Saturday, 27 July 2019

Why Democrats Are Further Away From Impeachment Than Ever

Why Democrats Are Further Away From Impeachment Than EverOn Friday afternoon House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) filed a petition to obtain secret grand jury information currently redacted from the Mueller Report. With articles of impeachment under consideration, this informational probe is “in effect” the same as an impeachment inquiry, according to Nadler, who also called the information “critically important.” Next week Nadler is also expected to file a lawsuit to attempt to enforce a subpoena against former White House counsel Donald McGahn. But how significant are Nadler’s moves now that special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony on Capitol Hill is widely acknowledged to have fizzled, left-wing activists such as billionaire and Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer are turning their attention back to climate change—and Congress is heading toward a six-week-long recess?Fred Wertheimer, a veteran ethics activist and president of Democracy 21, believes Nadler’s move is only a cosmetic change to reflect changing party sentiments. “That’s what they’ve been doing since March. When they announced they would investigate three areas regarding the president: obstruction of justice, public corruption, and abuses of power. They have had articles of impeachment pending referred to the committee months and months ago . . . the investigation they have been conducting since March is the equivalent of an inquiry into whether they should consider impeachment,” he told the National Interest.




Moscow police arrest hundreds at rally for fair elections

Moscow police arrest hundreds at rally for fair electionsRussian police arrested more than 300 people as they gathered in Moscow on Saturday to demand free and fair elections, a monitor said, following a crackdown on the opposition. The rally comes a week after the capital's biggest demonstration in years, when some 22,000 people protested the authorities' decision to block opposition candidates from standing for the city council in September. Investigators raided the homes and headquarters of several disqualified candidates in the run-up to the fresh rally on Saturday.




Mueller’s Testimony: A Complete Disaster for Liberals

Mueller’s Testimony: A Complete Disaster for LiberalsIf Democrats believed that Robert Mueller would provide them with additional ammunition for an impeachment inquiry, they made an extraordinary miscalculation.Not only was Mueller often flustered and unprepared to talk about his own report—we now have to wonder to what extent he was even involved in the day-to-day work of the investigation—but he was needlessly evasive. In the end, he seriously undermined the central case for impeachment of President Donald Trump.The very first Republican to question him, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Rep. Doug Collins, forced Mueller to correct his own opening statement. In it, the former FBI director had asserted that the independent counsel “did not address collusion, which is not a legal term.”Stressing the difference between the criminal conspiracy and the colloquial “collusion” is a popular way of obscuring the fact that the central conspiracy pushed by Democrats, one that plunged the nation into two years of hysterics and fantasy, had been debunked by Mueller.Moreover, as Collins pointed out, Mueller’s own report stated that “collusion” and criminal conspiracy were basically “largely synonymous.”When asked to explain this contradiction, Mueller stammered for a few minutes before saying he would “leave it with the report.” Collins pointed out that, yes, the report stated that the terms “collusion” and “conspiracy” were synonymous, Mueller was forced to admit, “Yes.”It didn’t get better from there. Mueller didn’t know where some of the most infamous quotes in his own report had emanated. He claimed to be unfamiliar with Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, the Clinton—and DNC—funded contractors who originated and then propelled the Trump-Russian collusion theory.




