

Moran is one of at least 17 former members of Congress who are registered as U.S. agents of foreign governments and have also kept their campaign committees active since retirement--or converted them, along with their cash reserves, into other types of committees that can disburse funds to political allies. And according to a joint investigation by The Daily Beast, the Campaign Legal Center, and the Center for Responsive Politics, at least nine of those former members have used those committees to donate to the same legislators they've reported lobbying on behalf of their foreign government clients.

WHO JUST HAPPENS TO BE BLACK...:

Trump early Saturday lashed out at Elijah Cummings, calling the Democratic lawmaker a "brutal bully" on the border issue and criticizing his Baltimore district as "disgusting"https://t.co/0Bk4iAMGda

— POLITICO (@politico) July 27, 2019

"Donald Trump has tweeted more than 43,000 times. He's insulted thousands of people... but when he tweets about infestation, it's about black and brown people." pic.twitter.com/PPVvL9VlUU

— Josh Campbell (@joshscampbell) July 27, 2019

IT'S ALL ABOUT HELPING THE SALAFI...:

The president's justifications for his vetoes were not the least bit persuasive, and it is worth digging into the president's veto messages to understand how disgraceful and indefensible his continued willingness to arm these governments is.

The president states in his veto message for S.J.Res. 36 (echoed in his other veto messages):

First and foremost, it is our solemn duty to protect the safety of the more than 80,000 United States citizens who reside in Saudi Arabia and who are imperiled by Houthi attacks from Yemen.

This is one of the Trump administration's preferred talking points for justifying arming war criminals. The conceit here is that they are somehow "protecting" Americans who choose to live in Saudi Arabia by providing the Saudis and the UAE with the means to slaughter Yemeni civilians. This excuse is not even slightly credible. None of the weapons that the U.S. sells to the Saudis and the UAE actually protects anyone. The weapons that the U.S. sells to these governments are used to imperil and kill people in Yemen that have never done anything to the U.S. It is not our government's responsibility to enable war crimes by a government simply because some of our citizens may happen to reside in the country in question, and the Americans living in the kingdom would not be at any risk if it were not for the Saudi coalition's indiscriminate bombing campaign and long list of atrocities against the people of Yemen. By continuing to funnel weapons to the Saudis and Emiratis, Trump exposes American citizens in the region to greater danger.

Trump's embarrassing excuses for arming war criminals continue:

Third, Saudi Arabia is a bulwark against the malign activities of Iran and its proxies in the region, and the licenses the joint resolution would prohibit enhance Saudi Arabia's ability to deter and defend against these threats.

The great Saudi "bulwark" launched a stupid war of choice in Yemen and they are now paying the price for their stupidity. The war on Yemen is a boon to Iran by bogging Saudi Arabia and the UAE in an unwinnable war, and the more weapons that the U.S. sends to these governments the longer they can keep waging that war. Sending more weapons to the Saudis and Emiratis does not deter or defend against anything. It simply encourages more bloodshed and recklessness from horrible client governments.

The president is not done misleading the public:

Finally, by restricting the ability of our partners to produce and purchase precision-guided munitions, S.J. Res. 36 would likely prolong the conflict in Yemen and deepen the suffering it causes.

The quickest way to bring the war on Yemen to an end is to deprive the Saudi coalition of the means to continue their campaign. It has been the Saudi coalition's intervention that prolonged and intensified the war, and more than four years later it is the Saudi coalition's involvement that prevents the war from ending.

I'M NOT RACIST, MY LEADER JUST TREATS ME LIKE I AM...:

Despite four years of numbing vileness, Donald Trump's determination to degrade us retains its power to shock.

Plumbing America's psychic cesspool for bigoted votes and feral adulation, Trump has targeted four controversial Democratic congresswomen -- the ardently progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar -- as magnets for his race-based xenophobia. [...]

 

Go back where exactly, one wonders. Three were born in America to families of Puerto Rican, African-American, and Palestinian descent; Omar is a naturalized American citizen from Somalia. Their only shared demographic is that they are women of color. By roiling the fever swamp of misogyny and race, Trump clearly risks inciting violence -- exposing, yet again, a soul barren of empathy or conscience.

Americans writ large are better. In a poll following his initial tweet, 68 percent found it offensive; 59 percent "un-American." Trump's bigoted railings might seem self-destructive. Yet Trump not only claimed to be "enjoying" the ensuing disturbance but boasted that he was "winning it by a lot." 

Seemingly, he was redefining victory with his customary solipsism: Most voters opposed his attacks but his approval rating rose among Republicans.

And so however personally congenial they may be, Trump sees his racial provocations as strategic. Notes the Atlantic: "[I]nstead of campaigning on his administration's signature achievements -- cutting regulation, appointing conservative judges, presiding over steady economic growth -- [Trump] seems intent on reprising his 2016 run, a campaign largely built on fear, resentment and division."  [...]

Understand how the Electoral College works at present, and you grasp why Donald Trump is laser-focused on converting an ardent minority of voters into a majority of electors: It worked the last time, and may well again. As Nate Cohn suggests, Trump's electoral college advantage may be even greater than was in 2016, when Trump lost the popular vote by almost 3 million Americans, yet won the Electoral College 304-227. 

Cohn writes:

That persistent edge leaves him closer to reelection than one would think based on national polls, and it might blunt any electoral cost of actions like his recent tweets attacking four minority congresswomen.

For now, the mostly white working-class Rust Belt states, decisive in the 2016 election, remain at the center of the electoral map... The Democrats have few obviously promising alternative paths to win without these battleground states... 

A strategy rooted in racial polarization could at once once energize parts of the president's base and rebuild support among wavering white working-class voters. Many of these voters backed Mr. Trump in the first place in part because of his views on hot-button issues, including on immigration and race.

Therefore the president's strategy for 2020, an adviser says, is to "win where we won in 2016." This year he has held campaign rallies exclusively in the swing states that made him president -- Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, and Florida. 

Trump's attacks on the four congresswomen epitomize that effort. Trump escalates them daily - a recent tweet labeled them "a very Racist group of troublemakers who are young, inexperienced, and not very smart," adding that they were "against humanitarian aid at the Border... And are now against ICE and Homeland Security"

Little wonder that a spokeswoman for a pro-Trump super-PAC says: "The president can turn out his base like no other president ever seen before in my lifetime. He has a way of exciting people to get them the polls." 

He sure does -- at whatever cost, we will see it every day until November 2020. As of now, the super-PAC intends to invest in only six states -- all of which Trump won.

Cohn understands the reasons: "[T]he major Democratic opportunity -- to mobilize nonwhite and young voters on the periphery of politics -- would disproportionally help Democrats in diverse, often noncompetitive states." Conversely, "the major Republican opportunity -- to mobilize less educated white voters, particularly those who voted in 2016 but sat out 2018 -- would disproportionately help them in white, working-class areas overrepresented in the Northern battleground states.

In short, the Electoral College turbocharges demographic sorting -- and racial politics of the worst sort. 

NOT TULIPS:

YOU ARE ILHAN OMAR:

WRITING WHILE BLACK:

Trump is now openly threatening to investigate Obama: "We want to find out what happened with the last Democrat president. Let's look into Obama the way they've looked at me ... they could look into the book deal that President Obama made. Let's subpoena all of his records." pic.twitter.com/uDO0kL9QfA

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 26, 2019

KNOWING YOUR ENEMIES:

A former al-Qaeda member claims the Bahraini government recruited him to assassinate members of the country's Shia-led opposition.

This comes after thousands of Bahraini opposition members and activists were arrested following a violent crackdown on mass protests in March 2011.

Bahrain executed three men on Saturday, including two Shia activists accused of terrorism, the public prosecutor said in a statement.

Shia activists Ahmad al-Mullali, 24, and Ali Hakim al-Arab, 25, were sentenced to death last year in a mass trial, along with 56 other men who were handed jail terms over "terrorism crimes".  [...]

Rights groups have decried the executions and said the cases of the two activists were based on confessions allegedly obtained through torture.

Aya Majzoub, Gulf researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), described the executions as "cruel" and said they were a sign that the kingdom "was not serious about reform and rule of law".

A SIMPLE DEMONSTRATION:

Civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., explained why he backed a resolution upholding the right to boycott "at home and abroad" -- even though he also voted to condemn the boycott, divestment and sanction movement aimed at Israel

Lewis was a cosponsor of a House resolution, 496,. "affirming that all Americans have the right to participate in boycotts in pursuit of civil and human rights at home and abroad.'" The non-binding resolution was introduced last week by Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., who back BDS.

Resolution 496 does not specifically mention BDS or Israel, but its authors have said that they were moved in part to introduce it because of efforts to penalize Israel boycotters.

Lewis explained his support of this resolution as "a simple demonstration of my ongoing commitment to the ability of every American to exercise the fundamental First Amendment right to protest through nonviolent actions," he said. His statement Thursday noted his role in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, which included boycotts.

That doesn't mean Lewis personally supports BDS -- in fact, he cosponsored a separate resolution, 246, that passed Tuesday that condemns the movement.

THE MOST EFFECTIVE ARGUMENT AGAINST COLLUSION...:

Our research shows Russian trolls were trying to stoke divisions among Canadians by tweeting fake news stories and Islamaphobic statements after the Québec mosque shootings in 2017. The Russians have used similar techniques to disrupt and sow dissent in other countries. It's reasonable to assume the same thing could happen in advance of the October election.

THE PARTY OF OLD WHITE MEN:

Does Trump respect minorities in @foxnews poll? Non college white men are +6 yes; col + white men are +1 yes. But non-col wh women are -13 no; col+wh women are -48 no; minorities are -53 no. A clear majority of US say the president does not respect minorities. That's our moment https://t.co/Qsa7dgtEbw

— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) July 25, 2019

WELL, THE WHITE SUPREMACISTS ARE TERRIFIED:

In the summer of 2017, I sang at a rally that was heavily counter-protested by a crowd of white men in Make America Great Again hats.

After my performance, I approached a few of these counter-protesters and asked why they had come. In response, one of them began ranting about Antifa, gesticulating at a group of black-clad youth leaning against a low retaining wall on the other side of the police barricade.

"They're terrorists," he said. "They look just like ISIS. Just look at them."

These kids, most of whom were clearly overheating behind the black bandanas impractically tied across their faces, seemed enigmatic and slightly silly to me; but nothing about their posture or behavior struck me as remotely menacing. I've met golden retrievers who scared me more.

By contrast, I later learned that the man who'd invoked the ISIS comparison was well-known throughout the Pacific Northwest for showing up at mosques to harass worshippers and that his affiliations included multiple groups recognized as far-right hate, reactionary, and antigovernment groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. [...]

For starters, the vast majority of terrorist attacks on American soil are motivated by right-wing extremism, and terrorists typically attack soft targets such as places of worship, workplaces, schools, or clinics. By aiming at people going about their daily lives, terrorists sow fear and instability, often in an attempt to coerce powerful institutions into complying with their demands.

We should therefore all be asking why Republicans are so eager to slap the "terrorist organization" label on a decentralized, left-wing, grassroots network that has never claimed responsibility for any such attack, and which is responsible for zero deaths ever.

RACE HUSTLING:

After recruiting thousands of donors for the American Conservative Union -- the powerful organization behind the annual CPAC conference -- a Republican political operative pushed the same contributors to give millions to a PAC that promised to go after then-President Barack Obama, but then steered much of their donations to himself and his partners.

The PAC, called the Conservative Majority Fund, has raised nearly $10 million since mid-2012 and continues to solicit funds to this day, primarily from thousands of steadfast contributors to conservative causes, many of them senior citizens. But it has made just $48,400 in political contributions to candidates and committees. Public records indicate its main beneficiaries are the operative Kelley Rogers, who has a history of disputes over allegedly unethical fundraising, and one of the largest conservative fundraising companies, InfoCision Management Corp., which charged millions of dollars in fundraising fees.

THIS MUCH IS TRUE:

3) Rebutting Trump's claims of total exoneration: "The president was not exculpated for the acts that he allegedly committed."

 

Mueller clarified his position on whether he would have indicted the president if not for the opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel that says a sitting president shouldn't face criminal charges. "We did not reach a determination as to whether the president committed a crime," he said.

"We did not address 'collusion,' which is not a legal term," Mueller said in his opening statement. "Rather, we focused on whether the evidence was sufficient to charge any member of the campaign with taking part in a criminal conspiracy. It was not."

Asked whether the president, under Justice Department policy, could be prosecuted for obstruction of justice after he leaves office, Mueller kept his answer succinct: "True." [...]

5) On why he didn't subpoena the president: "We decided that we did not want to exercise the subpoena powers because of the necessity of expediting the end of the investigation."

The former special counsel conceded that Trump's written answers to his questions about Russian interference -- the president refused to answer any questions about the 10 episodes of potential obstruction of justice that his office explored - were "certainly not as useful as the interview would be."

Despite Trump's claims that he fully cooperated, Mueller noted that the president's team stonewalled in negotiations for over a year about a sit-down interview and said he assumed Trump "would fight the subpoena." Mueller explained that he needed to decide "how much time you are willing to spend in the courts litigating an interview with the president."

Despite claims that Mueller wanted to drag out his investigation, he made clear that he hoped to get it wrapped up as soon as possible. "The reason we didn't do the interview was because of the length of time that it would take to resolve the issues attendant to that," he said.

6) There was a coverup: "A number of people we interviewed in our investigation, it turns out, did lie."

Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos have each acknowledged that they lied to the FBI. Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) asked Mueller whether it was "fair to say" that Trump's written answers were "not only inadequate and incomplete, because he didn't answer many of your questions, but where he did, his answers showed that he wasn't always being truthful."

"I would say, generally," Mueller replied.

Mueller acknowledged that he caught many former members of Trump's team not telling the truth, and this made it harder to investigate what really happened. "That would be accurate," he said.

"And then," Schiff said, "they lied to cover it up?"

"Generally, that's true," said Mueller.

TOUGHEST CALL EVER:

When the conservative group Turning Point USA announced Thursday that it had fired the staffer who projected a parody presidential seal behind President Trump during his speech to the group, a spokesman said he thought it was an honest mistake based on a sloppy Google search. Charles Leazott, the 46-year-old graphic designer who created the seal after the 2016 election, a form of mocking catharsis for the Republican Party he said Trump drove him from, isn't buying it.

"That's a load of cr-p," Leazott told The Washington Post. "You have to look for this. There's no way this was an accident is all I'm saying." Leazott's parody seal has some obvious differences from the real one -- the American eagle replaced by a two-headed eagle from Russia's coat of arms, golf clubs in one claw instead of arrows, wads of cash in the other claw -- and some more subtle ones, like the U.S. motto "E pluibus unum" ("out of many, one") swapped with a Trump-specific Spanish phrase, "45 es un títere," or "45 is a puppet." No one at Turning Point USA or the White House noticed any of this until the Post pointed it out Wednesday.

The Turning Point USA staffer who put it behind Trump was "either wildly incompetent or the best troll ever -- either way, I love them," Leazott told the Post.

INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE:

Before Nazilla Akbari can check out the latest offerings on Twitter or YouTube, she scrolls through an array of icons on her smartphone, searching for the right workaround to bypass state censors.

It's a cat-and-mouse game that has become second nature in Iran, where the clerically-led government restricts access to popular social media sites and where US sanctions create other barriers.

"Every day I struggle for 40 minutes just to get connected to uncensored internet," Akbari, a 30-year-old software developer, told The Associated Press. "Even after I do, the internet is so slow that I have difficulty even watching a short video."

Iranian authorities have sought to limit Western cultural influence since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. They began blocking popular sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube when activists used them to organize mass protests and document a crackdown after a disputed election in 2009.

That hasn't stopped Iranians from accessing such sites through virtual private networks, or VPNs, and other services. It also hasn't prevented a number of top Iranian officials from using the sites to broadcast the official line. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif frequently tweets in English, and accounts believed to be run by the offices of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani regularly post on their behalf.

IT'S A RICO CASE:

Rudy Giuliani, one of President Donald Trump's personal attorneys, was accused of intentionally deflating his own wealth in an attempt to stiff his estranged wife Judith Nathan Giuliani in court proceedings Thursday.

In the midst of an increasingly vitriolic end to their fifteen year marriage, Judith's attorney Bernard Claire claimed that Giuliani had actually been losing money by working in Trump's employ free of charge and also footing the bill for all of his own expenses, according to a Daily Beast report.

YEAH, BUT THEY'RE BROWN, NOT BLACK...:

The reports and images of ICE officers staking out homes and arresting people recall a parallel moment in history in apartheid South Africa, where the authorities regularly swept up black people under the "pass laws," a system that rigidly regulated the movement of black people from so-called homelands to the white urban centers.

The pass laws represented one of the most inhumane and hated aspects of the South African apartheid system. Under a system of racially based citizenship laws, the apartheid regime mandated that all black South Africans over the age of 16 carry a "pass" in the form of a small reference book--brown for men, blue for women--at all times. Without these passes it was virtually impossible to find work, obtain housing, register births, or obtain a range of labor rights. Failure to carry it was a crime.

This system of "influx control" entailed the constant policing of homes and other private spaces as well as public places like train stations and places of employment. Uniformed police squads would sweep communities in frequent pass raids and arrest "illegals," or anyone caught without a pass in a designated white neighborhood. Those caught in the pass raids were forcibly removed to "homelands," where they would be relegated to lives of starvation and deprivation. A system that clearly demarcated and labeled "others" based on their race and ethnicity, the pass laws wreaked havoc on black families by forcing the separation of spouses from spouses and children from their parents, consequently destabilizing communities.

The pass law raids subordinated the humanity of black individuals caught in the web of constant surveillance. Treated as mere numbers, they were stalked and hounded like prey. Between 1916 and 1984, approximately 17,745,000 black South Africans were arrested or prosecuted under the so-called influx control laws. The officials responsible had lost empathy for those whom they considered "illegals"--and they failed to see their humanity or care about their survival.

TAX WHAT YOU DON'T WANT, NOT WHAT YOU DO:

The Niskanen Center applauds Representatives Francis Rooney (FL-19) and Dan Lipinski (IL-3) for their new proposal, the Stemming Warming and Augmenting Pay (SWAP) Act of 2019. If passed, the SWAP Act  would levy a tax on carbon pollution in exchange for a reduction in the rate of payroll taxes for employees and employers, and a moratorium on enforcement of the Clean Air Act regulations on stationary sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Combined with a meaningful increase in R&D funding for low-carbon technology, these measures will help reduce the long-term costs of decarbonization and accelerate emissions reductions in the United States.

"The Swap Act is an ambitious initiative that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions far more than the regulatory initiatives launched by former President Barack Obama, taking us a long way towards decarbonization of the economy by 2050," said Niskanen Center president Jerry Taylor. "The net effect of the bill is to shift the burden of taxation from working Americans to polluters--where it should be--all while harnessing capitalism, not regulatory bureaucracies, to direct the necessary emission reductions. This is what a free market climate solution looks like," he added.

In embracing pricing carbon emissions through a carbon tax, the SWAP Act, utilizes the best tool Congress has at its disposal for achieving emissions reductions at low cost and the needed scale. 

