16 November 19
Super Low Donor Response. That’s it, that’s only thing that can bring RSN down. Anything even approaching a reasonable degree of responsiveness from our donors and RSN does fine.
So far for November 312,503 readers have visited RSN 196 have donated. That has to cause a crisis. And it is.
In earnest.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
Founder, Reader Supported News
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16 November 19
Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker
Toobin writes: "Roger Stone is now a convicted felon, which is one honorific he had avoided during his decades of tumultuous public life."
Toobin writes: "Roger Stone is now a convicted felon, which is one honorific he had avoided during his decades of tumultuous public life."
EXCERPT:
Stone’s troubles—and now his downfall—came about because he is, to put it charitably, a bullshit artist. He is a rare political figure who exaggerates his evil deeds rather than his good ones. When I first profiled him, in 2008, he claimed major roles in such varied scandals as the so-called Brooks Brothers riot, during the 2000 Florida recount, and the prostitution bust that brought down the New York State governor Eliot Spitzer, in 2008. (His role in both remains unclear.) It was this perverse kind of boastfulness that led to Mueller’s case against him.
Stone was a peripheral player in Trump’s 2016 campaign. Like so many people associated with Trump, he was publicly fired but remained a phone pal of the candidate. After his firing, Stone found his way back into the campaign’s inner circles thanks to his purported familiarity with WikiLeaks, which, in July, 2016, released thousands of e-mails that had been stolen from the Democratic National Committee. That kind of dirty trick was deeply appealing to Stone, and he tried to become a conduit between WikiLeaks and the campaign. Notably, as came out in the trial, he apparently had several conversations with Trump himself about the WikiLeaks disclosures—something Trump denied under oath, in his written answers to Mueller.
The lies for which Stone was convicted reveal his longing to be involved in the Trump campaign more than any real connection he might have had to it. He was asked by the House Intelligence Committee whether he had any e-mails regarding the hacked documents released by WikiLeaks. “Not to my knowledge,” he answered. In fact, he had exchanged dozens, if not hundreds, of e-mails about WikiLeaks, many with Randy Credico, an eccentric radio host and comedian in New York. Those e-mails showed Stone puffing about his connections to the group—which he exaggerated significantly. Still, his lie about the e-mails doomed him in court. Another lie involved his denial that he had tried to get more information from WikiLeaks. Clearly, Stone did try—but he failed to get the information he sought.
After Stone’s conviction, Trump released an indignant tweet complaining that Stone had been prosecuted though many of the President’s enemies had not. No one should expect that Stone, now facing the prospect of a prison sentence, will turn on Trump and provide incriminating evidence. That’s against the code by which Stone has lived his life; more important, Stone was so far outside Trump’s inner circle that it’s unlikely that he has much evidence to provide.
President Trump has also hinted that he will consider pardons for all of his associates who have been convicted or pleaded guilty as a result of the Russia investigation. This includes Paul Manafort, Trump’s onetime campaign chairman (and Stone’s onetime business partner). But Stone, as a veteran of Trump’s world, knows that loyalty is a one-way street for the President: Trump expects it but does not provide it. A pardon might impose a political cost on Trump, and he almost certainly won’t be willing to pay it, at least until he’s a lame duck. It’s a lonely feeling to be convicted by a jury, and Stone is likely to remain on his own—as least as far as the President is concerned—for the foreseeable future.
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Nancy Pelosi. (photo: Erin Schaff/NYT)
Tim Mak, NPR
Mak writes: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi believes that the impeachment inquiry underway has uncovered evidence that President Trump's actions amounted to bribery."
"Bribery ... that is in the Constitution, attached to the impeachment proceedings. The bribe is to grant or withhold military assistance in return for a public statement of a fake investigation into the elections. That's bribery."
The Constitution says that the president can be impeached or removed for "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."
Earlier this week, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told NPR that bribery was among the possible articles of impeachment that the House may consider.
"Bribery, first of all, as the Founders understood bribery, it was not as we understand it in law today. It was much broader," Schiff said. "It connoted the breach of the public trust in a way where you're offering official acts for some personal or political reason, not in the nation's interest."
A security contractor frisks a detainee ahead of a deportation flight to Honduras. (photo: Getty Images)
Asylum Officers Rebel Against Trump Immigration Policies They Say Are Immoral, Illegal
Molly O'Toole, Los Angeles Times
O'Toole writes: "It took Doug Stephens two days to decide: He wasn't going to implement President Trump's latest policy to restrict immigration, known as Remain in Mexico. The asylum officer wouldn't interview any more immigrants, only to send them back across the border to face potential danger."