The Secret History of Washing Machines

The Secret History of Washing Machines




Climate change warning as Arctic Circle burning at record rate

Climate change warning as Arctic Circle burning at record rateAn unprecedented outbreak of wildfires in the Arctic has sent smoke across Eurasia and released more carbon dioxide in two months than the Czech Republic or Belgium does in a year. As 44C heatwaves struck Europe, scientists observed more than 100 long-lasting, intense fires in the Arctic in June, the hottest month on record, and are seeing even more in July, according to Mark Parrington of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. Mostly in Alaska and Russia, the infernos have collectively released more than 120 million tonnes of CO2, more than the annual output of most countries. It is the most carbon emitted since satellite monitoring began in the early 2000s. This will further exacerbate climate change and has sent smoke pouring toward more populated parts of the world. Pollutants can persist more than a month in the atmosphere and spread thousands of kilometres. “You ask people about the Arctic, they think ice, polar bears, a clean environment, but clearly that's changing and that's no longer the case,” Mr Parrington said. “It should be an alarm bell that something isn't right, but the way it could directly affect them is the long-range transfer of smoke pollution. I don't think it's getting as far as western Europe just yet but that could happen.” The huge amounts of carbon from the fires will exacerbate climate change Credit: Maxar Technologies via AP While some have estimated that up to half a million kilometres have burned worldwide this year, Russia has been especially hard hit. Already, dangerous levels of smoke pollution have been reported this week in the cities of Chelyabinsk, Tomsk and Novosibirsk, where a curtain of smog turned the daytime sun a deep red. The number of patients in some cardiac wards have reportedly doubled. Fires first erupted in the peatlands of northern Siberia in June and have been joined by blazes in the massive boreal forests south of the Arctic circle. More than 30,000 square kilometres of Russian territory are currently burning, already about as much as in 2018 and twice as much as in 2017. This has created a 4.5 million square kilometre “smoke lid” that reaches as far east as the Pacific Ocean and as far south as Kazakhstan. To the west, thick smoke haze has drifted into more populated parts of the country, obscuring the streets of cities like Yekaterinburg and Perm and being detected all the way in Kazan on the Volga River. “This morning I thought a rubbish bin was burning outside the window, but it hasn't passed, the smoke is staying there,” Yekaterinburg resident Yevgenia Panasyuk told local television. Impressive extent of heavy smoke across much of central Russia/Siberia, Alaska & Canada from numerous intense boreal & Arcticwildfires shows up in latest Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service aerosol optical depth forecast https://t.co/N5E33mccshpic.twitter.com/br0kkT02HY— Mark Parrington (@m_parrington) July 24, 2019 Once rare in the cold, wet tundra and forests, fires in the Arctic, which is warming at twice the world average, have been flaring up with increasing frequency. The Copernicus satellite system has observed an average of 50 to 60 Arctic hotspots on summer days since it began monitoring in 2003. This summer it has been seeing about 250 per day. And while in the past Arctic blazes would typically go out in a few days, the duration of this year's fires, many of which of have been burning for nearly two months, is shocking, Mr Parrington said. The long-term effects could be dire. Already in June, fires began to deposit soot known as “black carbon” on Arctic sea ice, accelerating its melt. Russia has mobilised 2,715 personnel and 28 aircraft but they are only fighting fires in about 1,500 square kilometres of territory. A brush fire burns in South Anchorage, Alaska Credit: Loren Holmes/Anchorage Daily News via AP Like in Alaska and Canada, not all fires here receive a response. Since 2015, Russia has declined to combat blazes in vast, remote “control zones” unless they threaten towns. “The logic is clear, we need to save money,” the head of the Krasnoyarsk region said this month. But the policy of leaving fires alone until they spread to populated areas has resulted in an “environmental disaster at a national level,” Greenpeace Russia said on Friday. It claimed that hundreds of villages were within the control zones, calling on these boundaries to be redrawn and for the government to send additional firefighting forces to defend villages. Also on Friday, a study published in Science found that some Alaskan glaciers were melting 100 times faster than previously thought. Drawing on data about the terminus of a glacier in LeConte Bay collected by local high students since 1983, scientists scanned the glacier with sonar, radar and time-lapse cameras for two summers to discover that the underwater part of it was melting up to 16 feet per day in August. Their results have demonstrated that glaciers are more sensitive to warming ocean temperatures than researchers had known.




Family speaks out after girl with special needs was brutally attacked by multiple teens in viral video

Family speaks out after girl with special needs was brutally attacked by multiple teens in viral videoThe family of a 15-year-old Chicago girl with special needs said she is doing OK after she was brutally beaten by a group of teenagers.




Student group says Harvard failed to address racist messages

Student group says Harvard failed to address racist messagesAn association of black students at Harvard Law School says the university "woefully failed to act" after four students received offensive emails and text messages from an anonymous sender. The Harvard Black Law Students Association issued a statement on Friday criticizing the school after it was unable to determine who sent the "hateful, racist and sexist" messages, and after officials refused to share details of an investigation with students who received the messages. Harvard officials say the case was investigated by university police, information technology officials and an outside law firm hired by the school, but they have been unable to determine who was behind the messages.