Andy Borowitz | Kremlin Names Trump Employee of the Month

21 March 19 Waiting for Someone Else to Donate Yesterday twenty thousand people visited RSN, 12 donated. There is no way on earth we can sustain that. Impossible. Obviously if people are coming but not donating then those who are not donating must believe someone else will. Don't wait for someone else to be the one ... be the one. Marc Ash Founder, Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! Update My Monthly Donation If you would prefer to send a check: Reader Supported News PO Box 2043 Citrus Hts, CA 95611

21 March 19 It's Live on the HomePage Now: Reader Supported News NO FAIR ON FUND-RAISING - For whatever reason this month we are receiving very few donations. No fair. We serve the community, we turn down corporate advertising and most importantly we are structured so that we can survive on 1 in 1000 Readers donating. Reader Supported News is growing in leaps and bounds - without funny money. We love that, we want RSN to continue and continue to grow. Some support is necessary. Sorry guys but one in a thousand? Not fair. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! Andy Borowitz | Kremlin Names Trump Employee of the Month  Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker Borowitz writes: "Capping an extraordinary year for the former television host, the Kremlin has named Donald J. Trump its Employee of the Month for December." READ MORE Senator Bernie Sanders shakes hands with supporters at his 2020 campaign launch. (photo: CBS News) Bernie's Campaign Becomes 2020's First to Promise to Offset Their Carbon Emissions Aki Soga, The Burlington Free Press Soga writes: "Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., pledged on Thursday that his 2020 presidential campaign will be carbon neutral, a promise similar to the one he made for his 2016 bid." READ MORE Chelsea Manning. (photo: Suzanne Cordeiro/Reuters) Chelsea Manning Says 'Unlawful Surveillance' Spurred WikiLeaks Subpoena Kevin Poulson, The Daily Beast Poulson writes: "Federal prosecutors believe that Chelsea Manning may have given 'false or mistaken' testimony during her 2013 court-martial for leaking classified material to WikiLeaks, Manning's attorney disclosed in a newly unsealed court filing." READ MORE Senator John McCain. (photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP) Trump Attacks McCain Again, Saying He Didn't Get a 'Thank You' for Approving Late Senator's Funeral Josh Dawsey, Ashley Parker, Felicia Sonmez and Alex Horton, The Washington Post Excerpt: "President Trump on Wednesday escalated his unrelenting attacks on the late senator from Arizona and former GOP presidential nominee John McCain, who even in death has remained one of Trump's top targets for abuse as fellow Republicans have repeatedly begged him to stop." READ MORE The prison became notorious for 'sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses.' (photo: Getty) 'It Never Really Left Me': Abu Ghraib Torture Survivors Finally Get Their Day in Court Richard Hall, The Independent Hall writes: "The images of torture at Abu Ghraib shocked the world when they emerged nearly 15 years ago." READ MORE A Tibetan chains himself during a protest held to mark the 60th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule, in New Delhi, India, March 10, 2019. (photo: Adnan Abidi/Reuters) After 60 Years in India, Why Are Tibetans Leaving? Kunal Purohit, Al Jazeera Purohit writes: "For many years, 34-year-old Kunsang Tenzing has been thinking about leaving India. His family did years ago. Most of his closest friends have also moved." READ MORE The Longview Power plant in West Virginia. (photo: Spencer Platt/Getty) Evangelicals Among Those Battling EPA Efforts to Weaken Toxics Regulations at Power Plants E. A. Crunden, ThinkProgress Crunden writes: "Faith groups and a bipartisan alliance of lawmakers are coming out hard against the Trump administration's efforts to rollback rules overseeing toxic chemicals at power plants." READ MORE Contribute to RSN Update My Monthly Donation

Bob Bauer | The Mueller Report and Ken Starr's 'Contempt'

01 March 19

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"WANTING" RSN TO SURVIVE IS NOT ENOUGH: This is not CNN, we don’t have ‘other ways’ of cashing in on your attendance. If we did we would be just like them and, you are here because you are done with that. Wanting RSN to continue to do good work is not enough. Honest news requires the support and participation of the community it serves. In case you haven’t noticed we are jumping through hoops for your donation. Give us a few dollars to work with. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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Bob Bauer | The Mueller Report and Ken Starr's 'Contempt' 

