Last Call For At Long Last

It's official: no charges for Hillary Clinton.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Wednesday said the Justice Department has decided not to pursue charges against Hillary Clinton or her aides and will close the investigation into her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.

The announcement comes a day after FBI Director James Comey held a press conference in which he said “no reasonable prosecutor” would pursue a case against Clinton, even though she and her staff were “extremely careless” in their handling of classified material.

Lynch's statement provides further relief to Clinton, whose presidential campaign has been dogged by the email scandal, which spawned myriad probes and lawsuits, some of which will continue even as the DOJ’s investigation ends.

“Late this afternoon, I met with FBI Director James Comey and career prosecutors and agents who conducted the investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email system during her time as Secretary of State,” Lynch said. “I received and accepted their unanimous recommendation that the thorough, year-long investigation be closed and that no charges be brought against any individuals within the scope of the investigation.”

Lynch had previously said that she would accept the FBI’s recommendation, a declaration that came after Lynch came under fire for an impromptu meeting she had with former President Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac late last month.

And oh boy, the Republicans are never going to let this go, with Comey and Lynch now facing the House GOP starting tomorrow.  But they haven't let anything go over the last eight years, why start now?

Black Lives Still Matter

As I mentioned in this morning's StupidiNews, we've got yet another example of police executing a black man in front of witnesses and captured on video, this time for the capital offense of selling CDs outside a convenience store, this time in Baton Rouge.

The video showed two Baton Rouge police officers attempting to detain Alton Sterling after the officers responded to a call “from a complainant who stated that a black male who was selling music cd’s and wearing a red shirt threatened him with a gun” outside the Triple S Food Mart, a convenience store, a Facebook post by Baton Rouge Police Department said. Police said they responded about 12:35 a.m. 

Sterling was shot and killed while pinned down by the officers. 

His killing is the latest in a nationwide string of fatal police-involved arrests captured on video. Like many others, the first versions of what happened are coming more from a video showing a fragment of the incident than from police, who have had relatively little to say so far. Thus no clear picture has yet to emerge of the full sequence of events that led to the death. 

The cellphone video of the incident surfaced on social media. The footage began with police standing a few feet from Sterling. A loud pop — like that of a stun gun — can be heard. 

“Get on the ground,” a police officer yelled. 

“Get on the ground,” the voice yelled again, followed by a second pop. 

Sterling, a large man, remained on his feet. 

A police officer tackled him over the hood of a silver car, then onto the ground. 

Meanwhile, another restrained his left arm behind his back and knelt on it. 

“He’s got a gun,” someone yelled. 

“Gun. Gun.” 

Both officers drew their pistols from their holsters. In the video, Sterling appeared to be fairly immobile. 

Then, the officers shouted something unintelligible, which seemed to include the phrase “going for the gun.” 

Two noises that sounded like shots rang out immediately after. 

Whoever filmed the video then dropped the cellphone.

I'm not showing the video, because I'm getting sick of the black death porn aspect of these police killings.  It's there at the WaPo story if you want to view it, and it's your call if you want to watch it.  I don't need to. Having said that, without the iPhone video of the incident, Sterling's death would have been just another statistic.

Although both officers were wearing body cameras, the Baton Rouge Police Chief reportedly told Louisiana State Rep. Denise Marcelle (D) that they both fell off during the incident and didn’t capture any footage of the incident. 

Civilian cellphone footage filmed from a nearby car shows police confronting a man in a red shirt, purported to be Sterling, and yelling at him to get on the ground. An officer tackles him, throwing him onto a car hood and then to the cement. Both officers are on on top of Sterling, who appears to be flat on the ground when one shouts “He’s got a gun.” The video then shows the other officer shooting at point-black range; The person shooting the video reacts, shifting the video from the scene, and at least two more shots are heard. 

“Thank god for the iPhone because without the iPhone they might have gotten away,” said Mike McClanahan, the president of the Baton Rouge chapter of the NAACP, at a press conference. 

The attorney for the Sterling family, Edmond Jordan, said in a press conference that one of the Baton Rouge Police Department’s first moves was to confiscate the store surveillance camera — along with its entire video system — without providing the store owner with a warrant. Police Chief Carl Dabadie also told Rep. Marcelle that there is dashboard camera footage from one of the squad cars. 

“There are no criminal charges pending against anyone as far as we know,” Jordan said. “So why are they holding on to this video?” 

“I don’t think the department knew that there was another video out there,” he said.

No, and if the cops had shaken the witness in the car down and taken their phone, we'd never have known. Governor John bel Edwards is referring the investigation to the feds, needless to say.

