Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham acknowledged on Sunday the Republican majority "does not have the votes" in the Senate to quickly dismiss the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.

The movie is but the latest offering in a long line of movies and shows -- from The Graduate to Friends to Single Parents -- from an industry that mostly shies away from depicting stably married families in a positive light, and spotlights, more often than not, the rise of diverse families that depart from the traditional intact-family model. Hollywood's offerings are also emblematic of the larger cultural and legal role that California has played in pioneering and amplifying particular cultural values -- e.g., from individual fulfillment to "if-it-feels-good-do-it-ism" to easy divorce -- that have undercut stable marriage across the nation. After all, no-fault divorce was invented by California, signed into law by Governor Ronald Reagan just over 50 years ago, before being exported across the United States, to the detriment of kids across America.

The irony in all this, though, is that our  new research indicates that the actual neighborhood that stands at the center of historic Hollywood, the Whitley Heights neighborhood just between the Hollywood sign and the Dolby Theatre, where the Oscars are held, has virtually no single parents amid the hundreds of families who make their home there. And it turns out that most of the best neighborhoods in the hills or along the beaches of Southern California -- from Pacific Palisades to Rancho Palos Verdes to Beverly Hills -- are dominated by two-parent families. These neighborhoods have fewer than 20 percent of children living in single-parent families, which makes them among the most stable in the state.

They are also consistent with another major theme in our report: When it comes to family, California elites tend to "talk left" but "live right." Of Californians ages 18 to 50, we find that college-educated Californians stand out for their more progressive views on family issues. The vast majority of Californians (85 percent) with a college or graduate degree agree that family diversity, "where kids grow up in different kinds of families today," should be publicly celebrated, compared with 69 percent of Californians without a college education. But a clear majority of college-educated Californians, 68 percent, report that it is personally important to them to have their own kids in marriage, and 80 percent of them who are parents are in intact marriages, compared with just 60 percent of their peers in the state who don't have a college degree. So, California elites pair progressive family values with traditional family living -- including steering clear of divorce court.

Donald Trump is racist and has made racism in the United States worse, according to the overwhelming majority of African Americans in a new Washington Post -Ipsos poll.

When asked directly whether Trump is a racist, 83 percent of black Americans said yes, with just 13 percent saying no. Another 4 percent had no opinion.

Asked if Trump had made racism a bigger or smaller problem in the United States since taking office, 83 percent said Trump had made it a bigger problem, 2 percent said he'd made it smaller, and 15 percent said Trump had made no difference or didn't share an opinion.

Here's another extremely fungible passage:

"China shall require the administrative authorities to transfer a case for criminal enforcement, if, under an objective standard, there is 'reasonable suspicion' based on articulately facts that a criminal violation of an intellectual property right has occurred. "

It's 2020, if there's anything world knows now it's that it's not hard to argue about "articulable facts," and when politics are involved any "objective standard" tends to go out the window. And politics will be involved, because the enforcement mechanism is inherently political. We'll tackle that next.

This deal has an enforcement agreement unlike any other, according to Chad Bown, a trade expert at the Peterson Institute. In a call following the its signing, he told reporters that it was odd that the deal makes no mention of the word "tariff." That is to say, it lacks any specifics for how to punish a party if it transgresses in this deal -- there are no guidelines on what is appropriate.

Even stranger, according to Bown, is that this deal does not take disputes to an overarching enforcement body. Enforcement is left to the office of the US Trade Representative, which then undertakes an up to 90-day adjudication and discussion process with its Chinese counterparts to try to resolve the conflict.

After the enforcement process is through, if the company that feels it has been wronged is not satisfied with the remedies presented by the offender its home country agrees, the country can "in good faith" put tariffs on the offending country. The offending country, then, is not supposed to retaliate.

However, and this is a big however: If the country hit by those new tariffs doesn't agree the import taxes were put on "in good faith," it has no recourse but to leave the deal, a senior administration official told reporters in a call following the deal's signing.

That's it. 

A legal chambers in the UK has filed a criminal complaint with London police requesting an investigation be opened into allegations of torture and murder over the death of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, and that an arrest warrant be issued against Egypt's President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. [...]

A panel of UN experts - including Agnes Callamard, special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions - and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that Morsi was held under "brutal" conditions.

"Dr Morsi was held in conditions that can only be described as brutal, particularly during his five-year detention in the Tora prison complex," the experts wrote. 

"Dr Morsi's death after enduring those conditions could amount to a state-sanctioned arbitrary killing."

A senior Hamas leader told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that recent talks between the Hamas leadership and several mediating countries -- which he did not name and which Hamas' politburo head Ismail Haniyeh visited on his foreign tour that began Dec. 7 -- aimed to outline a new prisoner exchange deal between Hamas and Israel.

