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Post by mhbruin on Dec 11, 2023 8:35:54 GMT -8
I find whiteboards quite re-markable.
If You Don't Like Then Should Have Put a Gag On It
Former President Donald Trump has been facing two separate gag orders — one in New York Attorney General Letitia James' fraud case, the other in special counsel Jack Smith's election interference prosecution.
Trump attorney Alina Habba has been angrily railing against the gag order in James' case, insisting that Trump's First Amendment rights are being violated. But James' office, according to Newsweek, has defended the gag order in a court filing, citing threats against Justice Arthur Engoron's staff as an important reason for it.
In the filing, Cleland B. Welton Jr. — a James assistant — stressed that Trump's "asserted free-speech injuries are insubstantial in light of the narrow scope of the challenged orders."
Threats against members of Engoron's staff, according to Welton, came after "personal attacks" by Trump. A gag order, Welton said, "led to a decrease in the number of threatening messages that the court and its staff received."
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 11, 2023 8:37:45 GMT -8
He Doesn't Cower.... What? ... Nevermind!
It didn't take long for the former president to withdraw his lawyer's promise.
It's been just a few days since Donald Trump's lawyer Alina Habba proclaimed he was not afraid and that's why he would testify on Monday.
"He still wants to take the stand, even though my advice is, at this point, you should never take the stand with a gag order," Habba said outside the courthouse on Thursday. "But he's so firmly against what is happening in this court and so firmly for the old America that we know, not this America, that he will take the stand on Monday. He will open himself up to whatever they want because he's not afraid. People who are afraid cower. President Trump does not cower."
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 11, 2023 8:40:28 GMT -8
I Can't Remember the Last Time I Left an $806,000 Ring Laying Around.
A ring worth €750,000 (£643,000) which went missing at the Ritz hotel in Paris has been found in a vacuum cleaner.
The owner, a Malaysian businesswoman who was a guest at the hotel, filed a police complaint on Friday after suspecting an employee of stealing it.
Ritz security guards found the ring lying among the dust in a vacuum bag on Sunday, Le Parisien reported.
The newspaper added that the guest had travelled to London on Friday, but will now return to Paris for her ring.
The Ritz said it has offered three more nights to the guest to make up for the inconvenience, though it is understood she does not intend to take up the offer.
In a statement to Le Parisien, the hotel said: "Thanks to the meticulous work of security guards, the ring was found this morning.
"We would like to thank the staff at the Ritz Paris who mobilised for this search and who work each day with integrity and professionalism."
The businesswoman told police she left the ring on a table in her hotel room on Friday when she went shopping in the city for a few hours, and when she returned it was gone.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 11, 2023 8:42:29 GMT -8
The US Isn't the Only Country That Abandons Those Who Help Them
About 200 members of Afghan special forces, trained and funded by the UK, face imminent deportation to their Taliban-controlled homeland, the BBC has learned.
The figures - gathered by a network of Afghan veterans - reveal the scale of what one former UK general calls a "betrayal" and a "disgrace".
The soldiers fled to Pakistan, which now says it will expel Afghan refugees.
The UK says it has brought thousands of Afghans to safety.
Gen Sir Richard Barrons, who served the British Army in Afghanistan over 12 years, told BBC Newsnight that the failure of the UK to relocate these soldiers "is a disgrace, because it reflects that either we're duplicitous as a nation or incompetent".
"Neither are acceptable," he said. "It is a betrayal, and the cost of that betrayal will be people who served with us will die or spend their lives in prison."
In 2021, Prime Minister Boris Johnson had told Parliament that the service of these Afghan special forces had been "incredibly important", adding the UK would do "whatever we can" to get "safe passage" for them.
The fears for the Afghan commandos come as it was revealed the government also rejected calls from senior British diplomatic and military figures to offer asylum to key Afghan civilian leaders whose lives were in danger.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 11, 2023 8:44:51 GMT -8
I Am A Big Supporter of Free Speech on Campus, But there is a Big Difference Between Discussing Ideas and Calling for Violence
Liz Magill’s ouster at Penn will help the worst people take down free speech, higher ed
Critics celebrating the scalping of Penn's president won't stop there. Free speech, and college itself, are in grave danger.
Magill’s legalistic, bloodless, deer-in-the-headlights response to incessant probing by Stefanik and other lawmakers was not good — not just because she blew a chance to condemn the never-ending horror of antisemitism but also because it was a weak defense of free speech on campus. I’m not writing to express any regret over her departure. It seemed to me she governed Penn like a candle in the wind, wanting to defend academic freedom but then betraying those values, as when the university tried to ban a film presenting legitimate criticisms of Israel’s policies and then threatened to punish students for showing it anyway.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 11, 2023 8:46:13 GMT -8
Good News About the Economy That Won't Be Reported
Gas prices sink to 2023 lows on weak demand, increased production
Prices at the pump are expected to continue declining, shaving off another $0.05 to $0.07 per gallon in the coming week, Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, said.
"We've seen oil prices slide over the last week, and they're taking gasoline and diesel down with it. So across the board energy is getting cheaper for the consumer," Lipow told Yahoo Finance.
Drivers in at least 17 states are seeing retail gasoline averages below $3 per gallon. Californians, who pay the most, are paying an average of $4.74 per gallon, down from $5.14 one month ago.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 11, 2023 8:48:07 GMT -8
Dueling Positions on Urkaine
Republicans to meet allies of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán on ending Ukraine aid
Hungarian appearance at two-day event part of Orbán’s transatlantic attempt to bolster Russia’s war
According to a Republican source, some of the attendees, including Republican members of Congress, have been invited to join closed-door talks the next day.