SO WOMEN SHOULD BE SAFE, LEGAL AND RARE?:

NOTHING PERPLEXES lEFT/rIGHT MORE...:

Why did Mueller testify at all? Plainly not because he felt it was necessary to his work--as he made clear time and again Wednesday, Mueller considers his report to be his first and last word on the findings of his investigation. Certainly not too out of desire to seek publicity or grandstand, as was so transparently the case with many of his questioners on both sides of the aisle. Rather, it seems Mueller came only because he was asked, and considered it part of his duty to answer for his work if called to do so. To partisans incapable of judging a public figure's actions except through the lens of whose tribe it helps and whose tribe it harms, it may have seemed a foolish endeavor. Perhaps Mueller privately felt so too. But it is to his credit that he came and slogged through the whole silly spectacle regardless.

If this is the last we see of Mueller--as it very likely is--it was a fitting sendoff. The Robert Mueller who showed up Wednesday was neither party's caricature of him: Not the duplicitous, Trump-deranged witch-hunter bedeviled by much of the right, not the messianic, giant-slaying #Resistance hero adored by much of the left. Rather, he was just the dowdy old lawyer and public servant who was called on to do a crazily difficult and controversial task, and did it as best he could with the least possible amount of drama or fuss. That was the Robert Mueller we needed, and the Robert Mueller we got. Don't blame him if we can't handle the rest.

THE ONLY BATTLEGROUNDS ARE RED:

Biden leads Trump by 8 in Ohio. Everyone else virtually tied.

Trump won Ohio by 8 last time.

(via @QuinnipiacPoll) pic.twitter.com/1VAiti3wCd

— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) July 25, 2019

ANGLOATMOSPHERICS:

The Cloud Appreciation Society recently traveled to Lundy, an island that seems untouched by the 21st century, to contemplate the sky. Take a walk around the island: https://t.co/0nPQAvek8y pic.twitter.com/MMZKjdlcf2

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) July 25, 2019

AND ONLY HE CAN SLOW THE OBAMACONOMY:

Fox News Poll - Trump approval on the issues:

Economy 52-41 (+11)
Iran 39-46 (-7)
Border Security 44-52 (-8)
Trade 40-49 (-9)
North Korea 39-49 (-10)
Immigration 41-54 (-13)
Health Care 38-51 (-13)
Race Relations 32-57 (-25)

Trump is strong on the economy and terrible elsewhere

— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) July 24, 2019

HELPFULLY, DONALD AND HIS BOTS TICK EVERY BOX:

Absent any consensus, journalists ought to clarify which meaning they're using in a particular article. But even when explicitly grappling with the appropriateness of using "racist" in coverage, journalists often make no attempt to do so.

Among the definitions that may come to mind for readers when they see the term:

A belief in the innate inferiority of a racial group.

Animus directed at someone due to their racial identity.

Denying equal treatment to a racial group.

Any action, law, policy, or institution that disproportionately harms a racial group.

Prejudging members of a racial group or failing to treat them as individuals.

Any of the above applied to ethnic, religious, or national origin groups, too.

Any of the above plus power over members of the target group.

This free-for-all makes it difficult if not impossible for everyone to be on the same page. And the lack of clarity is vexing for those of us who believe that rigor ought to be the lodestar in determining whether to use "racist" in a given instance.

ONLY ONE PEG FILLS THE GOD-SHAPED HOLE:

Secular congregations such as Sunday Assembly and Oasis--a similar group started in 2012--seek to offer a solution. Both were founded by faithless seekers hoping to carry on certain aspects of religious life: the community, the moral deliberation, and the rich sense of wonder. When they were growing so rapidly in their early years, these congregations were heavily covered by media outlets. "The Hot New Atheist Church," gushed a 2013 Daily Beast headline about Sunday Assembly. HuffPost noted that the number of assemblies had doubled in a single weekend in 2014. The media coverage emphasized the new community's high-energy services, its celebratory message, and the top-of-your-lungs group renditions of pop anthems such as "Livin' on a Prayer." For those uncomfortable with the level of overt spirituality even within relatively liberal denominations, such as Unitarian Universalism, secular communities offered a different option.

But even as the growth of "nones" has revved up in the intervening years, the growth of secular congregations hasn't kept pace. After a promising start, attendance declined, and nearly half the chapters have fizzled out--including the New York one that Walford joined. Building a durable community of nonbelievers, it turns out, is more complicated than just excising God.  

If the sudden emergence of secular communities speaks to a desire for human connection and a deeper sense of meaning, their subsequent decline shows the difficulty of making people feel part of something bigger than themselves. One thing has become clear: The yearning for belonging is not enough, in itself, to create a sense of home.

A RACE, NOT A RELIGION:

Mikhail's story is not unusual, and is becoming even more common, according to Itim's director, Rabbi Seth Farber. And in an increasing number of cases, the Chief Rabbinate has asked people, many of them immigrants or children of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, to undergo DNA testing to prove their Jewish roots.

"A new culture has developed within the Rabbinate that suspects everyone and relies on documents and science and technology, and not on religious norms," Farber, whose organization helps Israelis navigate the nation's Orthodox-run religious monopoly, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

A study recently released by the Israel Democracy Institute and Itim warns that over the next two decades, hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens from the former Soviet Union or of Ethiopian descent may need to undergo a process to validate their Judaism.

The study showed an increase in the proportion of cases that ended with a ruling that the applicant was not Jewish, from 2.9 percent in 2011 to 6.1 percent in 2016 to 6.7 percent in 2017.

Although those numbers may appear small, Itim and other advocates say the process is humiliating, demoralizing, unnecessary and undertaken with no clear or uniform standard for validating a person's Jewishness.

In Israel, the Chief Rabbinate controls marriage and divorce. In order to marry through the Chief Rabbinate, would-be spouses must prove they are Jewish. It's not difficult for Israelis who have been in the country for generations: The marriage certificates of their parents and grandparents issued by the Chief Rabbinate are on file.

Israeli World War II veterans of the Allied armies of Russian origins take part in a parade marking the 71st anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany, in Jerusalem, on May 8, 2016.  / AFP PHOTO / GALI TIBBON

Immigrants to the country must prove to a rabbinical court that they are Jewish.

IF THEY WERE CONCENTRATION CAMPS WE'D BE ENDING ASYLUM:

In July 1939, eight months after Kristallnacht and seven weeks before Hitler would invade Poland, Congress killed a bill that would have allowed 20,000 Jewish refugee children into the United States.

Opponents of the bill, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, said America should help its own poor people before foreigners, and worried that letting in children could later lead to admitting their parents.

"I have nothing against the Jews," said a woman quoted by JTA at the time as Mrs. Arthur J. O'Neill, president of the United Daughters of 1812, that April. "But this is a predominantly Christian country and we should take care of our own needy before we receive new aliens."

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After the war, and the Holocaust, Congress passed two bills that let 80,000 Holocaust survivors move to the US. Since then, the United States has continued accepting tens of thousands of refugees per year.

But next year, that number may again shrink -- this time to zero.

According to multiple news reports, Stephen Miller, the architect of President Donald Trump's immigration policies, may try to eliminate refugee admissions next year -- no refugees would be allowed beyond the borders. A Miller ally in the office of US Citizenship and Immigration Services proposed the shutdown at a meeting this month of security officials on refugee admissions, according to Politico.

TRUMPBOTS GONNA TRUMP:

Larry Klayman, a right-wing activist and attorney who has represented conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, former U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore and Laura Loomer among others, faces a possible 33-month suspension from practicing law in the District of Columbia.

A Hearing Committee with the Board on Professional Responsibility filed a report Wednesday alleging that he took advantage of a client and tried to start a relationship with her...

IT'S AN IMPEACHMENT REFERRAL:

ROBERT MUELLER PROVED Wednesday that he might just be the least cooperative friendly witness Congress has ever faced. During close to six hours of Mueller's testimony before two committees, House Democrats learned the hard way that you can lead a special counsel to an impeachment hearing, but you can't make him testify.

The man who had spent the past two years leading the investigation of Russia's attack on the 2016 election, and Donald Trump's apparent obstruction of justice, had promised--warned, really--that he would not go beyond the four corners of the 448-page report he'd delivered earlier this spring. He lived up to that promise.

"The report is my testimony," he told both committees. He refused even to read aloud key portions of that report, preferring to have congressional representatives read it aloud themselves, and then confirming in monosyllabic answers whether those portions were accurate. CBS tallied 41 one-word answers in just the first half of the morning Judiciary Committee hearing; Mueller declined more broadly to discuss all manner of other related and unrelated topics.

The day's most clarifying exchange came during the first five minutes of the hearing, when Judiciary Committee chair Jerrold Nadler ran through a rapid-fire series of questions aimed at undermining President Trump's consistent mantra of "No collusion, no obstruction."

As Nadler opened, "Director Mueller, the president has repeatedly claimed that your report found there was no obstruction and that it completely and totally exonerated him, but that is not what your report said, is it?"

"Correct. That is not what the report said," the former special counsel replied.

Then Nadler proceeded: "The report did not conclude that he did not commit obstruction of justice, is that correct?"

"That is correct," Mueller said.

Nadler: "And what about total exoneration? Did you actually totally exonerate the president?"

Mueller: "No."

Nadler: "Now, in fact, your report expressly states that it does not exonerate the president."

Mueller: "It does."

Nadler: "Your investigation actually found, 'multiple acts by the president that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian interference and obstruction investigations.' Is that correct?"

Mueller: "Correct."

THE lEFT IS THE rIGHT:

A writer for the New Yorker magazine once described Madison Grant, the early 20th-century conservationist best known for his race-based opposition to immigration, as someone who had "extended a passion for preserving bison and caribou into a mania for preserving the 'Nordic race.' " The same might be said of John Tanton, a physician turned political activist who died last week at age 85.

Tanton was one of the nation's leading anti-immigration figures over the past four decades, but he wasn't a right-wing conservative. He was a left-wing tree-hugger obsessed with overpopulation. Opposition to immigration, legal or illegal, was simply a means to that end.

Tanton came to his beliefs about population control in the 1960s and through the writings of antinatal zealots like Garrett Hardin and Paul Ehrlich, who argued that additional human beings have a negative effect on the supply of land, food and other resources. Modern-day Malthusians insist that the larger the population, the bigger the threat to nature.

THE nATIVISTS NEVER CHANGE...:

First, in the past when Americans wanted to seriously undermine a minority faith they didn't merely argue that it was an untrue religion but that it wasn't a religion at all. Samuel Morse, the inventor of the Morse code and the telegraph, led attacks on Catholics in the nineteenth century by saying that "Popery" was less a religion that "a Political system, despotic in its organization, anti-democratic and anti-republican, cannot therefore coexist with American republicanism." A few decades later, Mormonism was described in similar ways--"an immoral and quasi criminal conspiracy," as the Kalamazoo Telegraph put it.

Now listen to how Islam has been described by modern American anti-Islam activists. "Islam is a political ideology. It definitely hides behind being a religion," said Michael Flynn, President Trump's first national security advisor, in 2016. That same year, a poll found that only half of Republicans said Islam should be legal in America.

In case there was any ambiguity about why this distinction was important, Lieutenant General William G. "Jerry" Boykin, an anti-Muslim activist and former Pentagon official, explained in 2010 that since Islam is "a totalitarian way of life," it "should not be protected under the First Amendment."

Second, practitioners of particular minority religions could not assimilate, we were told. An editorial in the Missouri Commercial Appeal took this tactic in describing Mormons: "Their manners, customs, religion and all, [Mormons] are more obnoxious to our citizens than those of the Indians, and they can never live among us in peace." An anti-Mormon group in Carroll County in 1838 complained that too many Mormons came from across the border. (No, the other border). "It is impossible that the two communities can long live together," wrote the Signal. "They can never assimilate." To these writers, the Mormons were alien and dangerous. The next month the governor of the state, Lilburn Boggs, issued a rule that "the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated and driven from the State if necessary for the public peace."

Three days later, about 250 Missourians, including a state senator, went to a small community called Haun's Mill and massacred 17 Mormons.

At other moments in history, Catholics, Jews, and other European immigrants were also thought to be unassimilable too.

In modern times, anti-Islam activists have claimed, against evidence, that Muslims are particularly unable to assimilate. When the Islamic Society of Milwaukee applied for permission to build a mosque, a rally was held where one resident explained that "a mosque is a Trojan Horse in a community. Muslims have not come to integrate but to dominate." Donald Trump made it explicit. "I'm talking about second and third generation," Donald Trump said during the 2016 campaign. "They come--they don't--for some reason, there's no real assimilation."

In thwarting religious freedom, Americans have accused adherents of minority faiths of having dual allegiances. When Al Smith, a Catholic, ran for president in 1928, cartoons depicted him as kissing the ring of--or serving the liquor to--the pope whom, it was assumed, would be calling the shots. The newly constructed Holland Tunnel in New York was supposedly going to provide the pontiff ready access to America. Jews have long been subject to a similar charge, initially that they would put global Jewry above loyalty to country, and more recently that they would put the interests of Israel over that of America--criticisms that were reflected in the recent comments by Rep. Ilhan Omar that "the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country."

In the twenty-first century, the most pervasive dual loyalty charge has been against American Muslims, like Rep. Omar. They are, we are told, required by their faith to follow Sharia, the broad set of Islamic religious rules, akin to Catholic Canon Law or Halacha rules influencing some Orthodox Jews. Brigitte Gabriel, leader of ACT for America, one of the leading anti-Islam groups, has said, "A practicing Muslim who believes the word of the Koran to be the word of Allah, who abides by Islam, who goes to mosque and prays every Friday, who prays five times a day--this practicing Muslim, who believes in the teachings of the Koran, cannot be a loyal citizen to the United States of America."

JOY IN MUDVILLE:

You've gotta see Gerardo Parra's Baby Shark intro.

This is WILD. pic.twitter.com/kjmb6vaoUl

— Cut4 (@Cut4) July 24, 2019

SERIOUS MEN:

Here's what Mueller said:

➡️ Russia interfered in our election to help Trump.

➡️ Russians made numerous contacts with the campaign.

➡️ Campaign welcomed their help.

➡️ No one reported these contacts or interference to FBI.

➡️ They lied to cover it up. pic.twitter.com/ePAjUkfMlo

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) July 24, 2019

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

First, there was President Trump's June 2017 direction to the White House counsel, Don McGahn, to fire the special counsel in the wake of news reports that he was investigating the president for obstruction of justice -- and Mr. Trump's later insistence that Mr. McGahn create a false internal memorandum that would contradict reporting about this order.

Then there was President Trump's instructions, in summer 2017, to his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who was then a private citizen, to direct Attorney General Jeff Sessions to limit Mr. Mueller's investigation with the intent to, as stated in the report, "prevent further investigative scrutiny of the president and his campaign's conduct."

Democrats also noted Mr. Trump's repeated instructions that Mr. Sessions "unrecuse" himself from running the investigation, which Mr. Mueller said in the report lead to a "reasonable inference" that the president wanted his attorney general to act as a shield from the investigation.

And finally, Mr. Mueller described how Mr. Trump sought, in part through his private attorneys, to influence the cooperation and testimony of several possible witnesses, including his former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his former lawyer Michael Cohen, by making public and private threats, and by floating the possibility of pardons.

These facts, starkly affirmed on Wednesday by Mr. Mueller after months of mischaracterization of his report by the president and others, are catastrophic.

Despite Mr. Mueller's unwillingness to speculate on hypotheticals, and his adherence to the Justice Department policy against indicting a sitting president, these facts, which he also outlined in depth in his report, make clear that were Mr. Trump an ordinary person, he would have been indicted on multiple counts of obstruction of justice, as more than a thousand former federal prosecutors, free of those limitations, have observed.

Robert Mueller on Wednesday condemned President Donald Trump's repeated praise of WikiLeaks during the 2016 presidential election. According to the former special counsel, Trump's public embrace of the organization--even as it was regularly releasing Hillary Clinton campaign emails hacked by the Russian government--was tantamount to promoting "illegal activity."

"Problematic is an understatement, in terms of what it displays, in terms of giving some hope or some boost to what is and should be illegal activity," Mueller said after Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) read direct statements from Trump expressing admiration for WikiLeaks. Mueller also said he agreed with Mike Pompeo, who as CIA director in 2017 called Wikileaks a "hostile intelligence service." Pompeo is now Trump's secretary of State.

It was a striking moment from the former special counsel, who had spent the bulk of his back-to-back congressional hearings on Wednesday largely repeating the findings of his lengthy report. On this matter, however, Mueller appeared to offer a personal indictment of Trump's conduct.

GAME, SET, MATCH:

Rep. Ken Buck: "Could you charge the president with a crime after he left office?"

Robert Mueller: "Yes"

Buck: "You could charge the President of the United States with obstruction of justice after he left office?"

Mueller: "Yes" https://t.co/jFAp2RJoaI #MuellerHearings pic.twitter.com/rG1psVL0ib

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) July 24, 2019

AMERICAN SPRING:

Puerto Rico governor Ricardo Rosselló will resign by Wednesday following nearly two weeks of relentless protests calling for him to step down, according to reports by two major local media outlets.

Rumors of his resignation have circled in Puerto Rico since Sunday, after Rosselló spent the day meeting with cabinet members and mayors of his party. He announced that evening he was resigning to the presidency of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party and would not run for re-election.

Rosselló will offer a farewell announcement that would be broadcast before noon on Wednesday, sources told El Nuevo Día.

LOST PLOT:

Sixty years after the death of Raymond Chandler, and eighty years after the publication of his first novel, we mark the first anniversary of a brilliant achievement, The Annotated Big Sleep.  In 1939, Chandler (1888-1959) published The Big Sleep, introducing a fictional Los Angeles private investigator, Philip Marlowe, and in 2018, Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson, and Anthony Dean Rizzuto produced an edition with Chandler's text on the left-hand pages and their explanatory notes on the right-hand pages.  Also illustrating this volume are maps, photographs, and excerpts from other stories by Chandler.

Unlike a biblical commentary, where obvious passages can get lengthy deciphering and obscure lines get passed over, The Annotated Big Sleep tackles it all.  It is amusing that some readers, apparently, will need to have defined for them slang such as "swell' and "jalopy," or standard words such as "bookplate" and "davenport."  Most captivating is information about firearms and newspapers, about bygone fashions and obsolete automobiles, as well as the vanished landscape of 1930's Los Angeles.

Moreover, our annotators identify in The Big Sleep allusions to Arthurian legend.  In The Big Sleep and subsequent novels, Marlowe casts himself as a latter-day knight errant, with his own code of chivalrous integrity, righting wrongs and rescuing damsels in distress, even if the distress is of the damsel's own making.  In The High Window (1942), a medical doctor admiringly calls Marlowe "the shop-soiled Galahad."  Marlowe is unmarried, and in The Big Sleep, set in 1938, he is thirty-three.  With Marlowe, Chandler tapped into an archetype in Western literature, the solitary young hero, embodying virtue and virility.