What I know is this: Louisiana is an open carry state for both long guns and handguns and has been for years, both police officers say their body cameras came off during the altercation and that they don't have footage, and Alton Sterling is dead.

What I know is that people I consider friends will gaslight this again in order to justify Sterling's death, and that they will continue to believe that the Second Amendment is there for the protection of citizens against the government, and that Sterling's life was forfeit the second he "refused to comply" with the officers.

What I know is that this will happen again, be caught on video in another American town, more protests will happen, and that not a damn thing will change.

What I know is that I'm bone weary of this happening, and that there's little I can do in order to try to stop it.

Meanwhile, here in Kentucky, we're going to enshrine into law that police are above said law.

And so it goes in America.

Meanwhile In Gunmerica...

The issue of gun violence isn't going away, as much as Republicans would like to use the power of "Thoughtsnprayers" to make the issue vanish.  It's not, not with Donald Trump remaining an albatross around the necks of every Republican running in November.  It looks like we're moving into the deal-making stage ahead of the convention recess.

House Democrats and Republicans seem just as destined for an election-season clash over guns as they did before a Democratic sit-in on the chamber's floor ushered in lawmakers' July 4 recess two weeks ago. 

Nearly a month after the Orlando mass-shooting catapulted the issue back onto the nation's radar, the two parties were meeting separately Wednesday to map strategy. 

Republicans have incorporated some gun curbs into a broader bill aimed at addressing domestic terrorism that the House has planned to debate this week, though their plans seemed less certain late Tuesday. Democrats are insisting on amendments tightening gun restrictions far further, which House Speaker Paul Ryan seemed to nix Tuesday, and each party says the other's proposals are defective. 

Ryan, R-Wis., met Tuesday evening with two leaders of the sit-in, Reps. John Lewis of Georgia and John Larson of Connecticut. The Democrats said Ryan listened respectfully and mentioned his party's concerns about protecting gun owners' rights, but made no promise to allow votes on the Democrats' proposals. 

Asked what Democrats would do if they are denied votes, Lewis, the civil rights hero, wasn't specific but said: "There will be action. We will not be silent." 

Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said the two parties "have different views on how to achieve a shared goal of preventing gun deaths," especially over protecting gun owners' rights. She said the next steps on anti-terror legislation "will be discussed and determined by the majority in the coming days." 

That seemed less assured than earlier comments from Ryan that the House would vote on the GOP legislation this week. Late Tuesday, Republicans were working to line up GOP support for their own measure, with some having questions about the bill's procedural protections for gun owners and other concerns. 

Despite the uncertainty, GOP leaders' hopes of staging a vote on their proposal underscored the pressure they've felt since the June 12 mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, that left 49 victims dead. Since the 2012 slaying of school children in Newtown, Connecticut, Republicans have not brought any legislation broadly restricting guns to the House floor.

Ryan wants this vote over and done with so it becomes the Senate's problem, which is what John Boshner would have done a month ago.  Sadly, Ryan is even worse at this whole Speaker thing than Orange Julius was, and that's really saying something.

Still, Ryan should be able to say that he kept his promise of holding a vote, and then watch the measure die.

Well, unless the House revolts again.  You never know.

StupidiNews!

• Former South African sprinter Oscar Pistorious has been sentenced to six years in prison for the 2013 murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
• Footage from a mobile phone allegedly shows two Baton Rouge police officers holding 37-year-old Alton Sterling to the ground and then executing the unarmed black man.
• Results of a seven-year inquiry into Britain's entrance into the Iraq War will be released today with the focus on former PM Tony Blair and his decision in 2003 to join the US invasion.
• The private equity firm that put Hostess Brands back on America's shelves are hoping to turn Twinkies and King Dons into hipster nostalgia.
• EU lawmakers will go ahead with new regulations to identify and remove terrorist content online, the plan will now go to individual EU countries for final revision.

Last Call For Free Of Charge

FBI Director James Comey gave Republicans and Bernie Sanders supporters the bad news today that the agency is not formally recommending charges against Hillary Clinton over her email server. Ian Millhiser explains why charges aren't forthcoming:

Clinton, like her two most recent predecessors Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, maintained at least two email accounts: one specifically set up to receive classified information and the other for other communications. Clinton’s non-classified email was hosted on a private server (as opposed to Powell’s non-classified email address, which was an AOL account), while the classified email could only be accessed if Clinton complied with a byzantine array of security rules. 

