31 October 19
The Washington Post Editorial Board | Republicans Escalate Their Strategy of Voter Suppression
The Washington Post Editorial Board
Excerpt: "Early voting is meant to enable more people to vote: Shift workers, for example, who cannot wait in line at a polling place on a Tuesday can still have a voice. Texas's law turns that vote-enabling system into a vote-suppressing weapon."
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The Washington Post Editorial Board
Excerpt: "Early voting is meant to enable more people to vote: Shift workers, for example, who cannot wait in line at a polling place on a Tuesday can still have a voice. Texas's law turns that vote-enabling system into a vote-suppressing weapon."
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Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. (photo: Mandel Ngan/Getty)
Official Says White House Lawyer Moved Transcript of Trump Ukraine Call to Classified Server
Anna Kaplan, The Daily Beast
Kaplan writes: "Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a top Ukraine adviser in the White House, linked White House lawyer John Eisenberg to the decision to move the transcript of the July 25 call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to a classified server."
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Anna Kaplan, The Daily Beast
Kaplan writes: "Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a top Ukraine adviser in the White House, linked White House lawyer John Eisenberg to the decision to move the transcript of the July 25 call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to a classified server."
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A protester holds a sign calling for Donald Trump's impeachment. (photo: Spencer Platt/Getty)
Who Are the Two Democrats Who Voted Against the House Resolution Formalizing Impeachment?
Charles Duncan, McClatchy DC
Duncan writes: "Two Democrats in the House of Representatives voted against the resolution authorizing the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump."
Charles Duncan, McClatchy DC
Duncan writes: "Two Democrats in the House of Representatives voted against the resolution authorizing the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump."
EXCERPT:
Democrats Collin C. Peterson of Minnesota and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey voted against the resolution that came up Thursday morning.
Nearly all Republicans in the House — 194 — voted against the bill, while three didn’t cast a vote. The Democrats won the vote mostly along party lines, with 232 votes in favor, including one from independent Justin Amash, who previously left the Republican party.
The push comes over Trump’s efforts to have Ukraine’s president investigate former Democrat Vice President Joe Biden.
Peterson, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported earlier this month, “has called the impeachment process futile, unnecessarily divisive and a bad use of Congress’ time.”
The newspaper said Peterson has not defended Trump’s actions that led to the inquiry. Trump carried Peterson’s district in 2016, according to the Star-Tribune.
Van Drew was expected to vote no on Thursday’s resolution, according to The Press of Atlantic City.
Syrian soldiers stand next to ammunition found in the southern province of Daraa in February. (photo: Louai Beshara/AP)
The Weapons America Is Leaving Behind in Syria
Jared Keller, The New Republic
Keller writes: "Less than a week after President Donald Trump formally ordered the U.S. military to withdraw the majority of its forces from Syria, the Pentagon carried out an unusual mission in the northeastern part of the country."
Jared Keller, The New Republic
Keller writes: "Less than a week after President Donald Trump formally ordered the U.S. military to withdraw the majority of its forces from Syria, the Pentagon carried out an unusual mission in the northeastern part of the country."
EXCERPT:
This unusual mission underscores the logistical nightmares wrought by a hasty U.S. military withdrawal from the country. Military sources have told reporters that the sortie, which cost roughly $23,000 per hour per aircraft, was ordered “because the cargo trucks required to safely remove the ammo are needed elsewhere to support the withdrawal.” Army Colonel Myles Caggins, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Syria and Iraq, tried to play the incident off as routine, saying that “blowing the ammo was part of the plan,” but Brett McGurk, a former U.S. envoy to the multinational alliance, tweeted that the mission constituted an “emergency ‘break glass’ evacuation procedure reserved for an extreme worst-case scenario.”
McGurk isn’t wrong. “Trying to destroy munitions from the sky like this does not work as well as air planners think,” John Ismay, a New York Times reporter and former Navy explosive ordnance disposal officer, tweeted. “Some of the weapons you hit will detonate sympathetically, sure. For the rest, you’ve blown open secure storage and made it available to anyone with a pickup truck.”
It’s that latter prospect that should be concerning. In 2017, Trump shuttered a CIA program to arm and equip Syrian rebels, and the weapons and ammo left behind may have helped spur what one researcher on the ground has called an “industrial revolution in terrorism”—and in the midst of Trump’s hasty about-face in northern Syria, even more powerful U.S. munitions stand poised to fall into enemy hands.