"LOW AND SAFE AND LEGAL" IS "RARE AND SAFE AND LEGAL":

Wax's address was based on a 2018 Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy paper titled "Debating Immigration Restriction: The Case for Low and Slow." In the paper, Wax argues that America's debate over immigration has been warped in a pro-immigration direction by "left-leaning elites," whose "reactive, highly emotional, and one-sided" approach to the issue has made a serious debate over policy possible. It is the right and only the right, she argues, that is willing to talk unsentimentally about the harms from mass immigration.

Wax's paper splits the case for lower immigration rates into two buckets: the economic and the cultural. Her economic arguments follow those of Harvard economist George Borjas -- that low-skill immigration lowers wages for native-born Americans and is a drain on the welfare state -- as well as one of her own articles, written with policy analyst Jason Richwine (who has also run into controversy), arguing that such immigrants take jobs from native-born Americans. These claims are certainly debatable -- Borjas is somewhat of an outlier in his field -- but relatively straightforward.

Culture is, in Wax's phrase, a bit more "elusive." She defines the core of the cultural case for immigration restriction as this:

The idea is that a shared American identity is essential to maintaining a common sense of purpose, trust, and community. A large influx of immigrants, especially from nations that do not share our cultural values and understandings, will undermine citizen morale, unity, and solidarity as well as the integrity of our institutions.

There are two ways to make this case, per Wax. One set of people, "creedal nationalists," believe that immigrants from all backgrounds can move here without disrupting American society. But such assimilation takes time, so it might be wise to keep the pace of immigration slow and the number of immigrants low. "For this ilk of nationalist, there is no obstacle to America's core ideas being successfully adopted and embraced, and equally so, by people regardless of ethnicity and national origin," she writes.

A different group, "cultural distance" nationalists, "draw a sharp distinction among potential newcomers based on culture of origin and national background." In essence, they hold that immigrants from some backgrounds are not assimilable -- specifically, immigrants from non-Western nations are extremely unlikely to be able to accept the norms and values that would make them contribute to American society.

"Many cultural-distance restrictionists endorse the notion of maintaining a majority 'legacy' (European and Anglo-Protestant) population," she writes. "Immigration from non-Western countries should thus be kept at a minimum so as not to compromise the dominance of groups that are closer to our cultural heritage and more effective at transmitting it."

Who are the people advocating this view? Wax cites John Derbyshire, a right-wing writer who formerly wrote for the mainstream National Review. Derbyshire was fired from this job for penning a piece in which he advises his children that "if you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible." Other places that Wax credits for "thoughtful discussion" of these issues are Taki's Mag, the alt-right publication where Derbyshire published his screed about "the number of blacks," and VDARE, another leading alt-right publication. (The pro-Trump Journal of American Greatness and the marginal right-wing site Jacobite were also mentioned.)

This idea -- cultural distance nationalism -- is what seems to especially interest Wax in her paper. It's an idea whose implications are extremely troubling if you believe in a multicultural, pluralistic America. Cultural distance nationalism makes blanket judgments about people based on their national origin and ethnic identity. It also argues that immigration policy must not be allowed to "compromise the dominance" of "European and Anglo-Protestant" people in the United States and Europe.

American borders were for generations open to newcomers, but that was often in spite of, not because of, popular attitudes. Colonial America, a frontier society, was highly diverse by what passed for diversity in those days-mixes of English, Scots, Frenchmen, Dutch, and even Jews from the Caribbean. By the early 1800s century, however, the nation increasingly defined the "standard" American as a Protestant of British origin. (Needless to say, Africans and Indians were totally outside of this conversation.)

The great challenge of the mid-19th century came in the form of Catholic immigration, first heavily from the Irish fleeing famine, then Central Europeans fleeing political chaos, and later Southern and Eastern Europeans seeking economic opportunity.

Employers in America's era of industrialization of course encouraged and subsidized the influx. But millions of native-born Protestants resisted it. They resisted, in part, because they feared the economic competition. But nativists also felt threatened by foreigners' lifestyles and the spectre that Catholic immigrants would install Papal rule from Rome--a charge that actually gained far more credence than the occasional warnings we hear today about Sharia law. The struggle against foreigners was so great that a national political party, the Know Nothings, arose on this platform alone. Blood literally ran in the streets as mobs attacked the "unassimilable" immigrants and their institutions.

Around the end of the 19th and the beginning of 20th century, resistance to immigrants focused on the Italians, Poles, Greeks, Slavs, and Jews coming from Europe, as well as the Japanese and Chinese coming from Asia. Job competition was again one concern and it led to murders of Asian immigrants in California. (Ironically, Irish immigrants and Irish-descended Americans were especially vociferous in this context.) Anti-immigrant voices also raised political objections that European immigrants were bringing in radical, Bolshevik ideas. At the same time, progressives (yes, friends, progressives) provided a scientific justification for controlling immigration: These foreign "races" were inherently less intelligent and less moral than the Nordic race; their rabbit-like breeding would corrupt America; they could not assimilate.

In the mid-1920s, nativist campaigns led to laws effectively closing off immigration from much of the world that wasn't "Nordic." Whereas in 1910, before the interruption of World War I, almost 15 percent of Americans were foreign-born, by 1970 fewer than five percent were. Today, about 14 percent are, a result of the 1965 immigration reform legislation that removed quotas by national origin and also allowed family reunions, a celebrated rejection of discrimination by nationality.

Unfortunately, Americans hold a warped collective memory of earlier immigration history. Many assume that the European immigrants of generations past assimilated quickly, unlike Latin American, Asian, or Muslim immigrants today. Not true. Lasting ethnic enclaves like Greektowns and Little Italys were typical. Today's immigrants actually learn English and forget their native languages faster than did the earlier newcomers. Similarly, romanticized memories lead many to believe that, unlike today's immigrants, their ancestors made it up the ladder on their own steam-also a distortion. In the end, the supposedly unassimilable children and grandchildren of earlier immigrants became regular Americans, often to the chagrin of parents who hoped that their traditions would be more lasting.

YOUR NEXT TRUCK WILL BE A VOLT:

EVEN DONALD CAN FOLLOW THE PICTURES:

IT'S ILHAN'S AMERICA:

The resolution, backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, also enshrines the two state-outcome to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict at a time that the Trump administration and Israel's government have retreated from two states.

Additionally, it says Americans have a right to petition in opposition to government policy, a nod toward some Democrats who oppose separate legislation that penalizes Israel boycotts because, they say, such penalties impinge on speech freedoms.

Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill., one of the resolution's lead sponsors told The Jewish Telegraphic Agency that bringing a vast majority of the House, including virtually the entire GOP caucus, onboard in backing two states was a major achievement. The Republican Party abandoned two states in its 2016 platform.

"THERE ARE NO DOGS":

By every relevant measure, humanity is the most advanced and productive it has ever been, and the world is a much better place than it was even a short time ago. To point this out does not take romanticism, nor cherry-picking of statistics, but what should be the blindingly obvious assertion that, as we have all got richer, our lives have gotten better.

The alarmist narratives are grounded in rhetoric, rather than truth. On the environment, carbon dioxide emissions have been declining in the UK for six consecutive years, plummeting last year to levels not seen since 1858. Around the world, use of renewable energy resources has been shooting up in recent decades; as of 2016, modern renewable energy production has seen more than a five-fold increase since the 1960s, with infamous polluters China and India leading the pack.

Life expectancy - the surest measure of how well we are doing at looking after ourselves - tells a heartening story. Less than thirty years ago, we lived to an average of 65 years. As of 2016, that figure stands at 72.5; we added seven and a half years to each of our lives in the space of less than three decades.

At the crux of these great strides forward, of course, is economic growth. In 1990, well over a third of the world's population was living in abject poverty. Today, it is less than one tenth, and that figure continues to tumble. As if that wasn't enough, we are also more peaceful, more democratic and much more literate than at any other point in human history, with these rigidly upward trends showing no signs of plateauing.

Famed orator James May put it beautifully: "The world has never been going to the dogs. Every generation says it but if it were true we'd be there by now. There are no dogs."

THE INTERNAL PASSPORTS ARE COMING:

From the Washington Post: 

They were stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint in the South Texas town of Falfurrias, about 65 miles north of their hometown, according to his attorney, Claudia Galan. They were asked for papers. And Galicia had plenty, including a wallet-sized Texas birth certificate, a Texas ID card and Social Security card, Galan said. But U.S. Customs and Border Protection detained Galicia anyway over suspicion that his documents were fraudulent.

Birth certificate. State ID. Social Security card. Who carries all of this? I literally don't know where my Social Security card is. 

And yet despite providing copious evidence that he is a legal resident, law enforcement officers still had a "nagging suspicion" about Francisco. He was traveling to a soccer tryout with his undocumented brother and a group of friends, at least one of whom was a citizen. And he happened to be brown. Voila. That "suspicion" led to him being fingerprinted, after which discrepancies in paperwork filed by his mother resulted in his detention. 

Let me say that one more time for those in the back. This young man was fingerprinted by federal law enforcement because of his race and because of his company, who made the agents suspicious he was a criminal. That's it. 

OK TRUMPBOTS:

Trump makes a hand gesture while saying AOC's name pic.twitter.com/2266fEvlWE

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 23, 2019

WHY THE rIGHT LOVES HER:

Tulsi Gabbard claims Kamala Harris is 'not qualified to serve as commander in chief' @ayesharascoe @KirstenPowers @mkhammer @jeffzeleny discuss https://t.co/sVTPTmBij0 pic.twitter.com/Vy7FLDAnYF

— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) July 23, 2019

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

BREAKING: Sen. Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign has been hit with an unfair labor practice complaint alleging illegal employee interrogation and retaliation against staffers. https://t.co/BYEAh696rF

— Bloomberg Law (@BLaw) July 23, 2019

HE SHOULD NOT FINISH THIS ONE:

Trump today: "Then I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president."
This man should not have a second term.

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) July 23, 2019

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

A federal jury on Tuesday convicted Bijan Rafiekian, a former business partner of Michael Flynn, on a pair of foreign-agent felony charges stemming from work the two men did for Turkish interests during the final months of the Trump presidential campaign in 2016.

The verdicts, returned by jurors in Alexandria, Va., after a weeklong trial and only about four hours of deliberation, amount to a belated courtroom victory for special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated the $600,000 lobbying and public relations contract at the heart of the case and then handed the matter off to other federal prosecutors after Flynn's guilty plea to a false-statement charge in 2017.

CHRISTIAN OR NATIVIST?:

Pastor E.W. Lucas put up the sign "America: Love it or leave it" at Friendship Baptist Church in Appomattox

The congregation at the church walked out of the service yesterday in protest. https://t.co/5qCWpUy69u

— Stone 🥶 (@stonecold2050) July 22, 2019

KNOWING THE ENEMY:

FBI Director Wray says white supremacist violence is fueling most domestic terrorism: "I will say that a majority of the domestic terrorism cases we've investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence." https://t.co/aQGVhAwkXy

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) July 23, 2019

SERVING GOD IS HARD...:

Some of my Christian friends weren't ready to crown the President as God's Man right out of the gate. They called him the Lesser of Two Evils when they voted for him in 2016. But as time has gone on, they've realized that by bending the knee to this new king, they can get political power and Supreme Court justices. It's just like when Daniel was serving in Nebuchadnezzar's court, and was presented with two unsavory options: eat the king's unclean food to secure his place of safety and proximity to power, or refuse and suffer the consequences. Because he was a political realist, Daniel chose the Lesser of Two Evils and ate the king's food and...wait a minute...that's not how it went down, is it?

Bad example. Let me try again.

Maybe 2016 was like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego who really had no choice but to bow down to the idol because if they didn't they were guaranteed death (HILLARY!), so they bowed down and avoided the fiery furnace/Democrat president and that's how God was glorified...right?

Tell you what--let's forget the Book of Daniel, because it's full of people who couldn't possibly understand the pressure we're under here in 21st-century America. Sure, they refused to move the goalposts for a king who could exterminate them at any moment, and tried to. But we have real problems.

And because we have far more significant problems, we cannot afford the luxury of calling sin by it's name, or rebuking an unrepentant sinner with whom we've publicly aligned ourselves, or doing anything that might weaken God's Man politically. Because his political success is where our hope lies. He gets our loyalty and praise, because of the power of his office.

Now if the God he cursed had any real power, that would be a different story. But we're sophisticated enough to know that all the power that matters is in Washington, DC. We're not a bunch of yahoos who believe that God can accomplish his purposes without God's Man. I mean, have you even heard how tough God's Man can talk?

Sayoc is described in the defense filing as someone with "severe learning disabilities" who was "abandoned by his father and sexually abused by a teacher" and "lost everything in the Great Recession," ABC News reports. "In this darkness, Mr. Sayoc found light in Donald J. Trump," Sayoc's lawyers said.

The filing goes on to detail Sayoc becoming obsessed with Trump on a personal level and beginning to watch Fox News -- especially Fox & Friends and Hannity -- "religiously," in addition to following pro-Trump Facebook groups, The Washington Post reports. These groups pushed "the idea that Trump's critics were dangerous, unpatriotic, and evil" and that Democrats are "murderous, terroristic, and violent," and "Fox News furthered these arguments," the lawyers say.

The lawyers go on to cite a specific segment from Hannity in which the Fox News host described prominent Democrats as "encouraging mob violence against their political opponents," which came in response to former Attorney General Eric Holder saying, "When they go low, we kick them."

XI IS JUST DOING TO THEM WHAT DONALD WOULD LIKE TO DO:

The day after thugs attack Hong Kong demonstrators with iron bars, sending 45 to the hospital, Trump endorses China's handling of mass protests: "I think President Xi has acted very responsibly...he's allowed that to go on for a long time."

— Jackson Diehl (@JacksonDiehl) July 22, 2019

SPEAKING OF A BARREL OF MISSING GENITALIA...:

BLOOD & SOIL:

This was not the first time Wax has made unpleasant declarations about race. In 2017 she told Glenn Lowry on the video chat site Bloggingheads: "Here's a very inconvenient fact, Glenn: I don't think I've ever seen a black student graduate in the top quarter of the class, and rarely, rarely, in the top half." She later admitted that she had no data to support this statement. [...]

The definition of what it means to be "white" in America has always been fraught. Unlike ethnicity, which has at least some basis in shared DNA, the quality of "whiteness"--or "non-whiteness"--is both amorphous and transitory, defined differently at various points in our history, usually depending on who was doing the defining.

The eugenicists who pushed through broad-scale immigration restriction in 1917 and 1924 were obsessed with classifying races. Madison Grant's influential book The Passing of the Great Race defined a hierarchy of European races, with "Nordics" at the apex, "Alpines" in the middle strata, and "Mediterraneans" on the lowest rung. Grant and other restrictionists of the era argued that the United States was being flooded with inferior peoples from Southern and Eastern Europe, who were diluting the stock of native-born Americans, namely from the British Isles and Northwestern Europe. He argued that native-stock Americans "will not bring children into the world to compete in the labor market with the Slovak, the Syrian, and the Jew," who, he claimed "adopt the language of the native American, they wear his clothes, they steal his name, and they are beginning to take his women, but they seldom adopt his religion or understand his ideals, and while he is being elbowed out of his own home, the American looks calmly abroad and urges on others the suicidal ethics which are exterminating his own race."

Wax and her fellow travelers among nationalist conservatives make the case that today's immigrants are culturally unfit to become Americans. Using a metaphor associated with the alt-right, Wax dismisses the idea that the "magic dirt" of American soil will transform immigrants into Americans--a straw man argument not made by any serious immigration proponent--and claims that there is no reason to believe that "people who come here will quickly come to think, live, and act just like us."

THE TEA PARTY WINS AGAIN:

In a statement, Pelosi and Schumer said the agreement will "enhance our national security and invest in middle class priorities that advance the health, financial security and well-being of the American people."

KNOWING THE ENEMY:

A Saudi man visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem as part of an Israeli-sponsored trip has been driven out of the site by Palestinians, who accused him of normalisation.

Wearing his traditional Gulf Arab clothing, Mohammed Saud was recorded on Monday being chased out of the Old City of Jerusalem as Palestinians threw plastic chairs and hurled insults at him, accusing him of being a traitor and a Zionist.

BUT CAN THEY BE REATTACHED TO THE REPUBLICANS WHO LOST THEM?:

THANKS, DONALD!:

#HETOO:

New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, clarified that he would not meet with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a notorious anti-Semite.

"I will not sit -- I will not sit down with Louis Farrakhan, period. And I reject anybody who preaches that kind of bigotry and hate towards other Americans," he said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."

IF THEY WERE CONCENTRATION CAMPS, HE'D ADVOCATE GENOCIDE:

Troubling listening to Trump Oval Office news conference with Pakistani PM. He baldly states that we have analyzed and considered using nuclear weapons to kill millions of people in Afghanistan as a solution to the conflict. WHAT IS TRUMP THINKING?

— Barry R McCaffrey (@mccaffreyr3) July 22, 2019

THE FUTURE OF KASHMIR...:

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi never asked U.S. President Donald Trump to help mediate with Pakistan their dispute over the Kashmir region, the government said on Tuesday, after Trump's comments set off a storm of criticism.

FREELOADERS...:

New study finds immigrants and children of immigrants founded 45 percent of U.S. Fortune 500 companies, amassing $6.1 trillion in annual revenue last year. https://t.co/euve6uKKlR

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) July 22, 2019

DONALD IS AN "ACTIVE MEASURE":

Wow. One of the on-air reporters at pro-Trump One America News Network (OANN) is a Russian national *currently* on the payroll of Kremlin propaganda outlet Sputnik News.

He's been working at both outlets simultaneously since 2017.https://t.co/r0OL7hBfYV

— Caroline Orr (@RVAwonk) July 22, 2019

Here it is: "Active Measures," the first part of THE REPORT, our new podcast documentary on the Mueller Report.

All summer, we will present this audio experience of the special counsel's findings, in a format more digestible than 448 pages of text.https://t.co/Jio0Q2rz3z

— Lawfare (@lawfareblog) July 19, 2019

OUR WILSONIANS:

This point was drawn out during the conference by the ultraconservative Notre Dame political scientist Patrick Deneen, the only person I heard voice any unease with the national conservative project. In American history, he noted, "the emphasis of [nationalism] was the explicit and desired and in many ways successful aim to weaken the more local, regional, neighborhood, and particular forms of identity within the nation--those identifications that had been the hallmark of the American political/cultural experience." According to Deneen, nationalism was the progressive idea that we should put "the national need before the sectional or personal advantage" and "that local government should cede its activities to the national government." In this moment, he said, "it seems natural for conservative to rally around the idea of the nation. But we should always be wary of simply occupying the ground recently vacated by progressives."

Alas, Deneen went on to support virtually all the same policy prescriptions as everyone else at the conference. Anti-individualism seems to be the unifying theory of the ascendant political right. If government infringements on personal liberty are the price of achieving good outcomes, conservatives are more than happy to pay it.