Clinton says that the emails she received at her non-classified address “were not marked classified,” although she acknowledges that “there are disagreements among agencies on what should have been perhaps classified retroactively.” Government officials also confirm that “none of the emails the State Department redacted, or any other emails made public, contained classification markings at the time they were sent.” Although the FBI determined that 110 emails did contain classified information. 

This matters because of a legal concept called mens rea. As a general rule, most crimes require prosecutors to prove that an individual acted with a particular state of mind before they can be convicted of a specific crime. Most federal laws dealing with classified information require someone to “knowingly” violate that law in order to sustain a conviction. Thus, Clinton cannot be charged with transmitting or receiving classified information based on that fact alone. She had to have acted with knowledge that specific information was classified when it was transmitted. There is little, if any, evidence that Clinton possessed this state of mind.

Stupid? Sure. Criminal? Nope. And nearly impossible to prove.

But apparently people are worried that this might be worse than the raging orange anti-semite racist Islamophobe the other team is running.

It’s hard to read Comey’s statement as anything other than a wholesale rebuke of the story Clinton and her campaign team have been telling ever since the existence of her private email server came to light in spring 2015. She did send and receive classified emails. The setup did leave her — and the classified information on the server — subject to a possible foreign hack. She and her team did delete emails as personal that contained professional information. 

Those are facts, facts delivered by the Justice Department of a Democratic administration. And those facts run absolutely counter to the narrative put forth by the Clinton operation: that this whole thing was a Republican witch-hunt pushed by a bored and adversarial media. 

Now for the key question: How much do the FBI findings hurt her campaign? 

Clinton did avoid indictment, a ruling that would have effectively ended her campaign or left it so badly weakened that there would have been a major move within Democratic circles to replace her as the nominee. 

That said, campaigns aren’t governed by the ultimate legality of what Clinton did or didn’t do. So, while dodging an indictment is a good thing — she isn’t under criminal investigation and remains a candidate — it’s a far different thing from being cleared (or even close to it) in the court of public opinion.

Umm, Hillary Clinton has been triend in the court of public opinion since Whitewater, guys. The notion that large swaths of voters are going to be affected by this narrative is next to zero (unlike an actual indictment.)

So no, barring Loretta Lynch indicting, it's not going to happen, kids.

Russian To Judgment

WaPo's Josh Rogin argues that while President Obama may have painfully learned his lesson about trying to negotiate with Republicans who only want to see him obliterated from history, he still hasn't gotten around to figuring out that Vladimir Putin is just as untrustworthy and far, far more dangerous.

The United States cannot afford to write off the U.S.-Russia relationship. There is truth to the argument that the world’s most pressing problems, including Islamic extremism, cannot be solved without some Russian involvement. But Washington cannot ignore Russia’s increasingly horrendous behavior. Russia’s dangerous military maneuvers near U.S. ships are now regular occurrences. Russian harassment and intimidation of U.S. diplomats across Europe is at an all-time high. Russian government cyberespionage and propaganda campaigns have run amok. 

“The fact is, they are engaged in a new global Cold War against the U.S.,” said Samuel Charap, senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “There’s absolutely no question about that. We have this festering wound on the relationship that nobody on the U.S. side is spending much time trying to fix.” 

The United States has complicated relationships with lots of problematic countries. China, for example, is internally repressive and externally aggressive, but there’s no thought of cutting off relations with Beijing. Similarly, the policy of isolating Russia as punishment for its invasion of Ukraine has limits. Russia was determined not to cave to sanctions, and if the recent vote in the French senate is any indication, the sanctions regime will not last forever. 

“Putin is a very smart, sophisticated political animal,” said [former Ukranian PM Arseniy] Yatsenyuk. “He can wait and wait for a quite long and extensive period of time. He knows how the Western powers act.” 

The United States must establish a new relationship with Russia that is intellectually honest about Moscow’s actions and intentions while preserving whatever cooperation is possible. That may mean finding an endgame to the Ukraine sanctions before they crumble under their own weight. But it also means pushing back more against Russian provocations and raising the cost for Putin when he acts out on other fronts.

And again, that's a great idea on paper, but "raising the cost" for Putin is kind of hard to do when you need him more than he needs you.  He's perfectly fine walking away from coopoeration in Syria, continuing to hit Ukraine, and conducting a cyberspace Cold War, and frankly there's not a hell of a lot we can do to stop him without friends to back us up.

Ol' Vlad has already made most of our friends offers that they can't refuse either.  He's a smart guy and as smart as Obama is, he's outmanuvered Obama in the President's second term time and time again.