Bob Bauer, Lawfare
Bauer writes: "According to news reports, the end of the Mueller investigation is near. As early as next week, the special counsel may submit his report to the attorney general."
READ MORE

White House adviser Jared Kushner. (photo: Getty)

Trump Overruled Security Officials to Demand Jared Kushner Get Top-Secret Clearance, Report Says
Doha Madani, NBC News
Madani writes: "President Donald Trump overruled concerns of security officials and his own White House counsel and ordered that a top-secret security clearance be given to Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, The New York Times reported Thursday."
READ MORE

Kindergarten students dancing during a performance arts class at a school in New Jersey. (photo: Michelle Gustafson/The New York Times)

How Much Wealthier Are White School Districts Than Nonwhite Ones? $23 Billion, Report Says
Sarah Mervosh, The New York Times
Mervosh writes: "School districts that predominantly serve students of color received $23 billion less in funding than mostly white school districts in the United States in 2016, despite serving the same number of students, a new report found."
READ MORE 

The South Texas Family Residential Center. (photo: Ilana Panich-Linsman/The Washington Post)

Immigration Groups File Complaint Over 'Alarming Increase' in Detained Infants at Texas Center
Rebekah Entralgo, ThinkProgress
Entralgo writes: "At least nine infants under one year of age are being detained at the South Texas Family Residential Center (STFRC) in Dilley, Texas, according to a complaint filed Thursday by the American Immigration Council, American Immigration Lawyers Association, and the Catholic Immigration Network. One of the infants has been detained for over 20 days."
READ MORE

U.S. soldiers stand guard as Iraqi prisoners wait to be released at Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad, June 23, 2006. (photo: Reuters)

Judge Allows Abu Ghraib Torture Claims to Go to Trial
Associated Press
Excerpt: "After 10 years of delay, a federal judge has ruled that three former inmates who say they were tortured at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison can go forward with their lawsuit against a military contractor."
READ MORE

Israel opens fire on Palestinian protesters in Gaza. (photo: Jack Guez/Getty)

UN Council: Israel Intentionally Shot Children and Journalists in Gaza
Noa Landau, Haaretz
Landau writes: "The investigative commission of the United Nations Human Rights Council that examined the most recent round of violence on the Israel-Gaza border presented its findings on Thursday, saying it found 'reasonable grounds' that Israeli security forces violated international law."
READ MORE

Along a stretch of the central Grand Canyon, the deepest part of the inner gorge is composed of Vishnu schist, rock formed some 1.7 billion years ago. (photo: Pete McBride/National Geographic)

Are We Losing the Grand Canyon?
Kevin Fedarko, National Geographic
Fedarko writes: "On a 650-mile trek, two adventurers faced danger and hardship - and saw how development could spoil an American icon."
READ MORE

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RSN: Matt Taibbi | Trump's Family Separation Scandal Has Revealed Every Species of Hypocrite

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RSN: Matt Taibbi | Trump's Family Separation Scandal Has Revealed Every Species of Hypocrite

RSN: Matt Taibbi | Trump's Family Separation Scandal Has Revealed Every Species of Hypocrite

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RSN: Matt Taibbi | Trump's Family Separation Scandal Has Revealed Every Species of Hypocrite

RSN: Ronan Farrow | My Father, Woody Allen, and the Danger of Questions Unasked, Recipe to Lose 'War on Terror': Sunni Terrorism. Western Bombs. Repeat,

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Ronan Farrow | My Father, Woody Allen, and the Danger of Questions Unasked 
 
Ronan Farrow, The Hollywood Reporter 
Farrow writes: "Initially, I begged my sister not to go public again and to avoid speaking to reporters about it. I'm ashamed of that, too. With sexual assault, anything's easier than facing it in full, saying all of it, facing all of the consequences." 
READ MORE

The Secret NSA Diary of an Abu Ghraib Interrogator 
Cora Currier, The Intercept 
Currier writes: "Fair would go on to write a memoir detailing his experiences in Iraq; the book, Consequence, was published last month to strong notices, including not one but two positive reviews in the New York Times. But Fair actually wrote about his time as an interrogator more than a decade earlier in an internal NSA publication." 
READ MORE