"SEE THE SMOKE & HEAR THE WHISTLE BLOW":

As one of the United States's most scenic historic railroads, the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad (D&SNG), with its jet-black steam-powered locomotives and 1880s-era coaches, travels along the same tracks that miners, frontiersmen, and cowboys journeyed nearly 140 years ago.

The Durango & Silverton stretch of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad was completed in 1882. It was built to transport gold and silver ore from the more than 4,000 mining claims in and around Silverton, Colorado, to the smelters and mills in Durango, 45 miles to the south.

But in the 1910s, the Silverton mining boom began gradually subsiding. The D&SNG was then promoted as a scenic route for travelers and tourists. It remains as one of a very few surviving narrow-gauge steam railroads in the United States and is a favorite of railroad enthusiasts.

As it leaves Durango, the train's multiple-chime steam whistle can be heard reverberating throughout the town and along the Animas Valley. As it proceeds north, the train winds alongside the Animas River as it traverses the verdant green pastures of the Animas Valley and then crosses through the spectacular and breathtaking San Juan National Forest. The remote and treacherous route through the mountains includes a dramatic and stomach-churning stretch along the edge of a narrow shelf carved into the sheer granite cliffs 400 feet above the river. 

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

WE ARE ALL DESIGNIST:

It's not surprising that quantum physics has a reputation for being weird and counterintuitive. The world we're living in sure doesn't feel quantum mechanical. And until the 20th century, everyone assumed that the classical laws of physics devised by Isaac Newton and others -- according to which objects have well-defined positions and properties at all times -- would work at every scale. But Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and their contemporaries discovered that down among atoms and subatomic particles, this concreteness dissolves into a soup of possibilities. An atom typically can't be assigned a definite position, for example -- we can merely calculate the probability of finding it in various places. The vexing question then becomes: How do quantum probabilities coalesce into the sharp focus of the classical world?

Physicists sometimes talk about this changeover as the "quantum-classical transition." But in fact there's no reason to think that the large and the small have fundamentally different rules, or that there's a sudden switch between them. Over the past several decades, researchers have achieved a greater understanding of how quantum mechanics inevitably becomes classical mechanics through an interaction between a particle or other microscopic system and its surrounding environment.

One of the most remarkable ideas in this theoretical framework is that the definite properties of objects that we associate with classical physics -- position and speed, say -- are selected from a menu of quantum possibilities in a process loosely analogous to natural selection in evolution: The properties that survive are in some sense the "fittest." As in natural selection, the survivors are those that make the most copies of themselves. This means that many independent observers can make measurements of a quantum system and agree on the outcome -- a hallmark of classical behavior. [...]

At the heart of quantum Darwinism is the slippery notion of measurement -- the process of making an observation.

HIS MASTER'S VOICE:

OLD IDEAS WRAPPED UP IN NEW SHEETS:

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

"The report presents very substantial evidence that the president is guilty of high crime and misdemeanours, and we have to let Mueller present those facts to the American people and then see where we go from there," committee chairman Jerrold Nadler said on Fox News Sunday.

"The administration must be held accountable, and no president can be above the law."

FREE RANGE YOUR KIDS:

In his most recent book, The Coddling of the American Mind, Haidt soft pedals the evolutionary biology he relied on in his previous works, The Happiness Hypothesis and The Righteous Mind. The Coddling of the American Mind, was co-authored with Greg Lukianoff, the CEO and president of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Building on earlier work by the two authors, the book argues that free speech is the means by which a society preserves its connection to reality and prevents myths and slogans--whether progressive or reactionary--from overpowering facts. The cost in America of abandoning the commitment to free speech is evident, Lukianoff and Haidt say, by the armies of the righteous on both left and right gathering power to force their extremism on everyone else. 

The current anti-free-speech plague, Haidt and Lukianoff write, began in 2017. That was the year, fresh off the election of Donald Trump, when the UC Berkeley administration refused to restrain the violent demonstrators, many affiliated with the left-wing group Antifa, protesting a planned speech by Milo Yiannopoulos. Berkeley did not discipline a single student for smashing windows and beating up people who had the bad luck to get in the way of their rage. "The clear sign of being afraid of your students is that you will say nothing, nothing, that suggests that they are wrong," Haidt said at the Heterodox conference. "I can only name one example from a university president" of standing up to students, he added: Oberlin's former President Marvin Krislov, who refused in 2016 to respond to student protesters' "nonnegotiable" demands. 

The Coddling of the American Mind targets the progressive taboos that stop us from addressing the issues that progressives, paradoxically, are most concerned about. Haidt and Lukianoff quote Jeannie Suk Gersen, a Harvard law professor who says that discussing rape law in the classroom "has become so difficult that teachers are starting to give up on the subject."  She adds that if law professors stop mentioning sexual assault, that "would be a tremendous loss--above all to victims of sexual assault." 

The current student progressives differ from their '60s forebears because they deem themselves fragile, liable to be harmed by, for instance, depictions of women being treated badly by men. (I've experienced a few such objections myself when teaching college students books that show violence against women.) And so professors become PR agents for the masculine gender, carefully avoiding books that describe male brutality. After all, students are easily triggered, and they will be healthy and safe--so the story goes--if they can avoid triggers altogether. Meanwhile, campus health services pander to students who think themselves too psychologically fragile to handle disturbing opinions in the classroom. Not surprisingly, given the incentives created in these institutions, on some elite campuses 1 in 4 students consider themselves disabled, a huge spike from a few years ago. Our current idea is that higher education exists to protect young adults from stress, which as Haidt and Lukianoff point out is not the way to promote their future success in life, much less their strength of soul and open-mindedness. 

The reason college students see themselves as fragile beings who need protection is that they are shellshocked from the social media shame culture that has taken over our high schools. A few years ago, Haidt and Lukianoff write, Gen Z arrived on campus: kids born around 1996 who grew up with social media. "That's when things started to get weird," Haidt said at the Heterodox conference. "Safe? What do you mean? You don't feel safe because a book was assigned?" Gen Z, Haidt says, was given free range on social media but had vastly overprotected childhoods in every other way. The result: a college age culture in which self-righteously deriding other people is a sign of virtue, and everyone fears being called out. "We've got to get the age of social media raised from 13," Haidt said at Heterodox. "Girls in the fourth grade are getting Instagram accounts--all you do is lie about your age." 

"The recent spike in students' anxiety and depression is like nothing else in history," Haidt added, because they grew up exposed to online bullying and know they could be the next victim. Their aggression comes from fear that they might be pilloried themselves if they don't think or say the right things. College administrations fuel this paranoia. At NYU, for instance, posters urge students to call a "bias response hotline." "It's like East Germany," Haidt said to Bari Weiss in a 2017 Wall Street Journal interview, with the woke students playing the role of the Stasi. 

Shortly after 10 p.m. on a recent night, a car came to a stop at the edge of the woods. The door opened to release three children: towheaded boys of 12 and 15, and a 12-year-old girl with dark pigtails and an emoji-covered backpack. Then the driver threw the car into gear and sped away, gravel crunching under its tires.

They were tiny figures at the foot of the forest, miles from the summer camp they were attending, with only a primitive GPS to indicate the right direction. Darkness was falling. And they were alone.

They peered into the night: Was this the path?

"Could be," said Thomas, the 12-year-old team leader.

And then, because there was nothing else to do, they plunged into the woods.

This is the Dutch scouting tradition known as a "dropping," in which groups of children, generally pre-teenagers, are deposited in a forest and expected to find their way back to base. It is meant to be challenging, and they often stagger in at 2 or 3 in the morning.

THE lEFT IS THE rIGHT:

Support for British Labour head Jeremy Corbyn has fallen significantly among party members, many of whom are dissatisfied with his leadership in the face of Brexit and a growing anti-Semitism crisis that has developed under his leadership, a new poll conducted on behalf of the Times of London has found.

According to survey, which was carried out by pollster YouGov, two fifths of Labour members want Corbyn, who has led the party since 2015, to resign before the next general election while fully a quarter demand that he step down immediately.

Over half disapprove of Corbyn's approach to Brexit and 48 percent have stated that he has handled anti-Semitism either fairly or very badly.

If this were just Gorka, you could dismiss it as trolling. But his tweets were only a particularly brazen example of how right-wing gentiles are wrapping themselves in a smarmy philo-Semitism to attack the left, even when that means attacking either individual Jews or the political interests of most Jewish Americans.

VERY FINE PEOPLE:

60-40 NATION:

ALL OF THE BATTLEGROUNDS ARE RED:

The battle for the Senate is coming down to five states where Republicans are defending seats: Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, and North Carolina. If Democrats can't hold Sen. Doug Jones's seat in ruby-red Alabama--a very difficult task--they'll need to win at least four of those five races. (Should Trump win reelection, they'll need a clean sweep.)

Georgia and Texas, once seen as compelling opportunities, are looking further out of reach for Democrats. And despite GOP dysfunction in Kansas and strong Democratic fundraising against Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, those conservative states are still heavily favored to elect Republicans next year.

But the GOP's standing in the traditional swing states is looking more tenuous. The prospect of a Democratic sweep isn't out of the question, especially given the polarized nature of the electorate. If Democrats simply carry the states where Trump is viewed unfavorably, they'd win at least 50 Senate seats.

Down the ballot, Morning Consult's latest round of polls measuring the approval ratings of sitting senators should also concern Republicans. While most senators boast net-positive approval ratings, three Republicans up in 2020 are in precarious shape.

That list includes Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who has long enjoyed strong bipartisan support even in tough political times. She now holds the highest disapproval rating in the country. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina has the lowest approval rating of any senator, according to the survey. Sen. Cory Gardner, running in the bluest state of any Republican up in 2020, is viewed favorably by only 37 percent of Coloradans.

The two other swing-state GOP senators aren't faring much better. Sen. Martha McSally of Arizona holds a 40-37 job approval-disapproval rating, a sign of vulnerability. And Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, despite her reputation as a popular figure back home, holds a tenuous 42-38 approval-disapproval rating.

In FY 2006, the median immigrant bond price was just $50. Last fiscal year, the median was $8,000.

"This is an administration that loves detention," says former immigration judge Paul Schmidt. https://t.co/OWt8WJFMq4

— Axios (@axios) July 21, 2019

MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE:

WHAT TRUMPBOTS MEAN:

Reps. @AOC, @RashidaTlaib, @IlhanMN and @AyannaPressley are not "capable of loving" America, the president said. https://t.co/QqdAeHRCyK

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) July 21, 2019

WHAT TRUMPBOTS ARE DEFENDING:

With Trump again retweeting the extreme racist -- #KatieHopkins -- four times today

This is a Must Read informative thread👇by @AdamWagner1 from June (the prior time Trump quote tweeted Hopkins).https://t.co/b6gtXv9mRn

— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) July 20, 2019

ALONG THE ANGLOSPHERE:

THE ANTI-AMERICAN AVATAR:

Trump says if you don't love America, leave it.

He's been bashing the U.S. for years. pic.twitter.com/Kyk5oRXx1U

— VICE News (@vicenews) July 19, 2019

LOOKING UP FROM OUR NAVELS:

NASA deserves a lot of credit. A space agency funded by 4 percent of the world's population, it is responsible for launching 100 percent of the rovers that have ever wheeled on Mars; all the probes that have visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto; nearly all the major space telescopes; and all the people who have ever walked on the Moon. But while its robotic planetary exploration and space astronomy programs continue to produce epic results, for nearly half a century its human spaceflight effort has been stuck in low Earth orbit.

The reason for this is simple: NASA's space science programs accomplish a lot because they are mission-driven. In contrast, the human spaceflight program has allowed itself to become constituency-driven (or, to put it less charitably, vendor-driven). In consequence, the space science programs spend money in order to do things, while the human spaceflight program does things in order to spend money. Thus, the efforts of the science programs are focused and directed, while those of the human spaceflight program are purposeless and entropic.

This was not always so. During the Apollo period, NASA's human spaceflight program was strongly mission-driven. We did not go to the Moon because there were three random constituency-backed programs to develop Saturn V boosters, command modules, and lunar excursion vehicles, which luckily happened to fit together, and which needed something to do to justify their funding. Rather, we had a clear goal -- sending humans to the Moon within a decade  -- from which we derived a mission plan, which then dictated vehicle designs, which in turn defined necessary technology developments. That's why the elements of the flight hardware set all fit together. But in the period since, with no clear mission, things have worked the other way.

Neither the space shuttle nor the International Space Station were designed as parts of any well-conceived plan to send humans to the Moon or Mars. Insistence that they be included as part of such programs only served to make them infeasible. More recently, other constituencies in NASA have made demands that any expedition to the Moon or Mars make use of new hobbyhorses, including variously a space station or asteroid fragment in lunar orbit, or high-powered electric propulsion, none of which are necessary, desirable, or arguably even acceptable for near-term human exploration.

NASA's current plan for the "Lunar Gateway" space station (formerly known as the Deep Space Gateway, and then until a few months ago as the "Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway," or LOP-G -- I am not making this up) is a case in point. If you want to understand the merit of this project, consider a business proposition where you are offered a chance to rent an office in Saskatoon. Under the terms proposed, you will need to pay to build the office building and agree to a thirty-year lease at $100,000 per month rent, with no exit clause. In addition, you will need to spend one month per year in Saskatoon and travel through Saskatoon on your way to anywhere else for the rest of your life.

That, in a nutshell, is the Gateway project. It will cost a fortune to build and a fortune to maintain, and it will add to the propulsion requirements and timing constraints of all missions to the Moon and Mars that are forced to stop there -- as they surely will, since otherwise the pointlessness of building it will be revealed to the public. It is not an asset but a liability, or rather an entitlement, created for no other purpose but to provide a mechanism to drain agency funds to NASA's largest contractors.

This is unacceptable. NASA's space program is our space program. It does not belong to the major aerospace contractors, or even to NASA's management. It belongs to us. That some of the money NASA's human spaceflight office throws around on useless projects might end up in the hands of entrepreneurial space companies is not enough. The American people deserve a space program that is really going somewhere. We are paying for it. We have a right to insist on real results.

The mission needs to come first. The NASA human spaceflight program needs a clear, driving goal, which should be to initiate a permanent human presence on the Moon and Mars within a decade. Such a deadline is as necessary as a defined destination, because without it, the goal has no force, and activities will continue to be directed by the entropic pressure of vendors or political constituencies, rather than by the alleged purpose.

Rather than continue paying for endless cost-plus contracts to "develop" things with no real purpose, NASA needs to set clear goals and contract for services to support those goals. So, for example, let's say enabling human lunar exploration is the goal -- as it currently supposedly is. NASA should put out a request for proposals to industry for systems to deliver cargos to the Moon, and astronauts round-trip, offering to match development costs dollar for dollar and to award a certain number of missions to the best bidders. Whoever got such a contract would be strongly incentivized to minimize development cost and time because they would be paying half the cost out of pocket and would not start making a profit until actual missions began.

OFAY NONSENSE:

 "Holy, Holy, Holy!" has been chosen in a March Madness-like tournament as "the greatest hymn of all time."

The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada announced the winner on Thursday (July 18), the last day of its annual conference in Dallas.

"Some matchups were real nail-biters, while in others one hymn blew its opposition out of the water!" reads a Thursday post on the society's Facebook page. "Yesterday was the final round and we can safely say that the Greatest Hymn of All Time -- as chosen by you -- is: Holy, Holy Holy!!!"

More than 800 people, mostly members of the 1,200-member Hymn Society, voted on the society's website, on Facebook and, in the last rounds, in person at the conference during the competition that featured brackets similar to the springtime NCAA basketball tradition.

Hymn experts said it was fitting, if not surprising, that "Holy, Holy, Holy!" -- which trounced "Amazing Grace," 70% to 30% in the second round -- defeated its musical challengers.

Christopher Phillips, author of the 2018 book "The Hymnal: A Reading History," said "Holy, Holy, Holy!" is "something of a natural champion among hymns of various eras.

"The words and music have a stately, majestic quality, something many worshippers want to associate with the traditional hymn repertoire," he said.

Phillips, a professor at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, added that the hymn's tune by English clergyman John B. Dykes is one of the 19th century's best. The words by Anglican bishop Reginald Heber, he said, "are an elegant way of affirming the basic belief in the Trinity that unites most Christian denominations regardless of other doctrinal differences."

REALITY IS A TOUGH TASKMASTER:

USSR and post-Soviet Russia combined? 4 women astronauts since 1963. The USA? Almost 50, including all these firsts: mother, Chinese-born woman, payload specialist, married couple, black woman, hispanic woman, shuttle pilot and commander, ISS commander, and teacher. Also oldest. https://t.co/SFQLyjw9Gm

— Holly (Maths Geek) (@hollymathnerd) July 18, 2019

IN THE COUNTRY OF SIM:

I don't remember how I discovered OOTP Baseball, but I was instantly hooked. To the point where I'd get yelled at for spacing out and getting lost in the game as I ran my team into the year 2023, overseeing a World Series champion Padres team that featured Jedd Gyorko (the lone holdover), League MVP Miguel Sanó, José Berríos, and an aging Stephen Strasburg.

I made trades, I hoarded minor leaguers, I fired my head scout and manager in 2018 and replaced them quickly for the first of three title runs in four years. And it was awesome. But there was another real-life element that I quickly discovered.

A prospect named Christian Walker was my starting first baseman in fictional 2018, and was putting up monster numbers -- to the point where I felt the need to trade away my incumbent, Anthony Rizzo, for prospects. It got Walker on my fantasy radar, I grabbed him in real-life dynasty leagues... and here we are, several years later, when he's an impact first baseman for the Diamondbacks.

There were other prospects who popped up on my fantasy radar thanks to playing OOTP several seasons into the future. And some final-year stats for established players in the fictional universe were great, too -- everything from unexpected players hitting 40-plus home runs to Cy Young awards for previously unheralded pitchers. When it came close to fruition in real life the next year, I took notice.

So I dropped the OOTP developers a note and asked if they'd run a sim for the second half of this season for us -- with the idea being that maybe the process would unearth some surprise performances fantasy players could dig deeper on. There were plenty, along with some weird splits for a few players and a devastating injury for a jinxed closer.

Away we go...

END THE EMPLOYER SUBSIDY AND MAKE EVERYONE BEHAVE LIKE A CONSUMER:

Health care is one of retirees' biggest expenses, but it's not just because older people tend to access more medical services. Even if you never visit the doctor, your insurance bill will be higher in retirement than it was when you were working, according to a new analysis.

That's because retirees pay a bigger share of their premiums under Medicare than they did under their employer's health insurance. Employers generally subsidize around 75% of their employees' health insurance premiums, leaving employees responsible for just a quarter of the monthly costs, according to HealthView Services, a Danvers, Mass.-based company that provides health care cost data to financial advisors.

In retirement, however, you're responsible for 100% of your Medicare premiums. And that often comes as a surprise.

YOU TAKE THE GROWING STATES; WE'LL TAKE THE DYING ONES:

[T]rump's really trying to thread the needle here. A lot of things can go wrong.

His net approval rating remains negative (currently -9 points), as it has throughout a presidency in which he has focused on hardline immigration policies and racial resentment.

