monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Yes, Democrats do too, to a degree. But the Democratic left was furious with the Obama administration for its diffident approach to filling judicial vacancies. There has never been anything like the weaponizing of the federal judiciary that is currently taking place. Seventeen of President Trump’s 18 nominees to the federal appeals courts are connected to the Federalist Society. Donald McGahn, the White House counsel, joked at the Federalist Society’s annual convention in Washington last week that it was “completely false” that the Trump administration was outsourcing to the group the task of finding judicial nominees. “I’ve been a member of the Federalist Society since law school,” Mr. McGahn said. “Still am, so frankly it seems like it’s been in-sourced.”

Why is it always Orwell o’clock? Why is everything mildly unpleasant about government instantly Orwellian? Why is every banal propaganda effort obviously 1984 sprung to life? Why is it all as crushingly predictable as the Orwell Prize, the outstandingly foreseeable new Churchill And Orwell double biography, and now a new life-size bronze Orwell statue outside the BBC?

There is a simplicity and a clarity to Orwell’s prose. It flows nicely. But there is also nothing special about it other than the fact it has been canonised as the ultimate in English authorial excellence.
(...)

The secret of Orwell’s appeal lies in his rhetoric: everything is simple, everything is right or wrong, and everything—if you only listened to him—can finally be solved. George Orwell in fact reads nothing like a political thinker but like a Sunday morning country vicar: incredibly English, quietly demagogic, and thirsting for justice to be done.

The Texas native has built a reputation on Capitol Hill as a fierce advocate for the oil and gas industry and a reliable vote for conservative legislation. A member of the Freedom Caucus, Barton regularly receives top scores from socially conservative groups such as the Family Research Council that analyze members’ stances on positions such as abortion and gay rights.

A good writer, worth reading, but probably not worthy of beatification.

but the political crisis we confront has encouraged a great many who are neither scribes nor broadcasters to consider why journalism matters to a democracy. Among the many helpful books and articles on this subject, I particularly recommend a 2009 essay by Paul Starr, a Princeton University professor.

One of his central observations, from cross-national studies: The lower the circulation of newspapers in a given country, the higher the level of corruption. Journalism, it turns out, is an essential restraint on abuses by the powers-that-be, and all the more so when the checks and balances inside government are faltering.

Facebook plans to let people see if they had "liked" pages created by "foreign actors" to spread propaganda during the US presidential election.

The social network has previously said as many as 126 million Americans may have seen content uploaded by Russia-based agents over the past two years.

It is building a tool to let people see whether they had followed now-deleted pages made by the Russia-based Internet Research Agency.

The tool will be launched in December.

The Internet Research Agency was behind hundreds of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts and posted thousands of politically-charged messages.

Many of the pages such as Heart Of Texas, Being Patriotic and Secured Borders were designed to look like they were created by US citizens.

Since the last presidential election, in these fora, [Lash] has labeled herself a Republican and a Trump supporter.

amusing, disturbing and realistic?

During the 2016 election, the directions from the Kremlin were less subtle than usual. “Me and my colleagues, we were given a clear instruction: to show Donald Trump in a positive way, and his opponent, Hillary Clinton, in a negative way,” he said in his speech. In a later interview, he explained to me how the instructions were relayed. “Sometimes it was a phone call. Sometimes it was a conversation,” he told me. “If Donald Trump has a successful press conference, we broadcast it for sure. And if something goes wrong with Clinton, we underline it.”

Skorobutov said in his speech that the pro-Trump perspective extended from Kremlin-controlled media to the Moscow élite.

“There was even a slogan among Russian political élite,” he said. “ ‘Trump is our president.’ And, when he won the elections, on 9th November, 2016, Russian Parliament or State Duma even applauded him and arranged a champagne party celebrating the victory of Donald Trump.” That night, Skorobutov and his colleagues played clips of the party on the news.

The day is not over but wanted to get this New Yorker piece noted here

To explain the reasoning behind abandoning the investigation and why she chose to leave the BBC, MacKean stated, “The reason for dropping Newsnight’s story was never explained, even by the multi-million pound independent inquiry that later found the story should have run. Meirion [Jones] and I were isolated, if not marooned, and the BBC, throughout my career a benevolent employer, had come to feel like a hostile environment.”

Her work did not go unnoticed, however. The fact that the BBC chose to cover up this story and drop MacKean’s piece became public, and soon after the facts began to unravel. It wasn’t until 2014 that all (or at least most) of the details surrounding Savile’s sexual abuse victims came to light, exposing that he had sexually abused at least 500 children and even had sex with dead bodies.

Not only did he abuse children, but he also sexually abused countless adults of all ages, all the way up to 75 years old. Much of the abuse took place at hospitals, as he volunteered many of his hours there. Savile even had complete access to Leeds General Infirmary for five decades, where he raped and sexually abused children and adults, male and female, all over the hospital. Savile even performed “sexual acts” on dead bodies, and even bragged about making jewelry out of a man’s glass eyeball.

The Paris Accord was not adopted by treaty, so your thesis is false. If it had been a treaty, it would have required two-thirds of the Senate to rescind it, and that did not and would not happen. It helps to inform oneself before making pronouncements on what is or is not constitutional.

Quote:

The Texas native has built a reputation on Capitol Hill as a fierce advocate for the oil and gas industry and a reliable vote for conservative legislation. A member of the Freedom Caucus, Barton regularly receives top scores from socially conservative groups such as the Family Research Council that analyze members’ stances on positions such as abortion and gay rights.

WP
I gather that he sent photos of his weewee to at least one woman and to spice things up further, a video of himself jerking off. Barton has been a steadfast and consistent supporter of the oil industry. Those folks and their allies won't want this guy to be removed.