George Zimmerman Auctioning Gun Used to Kill Trayvon Martin 
Hudson Hongo, Gawker 
Hongo writes: "George Zimmerman says he is auctioning off the pistol he used to kill Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teen whose murder he was acquitted of in 2013." 
READ MORE

Planned Parenthood Shooter Robert Dear Has Been Found Unfit to Stand Trial 
Marie Solis, Mic 
Solis writes: Though the evidence against him may be damning, a judge ruled Wednesday that Dear is not mentally stable enough to undergo trial. According to the Denver Post, the ruling was supported by two state psychologists who diagnosed Dear with delusional disorder. " 
READ MORE

Prison Phones Are a Predatory Monopoly. One Family Fought Back - and Won. 
Colin Lecher, The Verge 
Lecher writes: "To prisoners and their relations, calls are a vital connection to home. For facility operators, they've long been considered security holes, a means for inmates to coordinate crimes with the outside. And for inmate phone companies, along with state and local governments, the system is a lucrative business opportunity." 
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Recipe to Lose 'War on Terror': Sunni Terrorism. Western Bombs. Repeat. 
Jürgen Todenhöfer, The Daily Beast 
Todenhöfer writes: "The West has been waging its war on terror for 14 years. The result? Instead of a couple of hundred dangerous international terrorists, we now have over 100,000. And 1.3 million dead in the Middle East." 
READ MORE

It's Been Another Rough Year for Honeybees 
Katie Valentine, ThinkProgress 
Valentine writes: "It's been another rough year for honeybees. On Tuesday, the Bee Informed Partnership released its annual report on total losses of managed honeybees - those kept by beekeepers - across the country." 
READ MORE

RSN: Goal to End Fossil Fuels by 2050 Proposed at Lima Climate Talks, Why the Founding Fathers Thought Banning Torture Foundational to the US Constitution, Palestinian Minister Killed by ISF at Protest in West Bank

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THE DANGEROUS PRECEDENT THAT IS READER SUPPORTED NEWS: We don't play the game, and we survive in spite of it. No news agency tries to do what we do. Reject the advertisers, you're kidding. Accept less profit, yeah right. These things do not happen. We survive hence we move the goalposts. No longer can the main-stream-media assume that their way is the only way. Get serious about this, it's real. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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Juan Cole | Why the Founding Fathers Thought Banning Torture Foundational to the US Constitution

Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Cole writes: "The Bill of Rights of the US Constitution is full of prohibitions on torture, as part of a general 18th century Enlightenment turn against the practice."
READ MORE

I Can't Be Forgiven for Abu Ghraib
Eric Fair, The New York Times
Fair writes: "I was an interrogator at Abu Ghraib. I tortured."
READ MORE

Tens of Thousands Protest Against Irish Water Charges
Padraic Halpin, Reuters
Halpin writes: "At least 30,000 people marched on the Irish parliament on Wednesday in a third day of mass protests against new water charges that have spurred the biggest opposition movement since the financial crisis erupted in 2008."
READ MORE

Kerry: Don't Block Ground Troops vs. ISIS
Martin Matishak, The Hill
Matishak writes: "Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday that any measure authorizing the use of military force (AUMF) against Islamic militants should not ban the use of U.S. ground forces."
READ MORE

Palestinian Minister Killed by ISF at Protest in West Bank
Al Jazeera America
Excerpt: "A minister in the Palestinian Authority, Ziad Abu Ein, has died after being beaten by Israeli security forces and inhaling tear gas during a protest in the occupied West Bank, witnesses say."
READ MORE

Two-Thirds of Americans Want Congress to Grant States "Safe Haven" from Federal Marijuana Enforcement
Christopher Ingraham, The Washington Post
Ingraham writes: "Americans overwhelmingly want the federal government to keep its hands off of state-level marijuana regulations."
READ MORE

Goal to End Fossil Fuels by 2050 Proposed at Lima Climate Talks
Anastasia Pantsios, EcoWatch
Pantsios writes: "A draft negotiating text was circulated yesterday at the UN climate summit in Lima, Peru that would cut carbon emissions to zero by 2050, earlier than many other proposals, and could spell the end of the fossil fuel industry. It's one of the most ambitious proposals to come out of the conference."
READ MORE

 

 

 

 

RSN: China: The Wet Dream of American Oligarchs, Rare Indian Burial Ground Quietly Destroyed for Million-Dollar Houses, Sarah Palin's Alternate Reality, et al