The Senate Judiciary Committee room on Capitol Hill on Sept. 26, 2018. (photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty)
Dahlia Lithwick | Why I Haven't Gone Back to SCOTUS Since Kavanaugh
Dahlia Lithwick, Slate
Lithwick writes: "It's been just over a year since I sat in the hearing room and watched the final act of Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing. I listened from the back as Christine Blasey Ford and then-Judge Kavanaugh each faced the Senate Judiciary Committee to tell irreconcilable versions of what happened in the summer of 1982."
Dahlia Lithwick, Slate
Lithwick writes: "It's been just over a year since I sat in the hearing room and watched the final act of Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing. I listened from the back as Christine Blasey Ford and then-Judge Kavanaugh each faced the Senate Judiciary Committee to tell irreconcilable versions of what happened in the summer of 1982."
EXCERPT:
Kavanaugh is now installed for a lifetime at the highest court in the land. Ford is still unable to resume her life or work for fear of death threats. And the only thing the hearings resolved conclusively is that Senate Republicans couldn’t be bothered to figure out what happened that summer of 1982, or in the summers and jobs and weekends that followed. In the year-plus since, I have given many speeches in rooms full of women who still have no idea what actually happened in that hearing room that day, or why a parody of an FBI investigation was allowed to substitute for fact-finding, or why Debbie Ramirez and her Yale classmates were never even taken seriously, and why three books so far and two more books to come are doing the work of fact-finding that government couldn’t be bothered to undertake. Women I meet every week assure me that they are never going to feel perfectly safe again, which makes my son somewhat prescient. Two out of the nine sitting justices have credibly been accused of sexual impropriety against women. They will be deciding fundamental questions about women’s liberty and autonomy, having both vowed to get even for what they were “put through” when we tried to assess whether they were worthy of the privilege and honor of a seat on the highest court in the country.
Afghan security officials present a group of suspected militants to the media during a news conference in Kandahar, Afghanistan. (photo: Muhammad Sadiq/EPA)
CIA-Linked Unit Accused of Atrocities in Afghanistan
Emma Graham-Harrison, Guardian UK
Graham-Harrison writes: "The Afghan soldiers who swept through Kulalgo village one late August night shot three of Dr Ulfatullah's relatives carefully, a single bullet through their left eye, faces otherwise untouched as blood pooled below their bodies on the floor of the family home."
Emma Graham-Harrison, Guardian UK
Graham-Harrison writes: "The Afghan soldiers who swept through Kulalgo village one late August night shot three of Dr Ulfatullah's relatives carefully, a single bullet through their left eye, faces otherwise untouched as blood pooled below their bodies on the floor of the family home."
EXCERPT:
Thousands of men strong, the units have been implicated in multiple, serious human rights abuses including summary executions, forcibly disappearing detainees, and attacking medical facilities.
The report, titled They have shot many like this, details 14 deadly raids, where victims have included an elderly woman, a child, and a 60-year-old tribal elder, and says that abusive visits by these units have become a daily fact of life for many communities.
“I believe the 14 [raids we investigated] are only a fraction of the cases of this kind … but because they occur in remote areas most go unreported,” said Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director for HRW and author of the report.
“In ramping up operations against the Taliban, the CIA has enabled abusive Afghan forces to commit atrocities including extrajudicial executions and disappearances. In case after case, these forces have simply shot people in their custody.”
According to witnesses, on 11 August this year troops from one of these CIA-backed units – which, the witnesses said, was accompanied by at least one US soldier and a translator – served as judge, jury and executioner for 11 men in Kulgago village.
Vegetation is covered in oil after diesel spilled into the Karnaphuli River following a collision of two tankers at Padma jetty in Chittagong, India. (photo: Getty)
Oil Spill Causes 'Major Disaster' for Ganges River
Madison Dapcevich, EcoWatch
Dapcevich writes: "A tanker carrying 1,200 tonnes of diesel collided with another ship in the Karnaphuli river near Chittagong port last week, spreading 10 tonnes of diesel across 16 kilometers, port authority spokesman Omar Faruk told the publication."
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Madison Dapcevich, EcoWatch
Dapcevich writes: "A tanker carrying 1,200 tonnes of diesel collided with another ship in the Karnaphuli river near Chittagong port last week, spreading 10 tonnes of diesel across 16 kilometers, port authority spokesman Omar Faruk told the publication."
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