Further, Trump's Republican Party lost the 2018 midterm elections, which were held under similar conditions as today. Trump's net approval rating was -9 points in the 2018 exit poll. The result was that Trump's Republican Party lost 40 House seats and the House popular vote by 9 points.

In the final weeks of that cycle, Republicans were not helped by Trump continuously pointing out in the final weeks of that campaign that migrants were coming up through Central America. Voters who decided in the final month of the 2018 campaign were as likely to vote Democratic as those who decided before then.

It remains unclear if Trump can compensate his unpopularity by demonizing the Democratic nominee this time around.

And remember, Trump also risks raising turnout among nonwhite voters. That's not a big deal in a state like Wisconsin, which is very white. It could, however, take Sunbelt states moving to the left, like Arizona and Texas, and put them into play for the Democrats.

If either Arizona or Texas go blue, it opens up a lot of electoral college paths for the eventual Democratic nominee.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton head into the final hours of the 2016 presidential campaign with the worst election-eve images of any major-party presidential candidates Gallup has measured back to 1956. Majorities of Americans now view each of them unfavorably on a 10-point favorability scale, a first for any presidential standard-bearer on this long-term Gallup trend. Trump's image is worse than Clinton's, however, with 61% viewing him negatively on the 10-point scale compared with 52% for her.

WE'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE AND OVERCOME OUR DISEASE:

In order to give life to that movement, Buckley specifically chose to rid its ranks of people who espoused the sort of anti-Semitism that once was inescapable on the American right.

Buckley would himself acknowledge that prejudice was a presence in his own home growing up. And as a youngster, Buckley admitted that he was a fan of Charles Lindbergh and his "America First" movement, whose flirtation with anti-Semitism was of a piece with its advocacy of appeasement of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany.

But as National Review took flight in the late 1950s, anti-Semitic writers found themselves on the outside looking in. So, too, did apologists for the extremist John Birch Society.

But despite the fact that his conservatism was one that was informed by his own Catholic faith (something that was consistently made clear in the pages of National Review), Buckley made his journal, and by extension, the movement for which it served as an unofficial bible, off-limits to the anti-Semitism that was commonplace in the world in which he grew up.

Though he didn't always agree with all of its policies, Buckley was also a consistent supporter of Israel. A staunch anti-Communist, he was also deeply supportive of the movement to free Soviet Jewry at a time when many in this country (including some Jews) were loath to speak out because it might be interpreted as opposition to a policy of detente with Moscow.

Long after he chased the Birchers out of NR, Buckley found himself forced to confront the issue again. When longtime colleagues Pat Buchanan and Joseph Sobran used their bully pulpits on the right to bash Israel and stigmatize Jews for their support for the state, it was again Buckley who took on the haters.

Buckley repudiated Sobran's writing, which he labeled anti-Semitic, and pushed him off the magazine's masthead.

As the issue continued to percolate in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf war in December 1991, he devoted an entire issue of the magazine to an essay titled "In Search of Anti-Semitism" (which was also the title of the book he later published on the same subject), in which he took on Buchanan, who was preparing an insurgent run for the White House against the first President Bush.

His conclusion was damning: "I find it impossible to defend Pat Buchanan against the charge that what he did and said during the period under examination amounted to anti-Semitism, whatever it was that drove him to say and do it," Buckley wrote.

Though Buchanan would continue to snipe away on television, it was largely Buckley's doing that he and others like him would do so from outside a perch in one of our two major parties rather than inside it.

When the conservative editor and intellectual William F. Buckley, Jr., ran for mayor of New York in 1965, he may have been the first conservative to endorse affirmative action, or, as he called it, "the kind of special treatment [of African Americans] that might make up for centuries of oppression." He also promised to crack down on labor unions that discriminated against minorities, a cause even his liberal opponents were unwilling to embrace. Buckley pointed out the inherent unfairness in the administration of drug laws and in judicial sentencing. He also advanced a welfare "reform" plan whose major components were job training, education and daycare.

In 1969, in his capacity as founding editor of National Review, launched a decade and a half earlier as a "conservative weekly journal of opinion" that stood in opposition to the dominant liberal ethos of the time, Buckley toured African-American neighborhoods in Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles and Atlanta organized by the Urban League and afterward singled out for special praise "community organizers" who were working "in straightforward social work in the ghettos." In an article in Look magazine months later, Buckley anticipated that the United States could well elect an African-American president within a decade, and that this milestone would confer the same reassurance and social distinction upon African Americans that Roman Catholics had felt upon the election of John F. Kennedy. That, he said, would be "welcome tonic" for the American soul.

This Buckley, who emerged in the years after 1965, bore little resemblance to the one who, eight years earlier in 1957, had penned an editorial he titled "Why the South Must Prevail"--in which he declared the white race the more "advanced" race and, as such, the most fit to govern. What happened in those eight years that sparked this change in attitude and policy advocacy on Buckley's part? How did a man who later proclaimed his greatest legacy was keeping the conservative movement free of bigots, kooks and anti-Semites move past a nakedly racist editorial like that?

It was the convergence of political shifts--particularly in the South, where the more genteel, states' rights-focused politicians were giving way to more overtly racist, populist demagogues--and his own personal introspection, rooted particularly in his religious faith and his own intellectual concerns about the integrity of conservatism. Buckley's evolution makes for important context today, particularly in the wake of the 2016 election. As Republican standard-bearers struggle with how to discourage the alt-righters and white nationalists and new wave of populists that Donald Trump's campaign apparently surfaced, they might do well to pay attention to how exactly Buckley began his search and how he charted out a new course for conservatism at a time when polarization over civil rights threatened to tear the GOP apart.

"Why the South Must Prevail" is shocking to the 21st century reader. The piece put National Review on record in favor of both legal segregation where it existed (in accordance with the "states' rights" principle) and the right of southern whites to discriminate against southern blacks, on the basis of their "Negro backwardness." The editorial defended the right of whites to govern exclusively, even in jurisdictions where they did not constitute a majority of the population.

In the same op-ed, Buckley concluded that as long as African Americans remained "backward" in education and in economic progress, Southern whites had a right to "impose superior mores for whatever period it takes to affect a genuine cultural equality between the races." In defense of his position that whites, for the time being, remained the "more advanced race," Buckley pointed to the name a major civil rights organization, The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had adopted for itself as evidence that its founders considered its constituents "less advanced." He offered no guidance as to how blacks might attain what he called "cultural equality," save for by the sufferance of the white population.

It's important to understand how Buckley rationalized such thinking because it's at the root of his later transformation. National Review justified its position on the grounds that whites were "the more advanced race," and as such were "entitled to rule." Buckley, the author of the editorial, made no mention of the role Southern whites had played, through the social and legal systems they had put into place, in keeping Southern blacks from rising to the point where he--or their white neighbors--would consider them "advanced" and therefore eligible to participate in the region's governance. He went so far as to condone the violence whites committed to perpetuate segregation.

National Review's opposition to federal civil rights legislation put it at odds not only with self-proclaimed "modern Republicans" such as Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. (In 1957, years before he adopted the southern strategy, Nixon was one of the highest-profile defenders of civil rights in the Republican Party). But it also put him at odds with conservative Republicans, whom the magazine supported editorially, such as Senate Minority Leader William Knowland, the 1957 Civil Rights bill's primary sponsor.

Buckley's 1957 opposition to legislative and other attempts to enforce Brown vs. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision that declared segregated schools unconstitutional, betrayed more than a defense of the rights of states to impose segregation and unequal treatment of citizens, but also his reservations about democracy's capacity to enhance freedom. In a subsequent editorial of "clarification," Buckley proposed in the name of racial equality an alternative to disenfranchising all African Americans on account of their race: All states should disenfranchise the uneducated of all races. He saw no reason to confine such practices to the South. In Buckley's view, too many ignorant people were being allowed to vote elsewhere.

As he contemplated the merits of the franchise and to whom to extend it, Buckley had restated views he had advanced while a student at Millbrook, his preparatory school. In a term paper he had written for his headmaster, Buckley maintained that uneducated voters might be manipulated by demagogues into surrendering some of their freedom in exchange for benefits raised through taxation of the citizenry. In staking out this position, Buckley was taking his place in a long line of conservative theorists beginning as far back as Aristotle, who saw in such democratic practices the roots of tyranny.

It was these intellectual currents that turned Buckley away from the Southern politicians of the time--and toward his reversal on civil rights.

ONLY HILLARY'S SERVER REMAINS UNBREACHED:

Red faces in Moscow this weekend, with the news that hackers have successfully targeted FSB--Russia's Federal Security Service, making off with 7.5 terabytes of data which exposed secret projects to de-anonymize Tor browsing, scrape social media, and help the state split its internet off from the rest of the world. The data was passed to mainstream media outlets for publishing.

A week ago, on July 13, hackers under the name 0v1ru$ reportedly breached SyTech, a major FSB contractor working on a range of live and exploratory internet projects. With the data stolen, 0v1ru$ left a smiling Yoba Face on SyTech's homepage alongside pictures purporting to showcase the breach. 0v1ru$ then passed the data itself to the larger hacking group Digital Revolution, which shared the files with various media outlets and the headlines with Twitter--taunting FSB that the agency should maybe rename one of its breached activities "Project Collander."

ONE OTHER PROBLEM WITH THE REPUBLICAN BUBBLE...:

Proponents say that mandating rooftop solar will cause the cost of installations to drop even further and also potentially encourage more innovation in distributed solar and home energy storage. In preparation for an influx of solar from rooftop installations, grid utilities might also be forced to make much-needed upgrades to energy distribution infrastructure.

And there's another benefit to the rooftop solar mandate proponents cite that's harder to quantify: its influence on public opinion. Requiring rooftop solar on new homes normalizes it. The idea is that if homeowners in older buildings see solar installations go up on new homes, they might be more persuaded to switch their own energy systems to renewable. And it's likely that the increased visibility of home solar installations might make people more amenable to supporting larger-scale policy shifts in favor of renewable energy.

Though this public-opinion ripple effect is difficult to quantify, a new study from CITE Research, a market research firm for communications campaigns, finds evidence that it's already happening. In a nationally representative poll of 2,000 people, 70% said that they would support a version of California's rooftop solar policy being mandated nationwide.

"We've seen all the surveys about general support for solar," says David Bywater, CEO of Vivint Solar, a residential solar installation company that commissioned the survey. He nods specifically to a 2016 Pew Research study that found 89% of Americans supported expanding rooftop solar. But the fact that support for a national mandate around rooftop solar is nearly as high shows that public sentiment is translating into policy. "In a lot of cases, people might say that California's policy is the big hand of government overreaching," Bywater says. "But it's actually what the people want."

IF ANYONE WERE SERIOUS ABOUT THIS STUFF...:

[A]t Wimbledon this year the winner of the men's title Novak Djokovic earned £2.3m, while the winner of the women's title Simona Halep got exactly the same amount. It has been a principle for a number of years now that there is no difference in men's and women's pay at the top of tennis. So normalised has it become that to question the policy is to immediately occupy the misogynistic position - and who but some unreconstructed neanderthal wants to do that?

Well, here goes: there is something wrong about equal pay, at least in the four grand slam tournaments. The problem was exemplified in this year's respective Wimbledon singles finals. Djokovic took four hours and 57 minutes to beat Roger Federer in an epic match that tested every aspect of the two competitors: skill, stamina, mental strength, you name it.

Halep, by contrast, finished her match against Serena Williams in just 56 minutes. That is more than four hours less time than the men's final. The Romanian played the match of her life and deserved to win. But still, 56 minutes? You don't book Centre Court by the hour. One reason for the disparity is that in grand slam events, men play the best of five sets. But the women play the same as they do in any other tournament on the circuit: the best of three sets.

THE ONLY SPORT THAT'S GOTTEN MORE DIFFICULT:

How?!

(via @MLB) pic.twitter.com/fqIfsQzxVG

— SI MLB (@si_mlb) July 21, 2019

IT'S A NGO GO ZONE:

Tommy Robinson 'decked in prison shower by man, 70, for acting like a celebrity' https://t.co/8voADX6jyI pic.twitter.com/51wZHv6hQs

— Daily Mirror (@DailyMirror) July 21, 2019

"WHAT SPOTS?", THE LEOPARD ASKED:

 Amy Wax, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who was removed from teaching first-year students last year after writing an article questioning the abilities of black students, offered what she called "the cultural case" for reduced immigration.

She defended President Trump's vulgar comment last year disparaging immigration from certain countries, to laughter and applause. And she dismissed the idea that immigrants somehow became American simply by living here, which Ms. Wax (borrowing a term used by white nationalists and self-described "race realists") mocked as the "magic dirt" argument.

There's no reason that "people who come here will quickly come to think, live and act just like us." she said. Immigration policy, she said, should take into account "cultural compatibility."

"In effect," she said, this "means taking the position that our country will be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites."

...AND CHEAPER...:

READ FURTHER:

You could say that I always had conservative tendencies. But I prefer to call them American. I was born and grew up in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Up until the start of the Bosnian war (the Siege of Sarajevo began in April 1992), I lived an ordinary life like most people there. That is, if you consider living in Communist Yugoslavia normal. The Soviet Union it was not, but neither was it "socialism with a human face."

I was born a Muslim, and for the most part I considered myself a cultural and ethnic Muslim rather then a fully practicing one. I began to think more deeply about my identity only once the war began. Muslims were targeted and eliminated. The Bosnian war brought the phrase "ethnic cleansing" into the public sphere.

As much as I was close to death more times than I'd care to remember, I was spared. I left my home by the end of 1992 in a convoy of women and children bound for a refugee camp in the Czech Republic.

Having spent almost four years in the camp, I did not want to go back to Bosnia. I was set on coming to America, and so I applied through the refugee resettlement program. My application was rejected and, out of both anger and desire, I wrote an appeal. That was a success, and I found myself on American soil in May 1996, just a few months shy of my 17th birthday.

Parallel to my geographic travels and constant uprooting was an odyssey of the mind. In many ways, books saved my life and kept me from being overcome by the darkness of my painful memories.

As I got older, I found myself navigating through the world of politics. Everything was political then, trending toward the absurd. On the surface, I subscribed to many of the liberal theories du jour. University space has a way of leading you into that abyss of identity politics, political correctness, and the worst offender of them all, collectivism. And yet, I was growing more and more restless. I was always interested in the order of things. By nature, I am a seeker of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, and I found myself increasingly surrounded by acts that were contra naturam.

Then I discovered William F. Buckley, Jr.

THE ANALYSIS NEED GET NO FURTHER THAN "KHAN":

Donald Trump just tweeted that London will "never be safe" under Sadiq Kahn pic.twitter.com/xAZ8n2Gcsu

— James Felton (@JimMFelton) July 20, 2019

ALL RACE, ALL THE TIME (profanity alert):

Over decades in business, entertainment and now politics, Mr. Trump has approached America's racial, ethnic and religious divisions opportunistically, not as the nation's wounds to be healed but as openings to achieve his goals, whether they be ratings, fame, money or power, without regard for adverse consequences.

He was accused by government investigators in the 1970s of refusing to rent apartments to black tenants (he denied it but settled the case) and made a name for himself in the 1980s by championing the return of the death penalty when five black and Hispanic teenagers were charged with raping a jogger. They were later exonerated. He threatened to sell his Mar-a-Lago estate to the Unification Church in 1991 and unleash "thousands of Moonies" if city officials in Palm Beach, Fla., did not allow him to carve up his property.

Taking on competitors of his Atlantic City casinos, he questioned whether rival owners were really Native Americans entitled to federal recognition -- then later teamed up with another tribe when there was money to be made. With his eye on the White House, he opened a yearslong drive to convince Americans that President Barack Obama was really born in Africa.

His own campaign in 2016 was marked by slurs against Mexicans, a proposed Muslim ban and other furors. To deflect criticism, two campaign officials said they regularly positioned a supporter nicknamed "Michael the Black Man" so cameras would show him behind Mr. Trump at his rallies.

In the White House, Mr. Trump equated "both sides" of a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., referred to African nations as "shithole countries" and said Nigerian visitors to the United States would never "go back to their huts."

LET THEM ALL GO FREE:

U.S. should close migrant "concentration camps" before complaining about Xinjiang abuses, Chinese media says https://t.co/XwxtDsw6df

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) July 20, 2019

WHY THE TRUMPBOTS ARE SO SCARED:

On Nov. 7, 2018, I woke up to some astounding news: Two Muslim women had been elected to the House of Representatives. And in my Queens district, a young progressive, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who had defeated our longtime congressman, went on to become the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. At that moment, seeing what women like me were able to achieve, I became convinced that my own political aspirations could become a reality.

This week, I watched in horror as President Trump escalated attacks on one of those new Muslim congresswomen, Ilhan Omar, at a campaign rally in North Carolina, including falsely accusing her of being a supporter of Al Qaeda, as audience members chanted "Send her back." Ms. Omar responded eloquently to his vicious attacks, tweeting, "I am where I belong, at the people's house and you're just gonna have to deal!" But I worry about those chants turning into something more sinister.

When I was growing up, I thought I wanted to pursue a career in medicine. I was surrounded by many women in medicine with a similar background to mine: My doctor was a Muslim woman, and many of the older Muslim girls I knew were aspiring physicians, nurses or pharmacists. There were no Muslim politicians for me to look up to, so I did not even consider that career path as an option.

Then in January 2018 I was invited to go to the Women's March with Seventeen magazine. I was 16 at the time and it was inspiring to meet everyday Americans turned activists, actresses, politicians -- some of them Muslim, like me. As I reflected on my experience at the march, I began to think that maybe I could be a force for change. I felt compelled to do something about the systems put in place that hurt me as a low-income, Muslim, Arab-American woman and others like myself. I wanted to help those both within and outside my community.

THANKS, UR!:

Thousands of people turned out in Moscow on Saturday to support the right of opposition candidates to be allowed to take part in elections to Moscow's city legislature, which are set to take place on September 8. The protest in the center of the Russian capital was organized by the country's Libertarian Party and had been authorized. The independent monitor "White counter" said 22,500 people attended the rally, while police put the figure at 12,000.

Protesters in the crowd chanted "Let them run!," "This is our city!" and "For free elections!"

Opposition politician Alexei Navalny was present, shaking protesters' hands and talking to the candidates who weren't registered. This issue is one of the rare ones to unite Russia's usually divided opposition.

Navalny made this point as he addressed the crowds: "Usually it is my exclusive right" not to be registered for elections, he joked, referring to the 2018  presidential elections in which he was not allowed to run. "But this has united us."

Navalny told journalists the mayor's office in Moscow would not be able to ignore such a huge crowd. He also insisted authorities could not ignore the huge number of people who planned to vote for independent candidates and had added their names to the signature lists the candidates need to collect to be registered.  

THANKS, DONALD:

[T]here were some oddities to the British decision. Few previous shipments of oil to Syria have been impounded. The Spanish claim that the British acted under the instruction of the Americans. The Trump administration is trying to freeze all Iranian oil exports as part of its policy of maximum economic sanctions designed to force the Iranians to reopen talks on the nuclear deal signed in 2015.

But Britain opposes that US policy, arguing that it is counterproductive and only likely to strengthen the hands of hardliners in Tehran.

Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister and co-chair of the European council on foreign relations, pinpointed the ambiguities of the British action in Gibraltar: "The legality of the UK seizure of a tanker heading for Syria with oil from Iran intrigues me. One refers to EU sanctions against Syria, but Iran is not a member of the EU. And the EU as a principle doesn't impose its sanctions on others. That's what the US does."

To the Iranian eye, the British action had nothing to do with an EU embargo, and everything to do with an desire to support the US squeeze on Iranian oil exports, the quickest route to bringing the Iranian economy to its knees. Some reports estimate that Iranian exports are down to 200,000 barrels a month.

Britain's efforts to extricate itself started to emerge at the weekend, when Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, rang his Iranian opposite number, Javad Zarif, and said the ship could be released if there was an undertaking that the ship would no longer travel to Syria.

But trust between Hunt and Zairif is low: Zarif feels let down by Hunt on a range of bilateral issues, including the case of Nazaninin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the Iranian dual national imprisoned in Tehran.

NOW DO THE THING WHERE YOU PRETEND HE'S DIFFERENT THAN RICHARD SPENCER:

Right-wing commentator Katie Hopkins has been condemnd for blaming the "Chief Rabbi and his support for mass migration" into Europe for the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in which 11 died.

Robert Bowers, the suspected shooter, is purported to have kept a social media account that sent antisemitic messages in the hours before the attack.

Two days after the mass shooting stunned the Jewish communty, Ms Hopkins tweeted she was "watching the pin-the-blame on the donkey".

"Look to the Chief Rabbi and his support for mass migration across the Med," she wrote. "There you will find your truths."

THE ONLY BATTLEGROUNDS ARE RED:

Trump's monumental unpopularity is threatening his reelection chances in two red states in the deep south: Georgia and North Carolina. A PPP poll released Friday shows Trump losing both states to a generic Democrat.

In Georgia, Trump trails 50 percent - 46 percent, while his numbers in North Carolina are slightly worse, trailing 49 percent - 44 percent.

POD FODDER:

Join us as we count down the final 13-minute descent from 18:45 GMT on Saturday 20 July

Download the story of the Apollo 11 mission with the 13 Minutes to the Moon podcast.

WHERE THE WAR ENDS:

AN AESTHETIC PROBLEM, NOT ECONOMIC:

BERNIE WHO?:

AMERICAN MAID:

Responding to Trump's accusations, Omar tells Al Jazeera: "Those [9/11] are horrific attacks. There's no question about it, that's not a debatable thing. Innocent Americans lost their lives that day, we all mourn their deaths ... And I think it's quite disgusting that people even question that and want to debate that."

Trump made the comments after Omar said Muslims in America have lost access to their civil liberties because they are collectively seen to be responsible for the attacks claimed by al-Qaeda.

"What is important is the larger point that I was speaking to," Omar clarifies, "which is about making sure that blame isn't placed on a whole faith, that we as Muslims are not collectively blamed for the actions of terrorists."

"I do not blame every single white person when we have a white man who massacres children at a school, or moviegoers in a movie theatre. And I think this really horrendous narrative that says, as a Muslim, I'm supposed to explain, apologise, for the actions of someone who's also terrorising me, is absurd."

Omar is critical of Trump's leadership and has supported calls for him to be impeached.

"I always said it wasn't the question of whether he should be impeached, but when. And we are seeing now so many people are coming to that conclusion," she says. "This president said he didn't see any problem in having a foreign, hostile government [Russia] intervene in our elections. He didn't understand how that could be a problem ... We do not accept information that is going to change the trajectory of our elections, from hostile governments."

Omar is vocal in her opposition to other US-foreign allegiances, including the relationship with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

"How can we make a decision to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia, knowing that they have been part of causing one of the most atrocious humanitarian crises in Yemen, when we know that they have a hand in what's happening right now in Sudan, what's happening in Libya, and the list can go on and on and on," she says.

"Our alliedship with Saudi Arabia and the Emirates is immoral. I believe that it is one of the most absurd alliedships; it doesn't fit with any of our values. When we think about what is in the interest of our national security, entrusting them to help us with that is like trusting a thief to watch over your shop. We know that they can't be trusted in that process."

Omar acknowledges the challenges posed by the current US administration, but believes the polarisation it creates has resulted in some positive side effects, including mass mobilisation of voters and the election of the most diverse Congress in US history.

STEELE, YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD:

The unsealed affidavit does not flatly assert that the Hicks was part of a discussion about paying off Daniels. But it supported that possibility. On Thursday night, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) wrote to Hicks and her attorney, Robert Trout, asking her to clarify apparent inconsistencies in her testimony "in very short order--but not later than August 15, 2019." Nadler said that unsealed material "raises substantial questions about the accuracy" of several of Hicks' claims.

In a statement Friday, Trout said that Hicks' testimony was accurate. "Reports claiming that Ms. Hicks was involved in conversations about 'hush money' payments on October 8, 2016, or knew that payments were being discussed, are simply wrong," Trout said. "Ms. Hicks stands by her truthful testimony that she first became aware of this issue in early November 2016, as the result of press inquiries, and she will be responding formally to Chairman Nadler's letter as requested."

Hicks previously offered more detail on the October 8 call with Trump and Cohen. During her June testimony, she said the call was about rumors she'd heard about "a tape involving Mr. Trump in Moscow with, you know--can I say this?...with Russian hookers, participating in some lewd activities." Hicks explained that she "wanted to make sure that I stayed on top of it before it developed any further, to try to contain it from spiraling out of control." She said she had heard that the gossip site TMZ might have "access to this tape," and she knew Cohen was friendly with TMZ founder Harvey Levin.

"VERY FINE PEOPLE":

Charlottesville, VIRGINIA - Benjamin Daley, Michael Miselis, and Thomas Gillen, members of the white-supremacist organization formerly known as the Rise Above Movement (RAM), were sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville for violence they committed as part of their conspiracy to riot, including at the August 2017 Unite the Riot Rally in Charlottesville, and other alleged political rallies in California. The announcement was made by United States Attorney Thomas T. Cullen, Special Agent in Charge David W. Archey of the FBI's Richmond Division, and Colonel Gary T. Settle of the Virginia State Police.

Daley, 26, of Torrance, Calif., was sentenced today to 37 months in prison. Gillen, 25, of Redondo Beach, was sentenced to 33 months in prison. Miselis, 30, of Lawndale, Calif., was sentenced to 27 months in prison. A fourth defendant, Cole Evan White, will be sentenced at a future date. All four defendants previously pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to riot.

"These defendants, motivated by hateful ideology, incited and committed acts of violence in Charlottesville, as well at other purported political rallies in California," U.S. Attorney Cullen stated today.  "They were not interested in peaceful protest or lawful First Amendment expression; instead, they intended to provoke and engage in street battles with those that they perceived as their enemies.  I am grateful for the diligence and hard work of the FBI and Virginia State Police in bringing these violent white supremacists to justice."

WHAT TOUCHING NAIVETE:

In my farewell message to colleagues, I cited philosophical differences over the best way to protect reproductive health. While the traditional approach has been through prioritizing advocating for abortion rights, I have long believed that the most effective way to advance reproductive health is to be clear that it is not a political issue but a health care one. I believed we could expand support for Planned Parenthood -- and ultimately for abortion access -- by finding common ground with the large majority of Americans who can unite behind the goal of improving the health and well-being of women and children.

When the board hired me to chart this new course, I knew that it would be challenging. Few organizations, let alone organizations under constant siege, accept change easily. Indeed, there was immediate criticism that I did not prioritize abortion enough. While I am passionately committed to protecting abortion access, I do not view it as a stand-alone issue. As one of the few national health care organizations with a presence in all 50 states, Planned Parenthood's mandate should be to promote reproductive health care as part of a wide range of policies that affect women's health and public health.

THE rIGHT IS THE lEFT:

HE HAS NOTHING ELSE TO OFFER:

THE POST-DONALD GOP:

ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL:

It's been 20 years since the end of apartheid in South Africa, the system of racial segregation that curtailed the rights of black South Africans for decades. One of the strongest protest movements outside South Africa to dismantle apartheid was in the United States during the 1980s.

Television news images of the violent struggles to end apartheid in South Africa captured the attention of Americans in the 1980s.  

They also galvanized support for the U.S. anti-apartheid movement. Former U.S. Congressman Ron Dellums was one of the leaders of the movement.

"Challenging apartheid in South Africa became a logical next place to go," he said.

Dellums worked to expose the plight of South Africa's blacks along with the injustices carried out by the white minority government. Dellums introduced anti-apartheid legislation in Congress banning trade and investment in South Africa, and also led many demonstrations in which ordinary people and many celebrities were arrested.

"They went out there to put themselves on the line to say, 'Look if South Africans could be beaten and jailed the least we could do is go out there and experience some discomfort ourselves and be one with our sisters and brothers in the struggle to liberate them," he said.

Howard Dodson, director of the Howard University Library, remembers protesting with his son outside the South African consulate in Atlanta.

"The anti-apartheid activities in the United States actually reverberated around the world leading other people to develop their own demonstration activities and that was probably as critical to the overthrow of apartheid as anything else that was going on," he said.

Students also protested on university campuses - calling on schools and corporations get rid of their investments in South Africa.

Affirming that all Americans have the right to participate in boycotts in pursuit of civil and human rights at home and abroad, as protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Affirming that all Americans have the right to participate in boycotts in pursuit of civil and human rights at home and abroad, as protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Whereas boycotts have been effectively used in the United States by advocates for equal rights since the Boston Tea Party and include boycotts led by civil rights activists during the 1950s and 1960s in order to advocate for racial equality, such as the Montgomery bus boycott, and promote workers' rights, such as the United Farm Workers-led boycott of table grapes;

Whereas Americans of conscience have a proud history of participating in boycotts to advocate for human rights abroad, including--

(1) attempting to slow Japanese aggression in the Pacific by boycotting Imperial Japan in 1937 and 1938;

(2) boycotting Nazi Germany from March 1933 to October 1941 in response to the dehumanization of the Jewish people in the lead-up to the Holocaust;

(3) the United States Olympic Committee boycotting the 1980 summer Olympics in Moscow in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the preceding year; and

(4) leading the campaign in the 1980s to boycott South African goods in opposition to apartheid in that country;

Whereas the Supreme Court, in the 1966 case Rosenblatt v. Baer, held that the First Amendment to the Constitution ensures that "[c]riticism of government is at the very center of the constitutionally protected area of free discussion";

Whereas the Supreme Court held in the 1982 case NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware that "[t]he right of the States to regulate economic activity could not justify a complete prohibition against a nonviolent, politically motivated boycott ... .";

Whereas the Supreme Court has recognized various activities as "expressive conduct" warranting constitutional protection, such as flag burning, wearing black armbands, silent sit-ins, and creating and designing custom wedding cakes; and

Whereas despite this tradition, governments and nongovernmental organizations alike have sought to criminalize, stigmatize, and delegitimize the use of boycotts in an attempt to stifle constitutionally protected political expression: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

(1) affirms that all Americans have the right to participate in boycotts in pursuit of civil and human rights at home and abroad, as protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution;

(2) opposes unconstitutional legislative efforts to limit the use of boycotts to further civil rights at home and abroad; and

(3) urges Congress, States, and civil rights leaders from all communities to endeavor to preserve the freedom of advocacy for all by opposing antiboycott resolutions and legislation.

IF THEY WERE CONCENTRATION CAMPS, THE TRUMPBOTS WOULD BE DEMONIZING THE JEWS:

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., gave a speech condemning "cosmopolitan elites" and their plan to weaken America through their international network and their control of big business.

Hawley made the remarks Thursday at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C., a gathering of nationalist thinkers organized by Yoram Hazony, an American-Israeli professor.

Aside from referring to Jesus as a "Jewish rabbi," he didn't mention the Jews by name in the speech. But critics of the speech found parallels to the use of the term "rootless cosmopolitan," an anti-Semitic smear popularized by Joseph Stalin in the mid-20th century. Nazis also used "cosmopolitan" as an anti-Semitic term.

Said Hawley, "For years the politics of both Left and Right have been informed by a political consensus that reflects the interests not of the American middle, but of a powerful upper class and their cosmopolitan priorities. This class lives in the United States, but they identify as 'citizens of the world.' They run businesses or oversee universities here, but their primary loyalty is to the global community."

NOTE HOW SOME ARE EVOLVING BY BECOMING BROWNER TO BLEND IN...:

Sheffield, in truth, is only the most recent locale to become the focus of the subreddit "BreadStapledToTrees," or BSTT, in which people post and discuss photos of their staplings. The forum was actually launched in 2017 by a user who has since deleted his Reddit account. Nevertheless, the subreddit has accumulated some 213,000 members. According to prominent BSTT member I_Say_Fool_Of_A_Took (real name Andy Chamberlain), the founding user and his friend had originally envisioned a subreddit about "whole wheat bread stapled to trees," before they ultimately decided that was too specific. Soon, they opened the floor to...any kind of bread stapled to trees.

...FROM MY COLD DEAD FACE (selfreference alert):

Your Beard Might Be Slowing Down Airport Security https://t.co/hZjGceADPa #frommycolddeadface

— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) July 19, 2019

ALLY:

Angela Merkel was asked if she supported the congresswomen being attacked by Trump. Her reply was to the point pic.twitter.com/J16vFojcts

— The Independent (@Independent) July 19, 2019

DEPORT THE NATIVES:

Terrorism does increase with immigration -- but only homegrown, right-wing terrorism https://t.co/a6ophzvRvL

— Monkey Cage (@monkeycageblog) July 19, 2019

A WARNING FROM HISTORY:

Y'all sharing the John McCain video defending Obama from the "smear" that he's a Muslim--please share Colin Powell's answer instead

Note how he warned of this racist bigotry among senior Republicans back in 2008--GOP did nothing to stop it & now we have 45pic.twitter.com/yfWNWJo4dZ

— Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@QasimRashid) July 18, 2019

THE SAFE, LEGAL AND RARE CROWD:

When John Tanton, a Michigan ophthalmologist and environmentalist, launched the modern anti-immigration movement in 1979, he had a simple but radical goal: eliminate nearly all immigration to the United States. To do that, Tanton hoped to turn opposition to immigration into a high-minded cause embraced by people of all political persuasions. Charges of nativism, Tanton assumed, would sink his new endeavor.

On Tuesday, Tanton died at the age of 85. Despite his initial warnings about nativism, Tanton spent the last decades of his life issuing increasingly extreme warnings about immigrants of color and became a hero to white nationalists. It was fitting, then, that news of his death didn't spread until Wednesday evening, just as President Donald Trump was leading a reelection campaign rally on a platform of unabashed racism.

Under Trump, Tanton's once-fringe ideas have become the guiding philosophy of a White House obsessed with immigration. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, the group Tanton founded four decades ago, now has alumni in key posts across the federal immigration bureaucracy. And for the first time ever, all three immigration agencies are led by people who follow FAIR's playbook. Stephen Miller, the president's immigration guru, is a savvier and far more influential Tanton.

In a 1989 oral history, Tanton recalled that the two defining events of his childhood in Detroit were Pearl Harbor and the city's 1943 race riot. After leaving the city for a farm in the wake of the riot, Tanton grew up to be a conservationist. He took to population control activism with a convert's fervor after reading the Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich's warnings about overpopulation.

Inspired by the ideas of the ecologist Garrett Hardin, Tanton came to see immigration as a neglected piece of the population puzzle. In his 1974 essay "Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor," Hardin proposed allowing people in the developing world to starve to death in the name of tough-love population control and criticized immigration because it "moves people to the food." 

Long before a surge of migrants from Central America overwhelmed the southwestern border, the Trump administration was already waging a broad assault on the rules determining who can seek asylum in the United States.

But on Monday, the administration announced one of its most restrictive rules yet for a system, enshrined in international law, that Mr. Trump has called "ridiculous" and "insane."

In a move that would stop virtually all Central American families who are fleeing persecution and poverty from entering the United States, Trump administration officials said they would deny asylum to migrants who failed to apply for protections in at least one country they passed through on their way north.

RUN, SHELLY, RUN:

Michelle Obama is the most admired woman in the world, according to a new poll.

The former first lady led the pack in a survey released Thursday by market research firm YouGov.

Obama came out ahead of an array of high-profile women, besting Oprah Winfrey in second, actress Angelina Jolie, who came in third, and Queen Elizabeth II, fourth on the list.

ASK DONALD?:

Two in three Americans (66%) in a June Gallup survey said they favor admitting Puerto Rico, now a U.S. territory, as a U.S. state. This is consistent with the 59% to 65% range of public support Gallup has recorded for Puerto Rico statehood since 1962.

IT'S BEEN DOWNHILL SINCE WE LET THE KRAUTS IN:

In Trump's version, "American" is defined by three propositions. First, to be American is to be xenophobic. The basic narrative he tells is that the good people of the heartland are under assault from aliens, elitists and outsiders. Second, to be American is to be nostalgic. America's values were better during some golden past. Third, a true American is white. White Protestants created this country; everybody else is here on their sufferance.

When you look at Trump's American idea you realize that it contradicts the traditional American idea in every particular. In fact, Trump's national story is much closer to the Russian national story than it is toward our own. It's an alien ideology he's trying to plant on our soil.

Trump's vision is radically anti-American.

AS YE SOW...:

The United States is struggling to win its allies' support for an initiative to heighten surveillance of vital Middle East oil shipping lanes because of fears it will increase tension with Iran, six sources familiar with the matter said.

MEANWHILE, IN AMERICA...:

Restaurant in Greenville, where Donald Trump's "send her back" rally was held, donates 100% of proceeds to helping immigrants https://t.co/zYkYbhF6O3

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) July 18, 2019

THE PRO-LIFE PRESIDENT:

There are many elements to the conservative mantra that the Affordable Care Act is a "disaster" -- it's too expensive, it doesn't cover all that many people, it's driven up costs for everyone, etc., etc. None of this is news to anyone who follows healthcare affairs. Nor is the fact that these criticisms all are either false or misleading.

A new study from the Society of Actuaries graphically shows how false and misleading. It documents the sharp rise in coverage and medical utilization in the individual health insurance market starting in 2014, when the ACA's insurance exchanges began operating. The actuaries also document that costs and utilization trends in the large- and small-group market -- health insurance provided by employers -- remained stable, fell, or continued trends that already existed before the advent of the exchanges.

The report, a collaboration with the Health Care Cost Institute (hat tip to David Anderson of Duke), is crystal clear about the reasons for the jumps in coverage and utilization. Chiefly, the launch of the individual exchanges resulted in a "surge of pent-up demand in both previously uninsured populations and previously uncovered services."

Simply put, many of the new entrants into the health coverage market had been uninsured "due to preexisting conditions," which had resulted in their being refused coverage or offered insurance at inordinately high premium rates. The ACA, moreover, mandated coverage of conditions that previously had been routinely excluded from individual health plans, notably maternity services.