Hamas acknowledged back in 2016 that it is holding four Israelis, including soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin, whom Israel believes are dead. Israel says the soldiers were killed in the 2014 war on Gaza. Hamas, meanwhile, refuses to reveal their fate as well as that of the other two Israelis -- citizens Avera Mengistu, an Ethiopian Jew, and Hisham al-Sayed, an Arab -- who both willingly entered the Gaza Strip in 2014.

The source, who is also a member of Hamas' politburo, added, "The main provision of the deal is for Israel to release all 50 Palestinians who were re-arrested after their release as per the [2011] Gilad Shalit deal and to include the names of detainees that it previously refused to release as per the deal. These include Marwan Barghouti, member of Fatah's Central Committee and secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Ahmad Saadat."

However, the source said Israel turned down Hamas' conditions, namely the inclusion of Barghouti in the next exchange deal, which pushed Hamas to suspend talks about the case. 

[T]here is a strong rationale for moving away from universal consumer subsidies, especially for fuel--at a minimum because of how heavily subsidies weigh on the budget. Yet, attempts at reforms have caused protests, at times violent, even when measures were taken to mitigate the effect on the poor.

Opposition to subsidy reform is so strong because consumer subsidies are at the heart of the unspoken social compact in which Arab citizens give up their voice and tolerate low government accountability in exchange for subsidies, free education and medical care, and public jobs. That social contract is being tested by a burgeoning youth population and emptying budget coffers. Dissatisfaction is exacerbated by the failure of many Arab states to deliver adequate services in the subsidized sectors such as public transportation. In many Arab countries, private and mostly informal operators provide the lion's share of transportation services. These operators stepped in where the state failed to deliver and in many ways the fuel subsidy was a transfer in kind to compensate the non-state operators for doing the state's job. The removal of fuel subsidy is perceived by the often-large number of small operators as a transfer from their pockets to those of a state that has done nothing to deserve it.

A new approach to reform is thus needed to account for the dynamics of the constantly evolving social contract between the (political and economic) elites and the people. Reform of consumer subsidies cannot be considered independently of the implicit producer subsidies including to inefficient state-owned enterprises and exclusive access to public contracts by cronies. The approach should articulate the broader vision of economic transformation toward a more genuine private sector and therefore address both consumer and producer sides. Transformation should also be complemented by a more vibrant social protection system that cushions individuals from bad economic shocks and poverty. Currently, protection systems in Arab countries are limited, inefficient, and fragmented. Well-designed and well-implemented systems can encourage more individual risk-taking and the development of entrepreneurship and sustainable private sector development.

The inability of many Arab governments to deliver reliable basic services such as electricity, water, waste management, public transportation, and telecoms is at the heart of the distrust. While universal subsidies should be reformed promptly, it is appropriate that the government first improve its performance and encourage competition in key sectors on which citizens depend. Such reforms would improve the quality of services making it easier to justify to consumers the higher tariffs that would result from reduced subsidies.

Transparency and data disclosure is essential to reform in the public sector and to create accountability mechanisms to limit corruption. In too many Arab countries, there is limited open government, which reduces the likelihood of achieving open markets that have no barriers to entry. For instance, the lack of transparent public procurement and the failure to digitalize government payments and receipts encourage red tape and the capture of markets by elites with connections to the government. What is more, inadequate disclosure of data and statistics prevents evidence-based policymaking and limits the ability of governments to self-correct and avoid big mistakes. In other words, the burden of reforms in Arab countries should fall first on governments to help ensure that citizens will accept the burdens occasioned by transformative reforms.

Die Partei -- which translates as "the party" -- was founded in 2004 by a group of German comedians, and satirizes the world of politics with humorous campaigns and policy suggestions. After Aschenbach was elected in the East German city of Dresden, however, the political prankster soon made headlines around the world for a very serious reason. He put forward a successful motion declaring that Dresden has a "Nazi emergency," meaning that the city, which is home to the anti-Islam Pegida movement and where a quarter of the population voted for the far-right AfD (Alternative for Germany) party, has a problem with extremism on a level with the climate emergency. "I've been interviewed by Russians, Canadians -- everyone!" he says.

Die Partei is known in Germany for its joke policies, such as a pledge to annul votes if voters cannot answer questions such as "What is the capital of Paris?" It prints posters with slogans such as "Yes to Europe! No to Europe!" But last year it won enough votes to gain two seats in the European Parliament and attracted 9 percent of the youth vote.

And as it enters the world of real-life politics, its stunts have taken a more serious turn, and it is quickly emerging as a thorn in the side of Germany's far right. In 2017, Die Partei members took over 31 of AfD's Facebook groups a week before the country's election. And after finding out the party was exploiting a loophole in Germany's political financing rules by selling gold coins and bars online, Die Partei began selling 100 euro notes for 105 euros. This led to AfD being reprimanded.

"I think satire can be more honest because it doesn't have to struggle for favor," says Aschenbach, a lanky figure who teams his politician's shirt and tie with battered DM boots and frayed jeans.