Molly O'Toole, Los Angeles Times
O'Toole writes: "It took Doug Stephens two days to decide: He wasn't going to implement President Trump's latest policy to restrict immigration, known as Remain in Mexico. The asylum officer wouldn't interview any more immigrants, only to send them back across the border to face potential danger."
As a federal employee, refusing to abide by policy probably meant that he’d be fired. But as a trained attorney, Stephens told The Times, the five interviews he’d been assigned were five too many. They were illegal.
“They’re definitely immoral,” Stephens said he told his supervisor in San Francisco. “And I’m not doing them.”
A spokesman for the union that represents some 13,000 Citizenship and Immigration Services employees said Stephens is believed to be the first asylum officer to formally refuse to conduct interviews under the program officially known as Migrant Protection Protocols. But across the country — according to asylum officers, including Stephens, as well as government officials — asylum officers are calling in sick, requesting transfers, retiring earlier than planned and quitting — all to resist Trump administration immigration policies.
Citizenship and Immigration Services declined requests for staffing data for the Homeland Security agency. In a sign of widespread discomfort among the asylum officers, however, the National CIS Council union has filed “friend of the court” briefs in lawsuits against the administration, arguing that its immigration policies are illegal. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments last month in the litigation against the Migrant Protection Protocols, and a ruling is pending.
Since the Trump administration announced its Migrant Protection Protocols in December, U.S. officials have pushed roughly 60,000 asylum seekers back across the southern border to wait in places the State Department considers some of the most dangerous in the world, rather than allowing them to stay in the U.S. until their immigration hearings.
One of an asylum officer’s primary missions is to make sure that the government is not returning people to harm in their home countries, a foundational principle in U.S. and international law. While U.S. officials downplay the danger in Mexico, kidnappings, rape and other violence against asylum seekers are widespread and well documented.
Homeland Security officials concede that the program is designed to discourage asylum claims. The president is running for reelection on renewed promises to limit immigration. Under the policy, 11 asylum seekers have been granted some kind of relief, according to Syracuse University’s TRAC database.
In a collaboration with the radio program “This American Life,” The Times interviewed asylum officers to get a front-line perspective on implementing Trump’s policy. In almost every interview they’ve conducted since MPP went into effect, half a dozen officers said, the asylum seeker expressed a fear of returning to Mexico — many said they’d been harmed there already. But under the new standards, the officers said, they had to return them anyway.
“What’s my moral culpability in that?” said an asylum officer who’s conducted nearly 100 interviews. She requested anonymity because she feared retaliation. “My signature’s on that paperwork. And that’s something now that I live with.”
The asylum officers objecting to the administration’s immigration policies say they run counter to the laws passed by Congress, as well as their oath to the Constitution and extensive training, which includes how to detect fraud or any potential national security concerns.
Under U.S. law, migrants have the right to request asylum. Some 80% of asylum seekers pass the first step in the lengthy process, an interview with an officer that’s known as a credible-fear screening. Congress set a low standard for this initial stage, to minimize the risk of sending someone back to harm. Ultimately, about 15% of applicants win asylum before an immigration judge.
Trump and his top officials have cited the difference in those percentages to back up the claim that asylum itself is a “hoax” or “big fat con job.”
Ken Cuccinelli, the acting head of Citizenship and Immigration Services, has publicly criticized the officers, saying they approve too many requests and oppose Trump’s initiatives for partisan reasons. On Wednesday, Cuccinelli was named acting deputy Homeland Security secretary.
Cuccinelli’s office did not make him available for an interview. But during an October media breakfast, he said this about concerns from officers: “So long as we’re in the position of putting in place what we believe to be legal policies … we fully expect them to implement those faithfully and sincerely and vigorously.”
Michael Bars, a Homeland Security spokesman, said in a statement that MPP is based on a federal statute that “clearly states that aliens arriving from a contiguous territory may be returned to that territory pending their immigration hearing.”
When Stephens refused to do the interviews in accordance with policy, his supervisors started disciplinary proceedings. He said he decided to quit, but not before drafting a memo outlining why he believed the Remain in Mexico policy violates the law. He sent it to everyone in the CIS office in San Francisco, as well as agency supervisors, the union and a U.S. senator.
No longer in government, Stephens now is trying to draw attention to the program and encouraging others to speak out.
“You’re literally sending people back to be raped and killed,” he said. “That’s what this is.”
The stay of Reed's execution means the case will go back to a state judge in Bastrop County where he was convicted. (photo: Ralph Barrera/AP)
Texas Appeals Court Blocks Rodney Reed Execution
Ray Sanchez, Chris Boyette and Amir Vera, CNN
Excerpt: "The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals blocked the execution of Rodney Reed Friday, allowing a lower court to consider Reed's claim that the state presented false testimony and that he is innocent."