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Carl Gibson | China: The Wet Dream of American Oligarchs

Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News
"If you have all the money in the world, but there's nothing in the world worth buying, then what's the point of having so much money in the first place?"
READ MORE

Charles Pierce | Sarah Palin's Alternate Reality
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "If John McCain -- and the entire goddamn Republican party, including the Republicans who pop up on liberal MSNBC -- had had their way, we would now be in our sixth year of having this fking dimwit one short gasp away from the nuclear launch codes."
READ MORE

Juan Cole | John Kerry Admits Israeli Apartheid; and Five Ways He Is Understating It
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Cole writes: "The remark will raise a firestorm of criticism from Palestine-deniers, who are if anything more blindered and fanatical than climate-change deniers. What is sad is that Kerry phrased it in the future tense. That cow was out of the barn a long time ago."
READ MORE

Rare Indian Burial Ground Quietly Destroyed for Million-Dollar Houses
Sarah Zhang, Gizmodo
Zhang writes: "A 4,500-year-old American Indian burial ground—one of the richest and best preserved found in California in the past century—has been paved over for a multimillion dollar housing development in the Bay Area. And archeologists are pissed."
READ MORE

Karen J. Greenberg | The Road From Abu Ghraib
Karen J. Greenberg, TomDispatch
Greenberg writes: "It's mind-boggling. Torture is still up for grabs in America. No one questions anymore whether the CIA waterboarded one individual 83 times or another 186 times."
READ MORE

Rep. Michael Grimm Surrenders to FBI
Bill Chappell, National Public Radio
Chappell writes: "Rep. Michael Grimm of New York, who has been under investigation for fraud and campaign finance irregularities, turned himself in to federal agents early Monday."
READ MORE

Americans' Complicity in the Prison Rape Crisis
Arjun Sethi, Al Jazeera America
Sethi writes: "Rape and sexual assault are as basic to the American prison experience as bars and bunk beds."

READ MORE

RSN: Veterans and White Supremacy, Pennsylvania's Natural Gas Wells Are Leaking Up to 1,000 Times More Methane Than EPA Estimates, et al

FOCUS: Amy Davidson | The Snowden Pulitzer

Amy Davidson, New Yorker
Davidson writes: "It would have been a scandal, this year, if there had been no Pulitzer related to the documents that Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, leaked to several reporters. This was a defining case of the press doing what it is supposed to do."
READ MORE

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NOT CLOSE ON DONATIONS: This is a very tough group to move. Perhaps too tough. Time will tell. You are here, but for the most part you (as a group) do not donate. It only takes a few minutes and a few dollars to keep RSN strong. What’s the problem? / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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Andy Borowitz | Zuckerberg Vows Facebook Will Shoot Down Google Drones

Andy Borowitz, New Yorker
Borowitz writes: "One day after Google outbid Facebook for a manufacturer of solar-powered drones, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg served warning that his company was prepared to blow Google's drones out of the skies."
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Abu Ghraib Closes, Bitter Memories of Torture Remain
Jamie Tarabay, Al Jazeera America
Tarabay writes: "The prison at Abu Ghraib was notorious for its treatment of those confined within its walls long before U.S. Army Private Lynndie England dragged a naked Iraqi prisoner around on a dog leash."
READ MORE

Bloomberg Plans a $50 Million Challenge to the NRA
Jeremy W. Peters, The New York Times
Peters writes: "Mr. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, said gun control advocates need to learn from the N.R.A. and punish those politicians who fail to support their agenda - even Democrats."
READ MORE

Pennsylvania's Natural Gas Wells Are Leaking Up to 1,000 Times More Methane Than EPA Estimates
Lindsay Abrams, Salon
Abrams reports: "Fracking sites at Pennsylvania's natural gas-rich Marcellus Shale are releasing way more methane than we thought - somewhere on the order of 100 to 1,000 times EPA estimates, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences."
READ MORE

Police Body Cameras Didn't Provide Accountability in New Mexico
Gwyneth Doland, Al Jazeera America
Doland writes: "It was one officer's helmet camera recording of the four-hour standoff's denouement - Boyd agreeing to leave with the officers and collecting his belongings, then being shot as police suddenly launched an offensive - that quickly brought the city's simmering anxiety to a rolling boil of protests and demands for change."
READ MORE