The meeting will take place against a backdrop of tense debate in Washington over Ukraine’s future. Last week the White House warned that, without congressional action, money to buy more weapons and equipment for Kyiv will run out by the end of the year. On Wednesday Senate Republicans blocked an emergency spending bill to fund the war in Ukraine.
A diplomatic source close to the Hungarian embassy said: “Orbán is confident that the Ukraine aid will not pass in Congress. That is why he is trying to block assistance from the EU as well.”
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 11, 2023 8:52:06 GMT -8
Some Israeli Settlers are TerroristsRabbis form human shield to protect olive harvest in West BankA group of rabbis and Israeli volunteers are risking life and limb to protect this year’s olive harvest in the West Bank, amid soaring tensions over the war in Gaza. Rabbis for Human Rights, an organisation set up in 1990 during the first intifada, has been working for decades to build ties with Palestinian communities threatened by violent Israeli settlers. As the war in Gaza rages, there has been a surge in violence in the West Bank, making the job of collecting olives, a cornerstone of the territory’s economy, riskier than ever. Rabbi Avi Dabush heads the charity and has continued his work despite being displaced from his home at Kibbutz Nirim, one of the communities that was hit hardest during the Hamas massacres on Oct 7. “We won’t go home for at least another year,” Mr Dabush told The Telegraph. The war and the tensions it has sparked makes him and the organisation even more determined to continue its work in spite of the new challenges the war has brought, he said. Before Oct 7 there was an average of three incidents of settler violence per day, according to the UN. But that has risen to seven. “We too are victims of their violence,” Mr Dabush said. “A year and a half ago when we were planting, 15 masked settlers came from Givat Ronen, attacked volunteers, set the cars on fire. “The volunteers are really putting themselves at risk. In this case we are trying to protect the farmers but they are also at risk,” he said. “Four years ago we had a rabbi, 80 years old, and the settlers came from Yitzhar, set the field on fire and hit him with iron bars. He was hospitalised for a few days.”Other volunteers have had arms and legs broken and suffered head injuries. The charity works near some of the most radical and dangerous settlements. The Bedouin village of Burim, near Nablus, is surrounded on one side by the settler community of Itzhar, and on the other Givat Ronen, considered a violent outpost. Instead of 100 volunteers a day going to help Bedouin communities with the olive harvest, only about 10 can reach them, with the rest either displaced, at home taking care of children whose schools have closed, or too afraid of the rising tide of violence. A UN report claimed “more than one in every three settler-related incidents since October 7 involved settlers using firearms to threaten Palestinians, including by opening fire”.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 11, 2023 8:54:11 GMT -8
In Case You Haven't Noticed, Texas Sucks.Damning Report On Texas Death Row Cases: ‘The System Is Utterly Broken’
Harris County, Texas, has executed more people than anywhere else in the country. In most Harris County cases ending in a death sentence over the previous 20 years, defense lawyers failed to find and present compelling evidence that could have kept their clients off of death row, according to a two-part report published on Monday by the Wren Collective, a group of former public defenders who do criminal justice research and policy. The report authors reviewed 28 cases, which accounts for the vast majority of Harris County cases that resulted in a death sentence over the past two decades. The authors excluded a handful of cases in which post-conviction litigation, which provides insight into what occurred at trial, had either not been filed at the time of review or contained insufficient detail about trial proceedings. They reviewed court filings, jail visit records, billing records and interviewed judges, trial and post-conviction lawyers and mitigation specialists. In each of those cases, the report authors found that trial attorneys missed important evidence that could have convinced a prosecutor to drop a death sentence or a juror to choose a life sentence, including evidence of mental illness, intellectual disability, physical abuse and sexual abuse. In many cases, attorneys failed to prepare key witnesses until the day they were scheduled to testify. “The stakes of capital murder cases could not possibly be higher, and yet for decades, people have gone to death row with serious intellectual disability claims and lengthy histories of severe physical and sexual abuse,” said Wren Collective founder Jessica Brand, who has previously worked at the Texas Defender Service. “It is not because juries did not believe their stories — it’s because they never heard them.”
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 11, 2023 8:55:50 GMT -8
More Good News About the Economy That Won't Be Reported
The first electric vehicle charging station funded by a $7.5 billion U.S. government program has begun operating in Ohio, the White House said Monday as the government ramps up charging to address a key concern of potential buyers.
Automakers and others say drastically boosting EV charging stations is crucial to the wide deployment of electric vehicles.
The White House goal is to grow the nationwide network of chargers to 500,000, including high-speed chargers - no more than 50 miles (80 km) apart - on the nation's busiest highways and interstates.
The funding comes from the $1 trillion 2021 infrastructure law. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the first station opening is a major step to "create a convenient, affordable, and reliable electrified transportation system."
As of December, the United States has more than 165,000 public charging ports and since the start of the Biden administration, the number of publicly available fast charging ports has increased by more than 70%, the White House said.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 11, 2023 8:58:41 GMT -8
Fighting Back Against the QOP War On Education
More than 650 members of Harvard University's faculty have signed a letter urging administrators to resist calls to remove the school's president amid an outcry over testimony she gave last week at a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism.
"We, the undersigned faculty, urge you in the strong possible terms to defend the independence of the university and to resist political pressures that are at odds with Harvard's commitment to academic freedom, including calls for the removal of President Claudine Gay," the letter says.
"The critical work of defending a culture of free inquiry in our diverse community cannot proceed if we let its shape be dictated by outside forces," the letter goes on to say. NBC News obtained the text of the letter from history professor Alison Frank Johnson, one of the faculty members spearheading the effort.
Frank Johnson said 664 people had signed the letter by Monday morning. She declined to release the names of the signatories, but said in an email that she was "very, very pleased by how broad the base of support is!"
The letter was delivered to the Harvard Corporation, the governing body that could decide Gay’s fate.
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