Before the ACA, insurers in the individual market charged women of childbearing age sky-high premiums for policies including maternity coverage, on the perfectly fair assumption that they would probably use it. That discouraged the entry of those women into the insurance market. "Similarly, male members or other members not likely to give birth would select individual coverages that excluded maternity so as to pay a lower premium," the actuaries observe.

Under the ACA, the cost of maternity care is spread among the entire insurance pool. That gives younger women more financial incentive to buy coverage. In effect, non-pregnant buyers subsidize pregnancy. Despite the idiotic posturing of conservatives (including President Trump's own Medicare and Medicaid director, Seema Verma) that maternity coverage should be optional, this is plainly the proper policy, as the cost of propagating the species shouldn't be imposed exclusively on women aged 18-45.

MIC DROP:

"Donald Trump is a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot."

~ Sen. Lindsey Graham https://t.co/IqQaIbynHs https://t.co/z4aFtJRxdj

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) July 18, 2019

THEIR HERO:

FBI documents unsealed on Thursday suggest that Donald Trump was actively involved in engineering a hush-money payment shortly before the 2016 election to a porn actress who said she had a sexual encounter with him, as his personal lawyer Michael Cohen, campaign team and others scrambled to head off a scandal.

OH, THE PLACES YOU'LL GO:

 Fifty years ago Saturday, millions of Americans tuned in to watch the Apollo 11 lunar module land on the moon.

Thirteen-year old Jay Buckey, who grew up on Long Island, was one of those eager viewers. Watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin take those first steps on the moon, Buckey fell in love with space.

This childhood admiration grew into a lifetime commitment to NASA research and space exploration.

"I always thought that space was a very exciting thing and something I wanted to be a part of," said Buckey, a professor at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, medical director of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center's hyperbaric medicine program and director of its space medicine innovation laboratory.

In 1998, Buckey fulfilled his dream of going to space. As a payload specialist for the final Spacelab mission, he conducted a number of studies on how entering and leaving space affects the nervous system and brain. While the research couldn't be totally conclusive due to a lack of further studies, it did suggest that the presence of gravity is essential to certain aspects of development, such as balance and the nervous system, he said.

Buckey, a Hanover resident, still remembers the feeling of liftoff from NASA's Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla.

"It's very exciting. For launch morning, it's the first time I was in the space shuttle where it actually got turned on," he said.

Today, at 63, Buckey continues to conduct research for NASA. He also runs the clinical hyperbaric oxygen program at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. This treatment consists of a chamber with high-pressure levels of oxygen, which can help heal damaged blood supply. It's useful as therapy for people suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, severe anemia or radiation injuries, among other major health problems. The program at Dartmouth-Hitchcock started because Buckey needed the chamber to study a bubble detector, a technology for detecting decompression sickness.

IT CERTAINLY IS A TRAIT (PROFANITY ALERT):

We can go back to the start of his career in the early 1970s and the outrage he expressed when Trump and his father were charged by the federal government with discriminating against African-Americans in the rental housing they owned in New York City. Trump's response was to hire Roy Cohn, who then countersued, calling the Justice Department attorneys "storm troopers" and "Gestapo." The Trumps ultimately agreed to integrate their buildings, but the Justice Department acknowledged they never really complied. Because they didn't want to. As Donald saw it, and I remember him voicing a version of this idea within the inner circle of his executives on several occasions: "Blacks don't want to live with whites, so why isn't it OK for whites not to want to live with blacks?" I know that in similar fashion he despised the affirmative action guidelines (50 percent female and 30 percent minority at every level) we were required to implement to maintain our gaming license. He would say it was not realistic and a waste of money to train people who did not have the ability.

I recall one busy Saturday night, walking the cas[***]o floor with him, when he saw what he considered an inordinate number of black customers. "It's looking a little dark in here," he calmly stated. It was his way of telling me to limit our charter bus programs in urban neighborhoods. I ignored him and continued to run the business in the best interest of Donald, the bondholders and the employees.

His prejudices didn't stop at the color of one's skin. Everyone was subject to judgment. It could be their ethnicity, their gender, their religion. It could be their social "caste." Like the time we were speaking of the fiancée of one of our executives who had died in a tragic helicopter crash while returning to Atlantic City from a news conference with Donald in New York. The woman happened to be a cocktail server at the ca[***]o. Donald's take was, "Poor girl. Her ticket out was Jon. She got lucky. Now she will be serving drinks the rest of her life."

Sometimes his petty prejudices begat very public tirades. One day, he flew into a rage over a limousine driver who arrived to pick him up wearing gray shoes, soiling his image by "looking like a f------ Puerto Rican."

In 1988, shortly after I was promoted to president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Cas[***]o, he invited me up to New York for lunch. There was a lot to talk over one issue in particular: one of our senior managers, who happened to be African-American. Donald considered him incompetent and wanted him fired. When I acknowledged some shortcomings in the man's performance, he instantly became enthused. "Yeah, I never liked the guy," he said. "And isn't it funny, I've got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day."

I was mortified. We were in a restaurant in Trump Tower. I worried he'd be overheard. But he went on, "Besides that, I've got to tell you something else: I think the guy is lazy, and it's probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is. I believe that. It's not anything they can control."

Then, eyeing me closely, he said, "Don't you agree?"

When I told him in no uncertain terms that I did not, he swiped aside my objections with a chop of his hand. "Ah, it's a trait," he said.

Where did the bigotry come from? Was he possessed of some insatiable inner need for reassurance that there is a social order of which he occupies the pinnacle? Certainly, he was no less self-obsessed back then. No less brittle, mercurial, vindictive. I think it explains in no small part the reflexive ease with which he slinks into the most sordid identity politics whenever he feels threatened, as when he claimed the judge presiding over the federal lawsuits in the Trump University swindle, the American-born Gonzalo Curiel, was "Mexican" and therefore biased against him. He's suggested the same of any Muslim judge. Knowing Donald, I'm sure he wondered how a "Mexican" came to be a judge in the first place.

AT LEAST THEY AREN'T BUSSED TO SCHOOL!:

School shootings since 2009.

US: 288
Mexico: 8
South Africa: 6
India: 5
Pakistan: 4
Nigeria: 4
Afghanistan: 3
Brazil: 2
Canada: 2
France: 1
China: 1
Russia: 1
Germany: 1
Turkey: 1
Japan: 0
Spain: 0
Italy: 0
UK: 0
Netherlands: 0
Australia: 0

— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) July 18, 2019

BRONZE TO GOLD:

There was also a third way -- a dark horse candidate favored by a minority of engineers led by Houbolt at NASA's Langley Research Center. Lunar orbit rendezvous, or LOR, would require only one Saturn V and two smaller vehicles to go to the moon -- a mother ship to stay in lunar orbit, which came to be known as the command module, while a lightweight lunar module, designed solely to land and return from the lunar surface, made the descent.

The catch? Astronauts, circling the moon nearly a quarter of a million miles away from any possibility of rescue, would have to link up the two spaceships to get home.

To the NASA establishment, that sounded way too risky. Nearly all but Houbolt and his group of supporters at Langley dismissed it out of hand.

At the time, no one had ever done rendezvous or docking in space -- maneuvers that are considered the bread and butter of spaceflight today but that were daunting and untried concepts in the early 1960s.

"If rendezvous had to be part of Project Apollo, critics of LOR felt that it should be done only in Earth orbit," according to the NASA fact sheet. In case the maneuver was unsuccessful, the astronauts could easily return home. However, "if a rendezvous around the moon failed, the astronauts would be too far away to be saved. Nothing could be done," it said.

Houbolt believed the risks of LOR were manageable. And further, he was adamant that a rendezvous of two spacecraft in lunar orbit wasn't just one possible method for a moon mission, but the only one that had any chance of meeting Kennedy's nearly impossible deadline.

To Houbolt, it was a simple equation involving the need to save weight, time and money. Lunar orbit rendezvous accomplished all three. But despite the obvious advantages, Houbolt faced an uphill battle. "He got batted down by pretty much everybody," Launius says.

There was von Braun's opposition, but also vehement pushback from Faget, the Mercury capsule designer.

In one meeting attended by NASA Associate Administrator Robert Seamans, von Braun and Faget, Houbolt pitched LOR. After the presentation, Faget rose from his seat to denounce Houbolt's plan.

"His figures lie!" Faget proclaimed. Amid a stunned silence in the room, Faget added, "He doesn't know what he's talking about!"

The outsider gets a hearing

His idea for getting to the moon may have been roundabout, but Houbolt himself was direct. He was also an outsider among the group of engineers studying a moonshot.

"Houbolt was not part of the program, and that is really where a core issue comes into play," Launius says. "He went to his boss and his boss sort of shouted him down and said, 'What are you doing?' because he wasn't working in this area at all."

Frustrated with his inability to get anyone to listen, in November 1961, Houbolt wrote a letter to Seamans, essentially going straight to the top of the NASA hierarchy. The move was a breach of protocol that Houbolt acknowledged in the letter was "somewhat unorthodox." But, he insisted, "[the] issues at stake are crucial enough to us all that an unusual course is warranted."

"Do we want to go to the moon or not?" Houbolt asked rhetorically, challenging the administrator to act. "Why is Nova, with its ponderous size, simply just accepted, and why is a much less grandiose scheme involving rendezvous ostracized or put on the defensive?"

The letter got Seamans' attention.

"It was rather strident in the way it was written," the former NASA official recalled in a 2008 documentary. "My first reaction was, 'I'd like some way to get that son of a gun off my back.' "

In a reply to Houbolt, Seamans promised to put LOR into active consideration.

Months later, at a June 1962 meeting, von Braun unexpectedly reversed course and publicly announced that he was recommending lunar orbit rendezvous.

Despite their differences, Houbolt -- who left the space agency in 1963 -- was invited by von Braun to mission control in Houston to witness the historic Apollo 11 landing on July 20, 1969.

JUST PUT HIS PICTURE:

📈Tonight's top searches, in order: racism, socialism, fascism, concentration camp, xenophobia, bigot

— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) July 18, 2019

ONE OF THE MOST DISCOURAGING ASPECTS...:

If you think about it, the chant was more wretched even than Trump's own despicable attacks against Omar and her cohorts. At least Trump was merely urging Omar and her colleagues to leave of their own accord. The North Carolina crowd sounded thirsty for them to be thrown onto a trans-Atlantic barge in a sack.

In another way, however, the chants of "Send her back" and those of "Lock her up" are two sides of the same coin. Both are acts of deliberate transgression against what many Trump supporters have come to view as the supposedly stifling ethics of our cultural elites. But while such transgression may have started, in the minds of some, as a way of pushing back for unpopular truths, it is increasingly clear that many on the right these days just enjoy the transgression for the perverse pleasure of it. If "Send her back" is what's going to send those damn media types into a tizzy, you can bet that's what they're going to chant.

The danger here--besides the obvious repulsiveness of the chant itself--is that this accelerating culture of political transgression is like a ratchet that can only turn one way. For a critical mass of conservatives, it is a sign that a given act is actually praiseworthy and brave if it draws condemnation from the despised left-wing media. "Send her back" is a chant that might make some cringe today--but once it's been digested by the media cycle and the battle lines drawn, and it's been repeated at rally after rally, it will become, in the minds of Trump's fans, just another handy weapon for triggering the pearl-clutching libs.

At which point it will be stale. And they'll need a new, more baldly indefensible, transgression. And so on, and on, and on.

HE HATES AMERICA BECAUSE "THEY" ARE AMERICAN:

America stinks. At least that's what Donald J. Trump seemed to be saying before becoming president.

He did not believe in "American exceptionalism," he said, because America was not exceptional. Instead, it was a "laughingstock" that was no better than Vladimir V. Putin's Russia. By promising to make America great again, he made it clear that he believed it was not great anymore. [...]

Ben Domenech, a founder and publisher of The Federalist, a conservative online publication, said the debate of recent days reminded him of a "South Park" episode where the characters say that America has problems, but anyone who does not root for the home team should get out of the stadium.

"The president is doing the same thing, with an added tinge of xenophobia," said Mr. Domenech. "It's tribal, it ramps up the intensity of everything, but it plays both in his interest and the interests of the congressional members involved from their perspective."

Mr. Trump was less bothered by criticism of the United States in the years leading up to his election. He repeatedly said "our country is a laughingstock" and took issue with the term "American exceptionalism." In 2013, he praised Mr. Putin for an "amazing" Op-Ed in The New York Times that said the United States was not special and criticized Mr. Obama for asserting American exceptionalism.

Speaking on CNN, Mr. Trump said, "You think of the term as being fine, but all of a sudden you say, what if you're in Germany or Japan or any one of 100 different countries? You're not going to like that term. It's very insulting, and Putin really put it to him about that." As for whether Americans were exceptional, he said, "Why would we be?" citing the disastrous Iraq war.

He likewise rejected the term in 2016 as a presidential candidate when asked about his praise for Mr. Putin's Op-Ed. "And that's basically what Putin was saying, is that, you know, you use a term like 'American exceptionalism,' and frankly, the way our country is being treated right now by Russia and Syria and lots of other places and with all the mistakes we've made over the years, like Iraq and so many others, it's sort of a hard term to use," he said on Fox News.

During other interviews, he has said the United States was no better than Russia when it came to its moral values on the international front. During a conversation with Bill O'Reilly on Fox shortly after Mr. Trump took office, the host pointed out that "Putin's a killer." Mr. Trump replied by saying, "What, do you think our country is so innocent?"

Mr. Trump's affinity for Russia was so pronounced during the campaign that Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, now the Republican leader in the House, privately told colleagues that "I think Putin pays" Mr. Trump. Last year, Mr. Trump blamed poor relations with Russia on "many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity" -- to which the Russian Foreign Ministry then tweeted, "We agree."

PAGING ATTICUS FINCH:

JUST A KNATIONALIST:

"If they don't love it, tell them to leave it" - that was US President Donald Trump's message about four Democratic congresswomen at a rally in North Carolina, where supporters called for one of four female politicians - who was born overseas - to be "sent back".

"Let 'em leave," Mr Trump said of the four women. "They're always telling us how to run it, how to do this, how to do that. You know what? If they don't love it, tell 'em to leave it."

But the 'love it or leave it' line is an eerily familiar slogan of the Klu Klux Klan in North Carolina, according to Australian National University US politics expert Jennifer Hunt.

Dr Hunt, who grew up in North Carolina, said the "Love it or Leave it" slogan was used by the KKK years ago when it claimed to be fighting "communism and integration".

"GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM":

Roma, Sinti, and Camminanti are traditionally nomadic ethnic groups that have lived in Europe for hundreds of years.

According to the Council of Europe, Italy has one of the lowest concentrations of these groups in the EU, with a population of between 120,000 and 180,000, according to the AFP. More than half of these people are Italian citizens who have integrated into mainstream society, AFP claims.

Despite this, hate crimes and prejudice against Roma, Sinti, and Camminanti are rampant, particularly against the less fortunate, some of whom still live in unofficial settlements.

Some 26,000 members of these groups were living in emergency shelters or camps across Italy in 2017, according to the advocacy group Associazione 21 Luglio.

Salvini, who is also leader of the far-right Lega party, has called for non-Italians found amongst the Roma, Sinti, and Camminanti to be rounded up and sent back to their countries of origin.

FORCED BUSING IS ONLY FOR MINORITIES:

A group of Ethiopian-Israeli parents has petitioned a court against the refusal of four ultra-Orthodox schools in Jerusalem to register their children for the coming school year.

One of the children has been offered a place in a school far from his home. The other three are without places. [...]

In previous years, the same four -- currently aged three to six -- have had to travel long distances for their education, with their families having to shoulder the transportation costs. One of the children spent an extra year in kindergarten because he was not accepted to one of the four schools, despite a professional opinion that he was ready to move up a year.

The petition was submitted after the parents appealed to the Jerusalem Municipality and the Education Ministry. According to the petition, officials from both bodies visited the schools in question and invited the parents and children to come, but did not invite them into the talks with senior school staff.

Largman said that the petition charged not only discrimination against the families but an almost complete absence of Ethiopian-Israeli children in the institutions, indicating a pattern of behavior.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE, SIR:

Getting CNN to produce a compilation of Sir Stories is one of my top career accomplishments so far pic.twitter.com/zh3hyULDVJ

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) July 17, 2019

THEY SUPPORT HIM BECAUSE OF, NOT IN SPITE OF, HIS RACISM:

This week American Greatness published an anonymously written poem titled "Cuck Elegy." I'm not going to link to it. It is an attack on David French and other conservatives who the author believes are too invested in getting the approbation of the left and not willing enough to fight . . . well, for whatever.

And midway through the verse are these lines:

The "Global South"? "The mocha-skinned Lazarus"?

"You are more rich than him if not in cash, then in your white skin"?

I don't know to read this as anything other than racism--and not just racism, but actual, honest-to-God, KKK-style white nationalism.

Especially since--again--the author is using a pseudonym. Which is the writerly equivalent of wearing a hood. If there was an innocent interpretation for this, then the author's name would be on it.

It is not a coincidence that this post appeared on a website devoted to the perpetual and total defense of Donald Trump 72 hours after Trump started telling some of America's elected representatives to "go back to your own country."

This is how the cancer spreads.

A MODEL OF oRIGINALIST JURISPRUDENCE:

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, et al., PETITIONERS v. 
DICK ANTHONY HELLER

on writ of certiorari to the united states court ofappeals for the district of columbia circuit

    Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Souter, Justice Ginsburg, and Justice Breyer join, dissenting.

    The question presented by this case is not whether the Second Amendment protects a "collective right" or an "individual right." Surely it protects a right that can be enforced by individuals. But a conclusion that the Second Amendment protects an individual right does not tell us anything about the scope of that right.

    Guns are used to hunt, for self-defense, to commit crimes, for sporting activities, and to perform military duties. The Second Amendment plainly does not protect the right to use a gun to rob a bank; it is equally clear that it does encompass the right to use weapons for certain military purposes. Whether it also protects the right to possess and use guns for nonmilitary purposes like hunting and personal self-defense is the question presented by this case. The text of the Amendment, its history, and our decision in United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174 (1939) , provide a clear answer to that question.

    The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. It was a response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several States. Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature's authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms. Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.

    In 1934, Congress enacted the National Firearms Act, the first major federal firearms law.1 Upholding a conviction under that Act, this Court held that, "[i]n the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument." Miller, 307 U. S., at 178. The view of the Amendment we took in Miller--that it protects the right to keep and bear arms for certain military purposes, but that it does not curtail the Legislature's power to regulate the nonmilitary use and ownership of weapons--is both the most natural reading of the Amendment's text and the interpretation most faithful to the history of its adoption.

    Since our decision in Miller, hundreds of judges have relied on the view of the Amendment we endorsed there;2 we ourselves affirmed it in 1980. SeeLewis v. United States, 445 U. S. 55 , n. 8 (1980).3 No new evidence has surfaced since 1980 supporting the view that the Amendment was intended to curtail the power of Congress to regulate civilian use or misuse of weapons. Indeed, a review of the drafting history of the Amendment demonstrates that its Framers rejected proposals that would have broadened its coverage to include such uses.