Veterans and White Supremacy
Kathleen Belew, The New York Times
Belew writes: "When Frazier Glenn Miller shot and killed three people in Overland Park, Kan., on Sunday, he did so as a soldier of the white power movement: a groundswell that united Klansmen, neo-Nazis and other fringe elements after the Vietnam War, crested with the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, and remains a diminished but potent threat today."
READ MORE

Report: Hundreds Killed While Defending Environment, Land Rights
Renee Lewis, Al Jazeera America
Lewis writes: "Hundreds of people have been killed while defending the environment and land rights around the world, international monitors said in a report released Tuesday, highlighting what they called a culture of impunity surrounding the deaths."
READ MORE

Benjamin Franklin said '....A Republic if you can keep it....'

Have we failed because of apathy, ignorance and propaganda?

Gregory D. Johnsen wrote, "Maybe it shouldn't be so surprising that Congress didn't think about how the war would end when it passed the AUMF on Sept. 14, 2001, but after more than a dozen years, we are no closer to an answer." (photo: unknown)

Required Reading

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

19 January 14

f you read nothing else this weekend, read Gregory Johnsen's somewhat epic performance on Buzzfeed about the original Authorization for the Use of Military Force that came out of the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the permanent state of war that one 60-word sentence in that document created in the United States, a phenomenon that the Founders specifically and repeatedly warned against. (Johnsen is the recipient of first Michael Hastings Fellowship, named for the renowned journalist who died in an automobile accident last year.) If nothing else, the piece functions as a very loud warning siren against upending the rule of law and the separation of powers out of fear and panic. War, Mr. Madison cautioned, is "the true nurse of executive aggrandizement." We have traded his wisdom for the undying partisan hackery of apparatchiks like David Addington and John Yoo. It is not a good trade.

Unbound by time and unlimited by geography, the sentence has been stretched and expanded over the past decade, sprouting new meanings and interpretations as two successive administrations have each attempted to keep pace with an evolving threat while simultaneously maintaining the security of the homeland. In the process, what was initially thought to authorize force against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan has now been used to justify operations in several countries across multiple continents and, at least theoretically, could allow the president - any president - to strike anywhere at anytime. What was written in a few days of fear has now come to govern years of action.

The piece goes on to illustrate with painful clarity a meek and timorous Congress, which had allowed so much of its constitutional war powers to leach into the executive over the previous five decades that most of its members had forgotten how to exercise them at all, let alone how to exercise them at a moment of national trauma. (One pissant aide to a forgettable schlub like Dennis Hastert gets to bulldoze past legitimate constitutional questions because we...must...do...something, and everybody acclaims him a hero.) Congress -- in the persons of Joe Biden and John Kerry, among others -- tries to cover its ass but ends up taking what everybody knows is a dive. And, after the dive, we see Yoo, who should have been kept away from the councils of government for the same reason we keep Charlie Manson out of the cutlery, immediately find a way to renege on a deal that had been cut with the Congress and expand the president's power beyond anything remotely conceived of in the Constitution.

Maybe it shouldn't be so surprising that Congress didn't think about how the war would end when it passed the AUMF on Sept. 14, 2001, but after more than a dozen years, we are no closer to an answer. "This is a bizarro war," Jack Goldsmith told me recently. A tenured law professor at Harvard who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel under George W. Bush, Goldsmith has written a pair of books on national security law. "What we don't see, we don't care about."

Read the whole thing and understand how we got to where we are today, when the president is going to deliver a speech about the NSA revelations, arguing for "reforms" in which there is no good reason to believe. Read the whole thing and see in it the seedbed for unlimited drone warfare and whatever comes after that, which undoubtedly will be worse. Read the whole thing and understand how Abu Ghraib happened and why Gitmo is still open. Read the whole thing and watch the relentless abandonment of self-government over the past 13 years. Read the whole thing and realize that we are no longer even the nation we pretend to be, Read the whole thing and realize how much the late Osama bin Laden actually won.

 

 

 

WE CAN’T AFFORD THE LUXURY OF FAILURE: When we said no to the corporations and the moneyed interests we canceled our “option to fail.” We finish our funding-drives because we must. In peace and solidarity. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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