Ray Sanchez, Chris Boyette and Amir Vera, CNN
Excerpt: "The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals blocked the execution of Rodney Reed Friday, allowing a lower court to consider Reed's claim that the state presented false testimony and that he is innocent."
EXCERPTS:
Rep. Michael T. McCaul wrote Abbott and the board this week to ask for a delay of the execution. Texas executes the most death row inmates of the 50 US states.
McCaul, a Texas Republican, is among a growing list of supporters across the country who say the new evidence might prove Reed did not kill Stites in Bastrop, Texas.
New witness affidavits from neighbors, colleagues, and associates of Stites and Fennell paint their relationship as abusive and difficult. There is more testimony supporting the assertion that Stites was in an affair with Reed.
One witness said that at Stites' funeral, Fennell said something like, "You got what you deserved," while looking at her body.
The Innocence Project noted that Reed, who is black, was convicted by an all-white jury.
The group says the murder weapon was never tested for DNA evidence and that forensic experts admitted to errors in their testimony, and that a former prison inmate claims the victim's fiancée confessed to the murder that sent Reed to prison.
Soldiers. (photo: PA)
Trump Pardons Military Personnel Accused of Crimes Overseas
Associated Press
Excerpt: "Donald Trump has pardoned a former US army commando set to stand trial next year in the killing of a suspected Afghan bomb-maker and a former army lieutenant who had been convicted of murder after he ordered his men to fire upon three Afghans, killing two, the White House announced late Friday."
Associated Press
Excerpt: "Donald Trump has pardoned a former US army commando set to stand trial next year in the killing of a suspected Afghan bomb-maker and a former army lieutenant who had been convicted of murder after he ordered his men to fire upon three Afghans, killing two, the White House announced late Friday."
EXCERPT:
One of the pardons went to Maj Mathew Golsteyn, a former Green Beret accused of killing a suspected bomb-maker while deployed to Afghanistan. Golsteyn has argued that the Afghan was a legal target because of his behavior at the time of the shooting.
The second pardon went to 1Lt Clint Lorance, who had been convicted of murder for ordering his soldiers to fire upon three unarmed Afghan men in July 2012, killing two. Lorance has served more than six years of a 19-year sentence.
Trump also ordered a promotion for the special warfare operator 1st Class Edward Gallagher, the Navy Seal convicted of posing with a dead Islamic State captive in Iraq in 2017. Gallagher was in line for a promotion before he was prosecuted, but he lost that and was reduced in rank after the conviction.
Late last month Adm Mike Gilday, the US chief of naval operations, denied a request for clemency for Gallagher and upheld a military jury’s sentence that reduced his rank by one step. One of Gallagher’s lawyers, Timothy Parlatore, said that ruling would cost Gallagher up to $200,000 in retirement funds because of his loss of rank from a chief petty officer to a 1st class petty officer.
Gallagher ultimately was acquitted of the most serious charges against him, and Grisham said the reinstatement of the promotion was “justified”, given Gallagher’s service.
Defense officials, including Mark Esper, the secretary of defense, met with Trump and provided him information on the cases.
Asked last week if he supported the exoneration of Gallagher, Golsteyn and Lorance, Esper told reporters that he had a “robust discussion” with the president about the issue and offered his advice and recommendations. He declined to provide more details, but said, “I do have full confidence in the military justice system and we’ll let things play out as they play out.”
Chile's 'historic' protest march from above. (photo: BBC)
In Win for Protesters, Chile to Vote on Replacing Constitution
Reuters
Excerpt: "Lawmakers in Chile agreed on Friday to hold a referendum next April on replacing the country's dictatorship-era constitution, bowing to demands of protesters who want the country's social and economic model overhauled."
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Reuters
Excerpt: "Lawmakers in Chile agreed on Friday to hold a referendum next April on replacing the country's dictatorship-era constitution, bowing to demands of protesters who want the country's social and economic model overhauled."
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'Snow in Chichim signals more than just the coming of a new season; its presence is essential for the survival of the village.' (photo: Catherine Davison/DW)
Living in Hope and Fear Beside India's Retreating Himalayan Glaciers
Deutsche Welle
Excerpt: "Tashi Yudon peeks out from behind a net curtain at the rooftops below and lets out a sigh, her breath frosting on the windowpane in front of her."
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Deutsche Welle
Excerpt: "Tashi Yudon peeks out from behind a net curtain at the rooftops below and lets out a sigh, her breath frosting on the windowpane in front of her."
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