    The opinion the Court announces today fails to identify any new evidence supporting the view that the Amendment was intended to limit the power of Congress to regulate civilian uses of weapons. Unable to point to any such evidence, the Court stakes its holding on a strained and unpersuasive reading of the Amendment's text; significantly different provisions in the 1689 English Bill of Rights, and in various 19th-century State Constitutions; postenactment commentary that was available to the Court when it decided Miller; and, ultimately, a feeble attempt to distinguish Miller that places more emphasis on the Court's decisional process than on the reasoning in the opinion itself.

    Even if the textual and historical arguments on both sides of the issue were evenly balanced, respect for the well-settled views of all of our predecessors on this Court, and for the rule of law itself, see Mitchell v. W. T. Grant Co., 416 U. S. 600, 636 (1974) (Stewart, J., dissenting), would prevent most jurists from endorsing such a dramatic upheaval in the law.4 As Justice Cardozo observed years ago, the "labor of judges would be increased almost to the breaking point if every past decision could be reopened in every case, and one could not lay one's own course of bricks on the secure foundation of the courses laid by others who had gone before him." The Nature of the Judicial Process 149 (1921).

    In this dissent I shall first explain why our decision in Miller was faithful to the text of the Second Amendment and the purposes revealed in its drafting history. I shall then comment on the postratification history of the Amendment, which makes abundantly clear that the Amendment should not be interpreted as limiting the authority of Congress to regulate the use or possession of firearms for purely civilian purposes.

I

    The text of the Second Amendment is brief. It provides: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

    Three portions of that text merit special focus: the introductory language defining the Amendment's purpose, the class of persons encompassed within its reach, and the unitary nature of the right that it protects.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State"

    The preamble to the Second Amendment makes three important points. It identifies the preservation of the militia as the Amendment's purpose; it explains that the militia is necessary to the security of a free State; and it recognizes that the militia must be "well regulated." In all three respects it is comparable to provisions in several State Declarations of Rights that were adopted roughly contemporaneously with the Declaration of Independence.5Those state provisions highlight the importance members of the founding generation attached to the maintenance of state militias; they also underscore the profound fear shared by many in that era of the dangers posed by standing armies.6 While the need for state militias has not been a matter of significant public interest for almost two centuries, that fact should not obscure the contemporary concerns that animated the Framers.

    The parallels between the Second Amendment and these state declarations, and the Second Amendment 's omission of any statement of purpose related to the right to use firearms for hunting or personal self-defense, is especially striking in light of the fact that the Declarations of Rights of Pennsylvania and Vermont did expresslyprotect such civilian uses at the time. Article XIII of Pennsylvania's 1776 Declaration of Rights announced that "the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state," 1 Schwartz 266 (emphasis added); §43 of the Declaration assured that "the inhabitants of this state shall have the liberty to fowl and hunt in seasonable times on the lands they hold, and on all other lands therein not inclosed," id., at 274. And Article XV of the 1777 Vermont Declaration of Rights guaranteed "[t]hat the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the State." Id., at 324 (emphasis added). The contrast between those two declarations and the Second Amendment reinforces the clear statement of purpose announced in the Amendment's preamble. It confirms that the Framers' single-minded focus in crafting the constitutional guarantee "to keep and bear arms" was on military uses of firearms, which they viewed in the context of service in state militias.

    The preamble thus both sets forth the object of the Amendment and informs the meaning of the remainder of its text. Such text should not be treated as mere surplusage, for "[i]t cannot be presumed that any clause in the constitution is intended to be without effect." Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 174 (1803).

    The Court today tries to denigrate the importance of this clause of the Amendment by beginning its analysis with the Amendment's operative provision and returning to the preamble merely "to ensure that our reading of the operative clause is consistent with the announced purpose." Ante, at 5. That is not how this Court ordinarily reads such texts, and it is not how the preamble would have been viewed at the time the Amendment was adopted. While the Court makes the novel suggestion that it need only find some "logical connection" between the preamble and the operative provision, it does acknowledge that a prefatory clause may resolve an ambiguity in the text. Ante, at 4.7 Without identifying any language in the text that even mentions civilian uses of firearms, the Court proceeds to "find" its preferred reading in what is at best an ambiguous text, and then concludes that its reading is not foreclosed by the preamble. Perhaps the Court's approach to the text is acceptable advocacy, but it is surely an unusual approach for judges to follow.

"The right of the people"

    The centerpiece of the Court's textual argument is its insistence that the words "the people" as used in the Second Amendment must have the same meaning, and protect the same class of individuals, as when they are used in the First and Fourth Amendment s. According to the Court, in all three provisions--as well as the Constitution's preamble, section 2 of Article I, and the Tenth Amendment --"the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset." Ante, at 6. But the Court itself reads the Second Amendment to protect a "subset" significantly narrower than the class of persons protected by the First and Fourth Amendment s; when it finally drills down on the substantive meaning of the Second Amendment , the Court limits the protected class to "law-abiding, responsible citizens," ante, at 63. But the class of persons protected by the First andFourth Amendment s is not so limited; for even felons (and presumably irresponsible citizens as well) may invoke the protections of those constitutional provisions. The Court offers no way to harmonize its conflicting pronouncements.

    The Court also overlooks the significance of the way the Framers used the phrase "the people" in these constitutional provisions. In the First Amendment , no words define the class of individuals entitled to speak, to publish, or to worship; in that Amendment it is only the right peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, that is described as a right of "the people." These rights contemplate collective action. While the right peaceably to assemble protects the individual rights of those persons participating in the assembly, its concern is with action engaged in by members of a group, rather than any single individual. Likewise, although the act of petitioning the Government is a right that can be exercised by individuals, it is primarily collective in nature. For if they are to be effective, petitions must involve groups of individuals acting in concert.

    Similarly, the words "the people" in the Second Amendment refer back to the object announced in the Amendment's preamble. They remind us that it is the collective action of individuals having a duty to serve in the militia that the text directly protects and, perhaps more importantly, that the ultimate purpose of the Amendment was to protect the States' share of the divided sovereignty created by the Constitution.

     As used in the Fourth Amendment , "the people" describes the class of persons protected from unreasonable searches and seizures by Government officials.     It is true that the Fourth Amendment describes a right that need not be exercised in any collective sense. But that observation does not settle the meaning of the phrase "the people" when used in the Second Amendment . For, as we have seen, the phrase means something quite different in the Petition and Assembly Clauses of the First Amendment . Although the abstract definition of the phrase "the people" could carry the same meaning in theSecond Amendment as in the Fourth Amendment , the preamble of the Second Amendment suggests that the uses of the phrase in the First and Second Amendment s are the same in referring to a collective activity. By way of contrast, the Fourth Amendment describes a right against governmental interference rather than an affirmative right to engage in protected conduct, and so refers to a right to protect a purely individual interest. As used in the Second Amendment , the words "the people" do not enlarge the right to keep and bear arms to encompass use or ownership of weapons outside the context of service in a well-regulated militia.

"To keep and bear Arms"

    Although the Court's discussion of these words treats them as two "phrases"--as if they read "to keep" and "to bear"--they describe a unitary right: to possess arms if needed for military purposes and to use them in conjunction with military activities.

    As a threshold matter, it is worth pausing to note an oddity in the Court's interpretation of "to keep and bear arms." Unlike the Court of Appeals, the Court does not read that phrase to create a right to possess arms for "lawful, private purposes." Parker v. District of Columbia, 478 F. 3d 370, 382 (CADC 2007). Instead, the Court limits the Amendment's protection to the right "to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation." Ante, at 19. No party or amicus urged this interpretation; the Court appears to have fashioned it out of whole cloth. But although this novel limitation lacks support in the text of the Amendment, the Amendment's text does justify a different limitation: the "right to keep and bear arms" protects only a right to possess and use firearms in connection with service in a state-organized militia.

    The term "bear arms" is a familiar idiom; when used unadorned by any additional words, its meaning is "to serve as a soldier, do military service, fight." 1 Oxford English Dictionary 634 (2d ed. 1989). It is derived from the Latin arma ferre, which, translated literally, means "to bear [ferre] war equipment [arma]." Brief for Professors of Linguistics and English as Amici Curiae 19. One 18th-century dictionary defined "arms" as "weapons of offence, or armour of defence," 1 S. Johnson, A Dictionary of theEnglish Language(1755), and another contemporaneous source explained that "[b]y arms, we understand those instruments of offence generally made use of in war; such as firearms, swords, & c. By weapons, we more particularly mean instruments of other kinds (exclusive of fire-arms), made use of as offensive, on special occasions." 1 J. Trusler, The Distinction Between Words Esteemed Synonymous in the English Language37 (1794).8 Had the Framers wished to expand the meaning of the phrase "bear arms" to encompass civilian possession and use, they could have done so by the addition of phrases such as "for the defense of themselves," as was done in the Pennsylvania and Vermont Declarations of Rights. The unmodified use of "bear arms," by contrast, refers most naturally to a military purpose, as evidenced by its use in literally dozens of contemporary texts.9 The absence of any reference to civilian uses of weapons tailors the text of the Amendment to the purpose identified in its preamble.10 But when discussing these words, the Court simply ignores the preamble.

    The Court argues that a "qualifying phrase that contradicts the word or phrase it modifies is unknown this side of the looking glass." Ante, at 15. But this fundamentally fails to grasp the point. The stand-alone phrase "bear arms" most naturally conveys a military meaning unless the addition of a qualifying phrase signals that a different meaning is intended. When, as in this case, there is no such qualifier, the most natural meaning is the military one; and, in the absence of any qualifier, it is all the more appropriate to look to the preamble to confirm the natural meaning of the text.11 The Court's objection is particularly puzzling in light of its own contention that the addition of the modifier "against" changes the meaning of "bear arms." Compare ante, at 10 (defining "bear arms" to mean "carrying [a weapon] for a particular purpose--confrontation"), with ante, at 12 ("The phrase 'bear Arms' also had at the time of the founding an idiomatic meaning that was significantly different from its natural meaning: to serve as a soldier, do military service, fight or to wage war. But it unequivocally bore that idiomatic meaning only when followed by the preposition 'against.' " (citations and some internal quotation marks omitted)).

    The Amendment's use of the term "keep" in no way contradicts the military meaning conveyed by the phrase "bear arms" and the Amendment's preamble. To the contrary, a number of state militia laws in effect at the time of the Second Amendment 's drafting used the term "keep" to describe the requirement that militia members store their arms at their homes, ready to be used for service when necessary. The Virginia military law, for example, ordered that "every one of the said officers, non-commissioned officers, and privates, shall constantly keep the aforesaid arms, accoutrements, and ammunition, ready to be produced whenever called for by his commanding officer." Act for Regulating and Disciplining the Militia, 1785 Va. Acts ch. 1, §3, p. 2 (emphasis added).12 "[K]eep and bear arms" thus perfectly describes the responsibilities of a framing-era militia member.

    This reading is confirmed by the fact that the clause protects only one right, rather than two. It does not describe a right "to keep arms" and a separate right "to bear arms." Rather, the single right that it does describe is both a duty and a right to have arms available and ready for military service, and to use them for military purposes when necessary.13 Different language surely would have been used to protect nonmilitary use and possession of weapons from regulation if such an intent had played any role in the drafting of the Amendment.

*  *  *

    When each word in the text is given full effect, the Amendment is most naturally read to secure to the people a right to use and possess arms in conjunction with service in a well-regulated militia. So far as appears, no more than that was contemplated by its drafters or is encompassed within its terms. Even if the meaning of the text were genuinely susceptible to more than one interpretation, the burden would remain on those advocating a departure from the purpose identified in the preamble and from settled law to come forward with persuasive new arguments or evidence. The textual analysis offered by respondent and embraced by the Court falls far short of sustaining that heavy burden.14 And the Court's emphatic reliance on the claim "that the Second Amendment ... codified a pre-existing right," ante, at 19, is of course beside the point because the right to keep and bear arms for service in a state militia was also a pre-existing right.

    Indeed, not a word in the constitutional text even arguably supports the Court's overwrought and novel description of the Second Amendment as "elevat[ing] above all other interests" "the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home." Ante, at 63.

II

    The proper allocation of military power in the new Nation was an issue of central concern for the Framers. The compromises they ultimately reached, reflected in Article I's Militia Clauses and the Second Amendment , represent quintessential examples of the Framers' "splitting the atom of sovereignty." 15

    Two themes relevant to our current interpretive task ran through the debates on the original Constitution. "On the one hand, there was a widespread fear that a national standing Army posed an intolerable threat to individual liberty and to the sovereignty of the separate States." Perpich v. Department of Defense, 496 U. S. 334, 340 (1990) .16 Governor Edmund Randolph, reporting on the Constitutional Convention to the Virginia Ratification Convention, explained: "With respect to a standing army, I believe there was not a member in the federal Convention, who did not feel indignation at such an institution." 3 J. Elliot, Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution 401 (2d ed. 1863) (hereinafter Elliot). On the other hand, the Framers recognized the dangers inherent in relying on inadequately trained militia members "as the primary means of providing for the common defense," Perpich, 496 U. S., at 340; during the Revolutionary War, "[t]his force, though armed, was largely untrained, and its deficiencies were the subject of bitter complaint." Wiener, The Militia Clause of the Constitution, 54 Harv. L. Rev. 181, 182 (1940).17 In order to respond to those twin concerns, a compromise was reached: Congress would be authorized to raise and support a national Army18 and Navy, and also to organize, arm, discipline, and provide for the calling forth of "the Militia." U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cls. 12-16. The President, at the same time, was empowered as the "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States." Art. II, §2. But, with respect to the militia, a significant reservation was made to the States: Although Congress would have the power to call forth,19 organize, arm, and discipline the militia, as well as to govern "such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States," the States respectively would retain the right to appoint the officers and to train the militia in accordance with the discipline prescribed by Congress. Art. I, §8, cl. 16.20

    But the original Constitution's retention of the militia and its creation of divided authority over that body did not prove sufficient to allay fears about the dangers posed by a standing army. For it was perceived by some that Article I contained a significant gap: While it empowered Congress to organize, arm, and discipline the militia, it did not prevent Congress from providing for the militia's disarmament. As George Mason argued during the debates in Virginia on the ratification of the original Constitution:

"The militia may be here destroyed by that method which has been practiced in other parts of the world before; that is, by rendering them useless--by disarming them. Under various pretences, Congress may neglect to provide for arming and disciplining the militia; and the state governments cannot do it, for Congress has the exclusive right to arm them." Elliot 379.

    This sentiment was echoed at a number of state ratification conventions; indeed, it was one of the primary objections to the original Constitution voiced by its opponents. The Anti-Federalists were ultimately unsuccessful in persuading state ratification conventions to condition their approval of the Constitution upon the eventual inclusion of any particular amendment. But a number of States did propose to the first Federal Congress amendments reflecting a desire to ensure that the institution of the militia would remain protected under the new Government. The proposed amendments sent by the States of Virginia, North Carolina, and New York focused on the importance of preserving the state militias and reiterated the dangers posed by standing armies. New Hampshire sent a proposal that differed significantly from the others; while also invoking the dangers of a standing army, it suggested that the Constitution should more broadly protect the use and possession of weapons, without tying such a guarantee expressly to the maintenance of the militia. The States of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts sent no relevant proposed amendments to Congress, but in each of those States a minority of the delegates advocated related amendments. While the Maryland minority proposals were exclusively concerned with standing armies and conscientious objectors, the unsuccessful proposals in both Massachusetts and Pennsylvania would have protected a more broadly worded right, less clearly tied to service in a state militia. Faced with all of these options, it is telling that James Madison chose to craft the Second Amendmentas he did.

    The relevant proposals sent by the Virginia Ratifying Convention read as follows:

"17th, That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well regulated Militia composed of the body of the people trained to arms is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free State. That standing armies are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the Community will admit; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to and be governed by the civil power." Elliot 659.

    "19th. That any person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms ought to be exempted, upon payment of an equivalent to employ another to bear arms in his stead." Ibid.

    North Carolina adopted Virginia's proposals and sent them to Congress as its own, although it did not actually ratify the original Constitution until Congress had sent the proposed Bill of Rights to the States for ratification. 2 Schwartz932-933; see The Complete Bill of Rights 182-183 (N. Cogan ed. 1997) (hereinafter Cogan).

    New York produced a proposal with nearly identical language. It read:

    "That the people have a right to keep and bear Arms; that a well regulated Militia, including the body of the People capable of bearing Arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free State... . That standing Armies, in time of Peace, are dangerous to Liberty, and ought not to be kept up, except in Cases of necessity; and that at all times, the Military should be kept under strict Subordination to the civil Power." 2 Schwartz 912.

    Notably, each of these proposals used the phrase "keep and bear arms," which was eventually adopted by Madison. And each proposal embedded the phrase withina group of principles that are distinctly military inmeaning.21

    By contrast, New Hampshire's proposal, although it followed another proposed amendment that echoed the familiar concern about standing armies,22described the protection involved in more clearly personal terms. Its proposal read:

    "Twelfth, Congress shall never disarm any Citizen unless such as are or have been in Actual Rebellion." Id., at 758, 761.

    The proposals considered in the other three States, although ultimately rejected by their respective ratification conventions, are also relevant to our historical inquiry. First, the Maryland proposal, endorsed by a minority of the delegates and later circulated in pamphlet form, read:

    "4. That no standing army shall be kept up in time of peace, unless with the consent of two thirds of the members present of each branch of Congress.

.     .     .     .     .

    "10. That no person conscientiously scrupulous of bearing arms in any case, shall be compelled personally to serve as a soldier." Id., at 729, 735.

    The rejected Pennsylvania proposal, which was later incorporated into a critique of the Constitution titled "The Address and Reasons of Dissent of the Pennsylvania Minority of the Convention of the State of Pennsylvania to Their Constituents (1787)," signed by a minority of the State's delegates (those who had voted against ratification of the Constitution), id., at 628, 662, read:

    7. "That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and their own State, or the United States, or for the purpose of killing game; and no law shall be passed for disarming the people or any of them unless for crimes committed, or real danger of public injury from individuals; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military shall be kept under strict subordination to, and be governed by the civil powers." Id., at 665.

    Finally, after the delegates at the Massachusetts Ratification Convention had compiled a list of proposed amendments and alterations, a motion was made to add to the list the following language: "[T]hat the said Constitution never be construed to authorize Congress to ... prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms." Cogan 181. This motion, however, failed to achieve the necessary support, and the proposal was excluded from the list of amendments the State sent to Congress. 2 Schwartz 674-675.

    Madison, charged with the task of assembling the proposals for amendments sent by the ratifying States, was the principal draftsman of the Second Amendment .23 He had before him, or at the very least would have been aware of, all of these proposed formulations. In addition, Madison had been a member, some years earlier, of the committee tasked with drafting the Virginia Declaration of Rights. That committee considered a proposal by Thomas Jefferson that would have included within the Virginia Declaration the following language: "No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms [within his own lands or tenements]." 1 Papers of Thomas Jefferson 363 (J. Boyd ed. 1950). But the committee rejected that language, adopting instead the provision drafted by George Mason.24

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