Hopefully Clinton can do a bit better, but I doubt it.  I do know that Trump will do Putin's heavy lifting for him, and Sanders would be too busy muttering about class warfare to realize Putin was taking him to the cleaners on a daily basis.

It's not looking good to "reset" the Russian relationship anytime soon, guys. He's holding most of the cards and more importantly he's willing to play them without constraint.

The Right To Connect

The United Nations has passed a resolution calling for the world's nations not to restrict internet access to citizens and affirming access as a basic human right in 2016, something that's really, really not going over well with the more repressive regimes on the planet.

The United Nations Human Rights Council has passed a non-binding resolution condemning countries that intentionally disrupt citizens' internet access. The resolution builds on the UN's previous statements on digital rights, reaffirming the organization's stance that "the same rights people have offline must also be protected online," in particular the freedom of expression covered under article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The resolution was passed by consensus last Friday, but was opposed by a minority of authoritarian regimes including Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia, as well as democracies like South Africa and India. These nations called for the UN to delete a passage in the resolution that "condemns unequivocally measures to intentionally prevent or disrupt access to our dissemination of information online." 

Resolutions like this are not legally enforceable, but put pressure on governments and give credence to the actions of digital rights advocates around the world. The UN's decision to target internet shutdowns is particularly relevant, as governments have started freely using this method as a means of controlling citizens in what appear to be even minor matters. 

Just in the last month social media sites have been throttled in Turkey after a terrorist attacks on Istanbul's airport; mobile internet has been shut down in Bahrain and India following local protests; and social media has been blocked in Algeria simply to stop students cheating on school tests. According to digital rights group Access Now, there were at least 15 internet shutdowns in 2015 around the world, and at least 20 just in 2016 so far.

Frankly, when you count the populations of China, India, Russia and the other countries that opposed the resolution, that's not a "minority" at all, it represents the governments of more than half the world's population.  That stuff matters, guys.  Many of us here in the states take access to the internet for granted.

Internet blackouts like this are only getting worse in the post-Arab Spring world and I'm betting they will continue for some time.  Internet is always the first casualty of a crackdown, it seems.

StupidiNews!

• NASA's Juno space probe has reached Jupiter's orbit after a nearly five-year flight and will spend the next several months mapping the largest planet in our solar system.
• A London law firm is suing the British government over Brexit, saying that departure from the EU requires a formal act of Parliament. 
• Three coordinated bombings in Saudi Arabia have killed four and injured dozens as Eid approaches Wednesday, signaling the end of the month of Ramadan.
• Australia's mail votes from Sunday's election are still being counted as neither current PM Malcolm Turnbull's Liberal coalition nor opposition Bill Shorten's Labor party have a majority.
• China continues cracking down on social media, calling services like Facebook and Twitter full of "hearsay" and "distortions" and banning them from being cited by state news agencies.

Last Call For The Frenemy Zone

You have to give the Clinton crew credit: they certainly know how to massage the Village in all the bipartisan erogenous zones.

Should she win the presidency, Hillary Clinton would quickly try to find common ground with Republicans on an immigration overhaul and infrastructure spending, risking the wrath of liberals who would like nothing more than to twist the knife in a wounded opposition party.

In her first 100 days, she would also tap women to make up half of her cabinet in hopes of bringing a new tone and collaborative sensibility to Washington, while also looking past Wall Street to places like Silicon Valley for talent — perhaps wooing Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook, and maybe asking Tim Cook from Apple to become the first openly gay cabinet secretary.

Former President Bill Clinton would keep a low public profile, granting few interviews and avoiding any moves that could create headaches for his wife, like his recent meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch during the F.B.I.’s investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email practices.

Mrs. Clinton would even schmooze differently than the past few presidents have. Not one to do business over golf or basketball, she would bring back the intimate style of former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Lyndon B. Johnson, negotiating over adult beverages. Picture a steady stream of senators, congressmen and other leaders raising a glass and talking policy in the Oval Office with her and her likely chief of staff, John D. Podesta, as her husband pops in with a quick thought or a disarming compliment.

Deeply confident that she would perform better as the president than as a political candidate, Mrs. Clinton wants to pursue a whole new approach at the White House to try to break through years of partisan gridlock, according to a dozen campaign advisers and allies who described her goals and outlook. From policy goals and personnel to her instinct for patiently cultivating the enemy, Mrs. Clinton thinks she would be a better dealmaker than President Obama if she finds willing partners on the other side.

I'm with Steve M. on this: when reality comes by and kicks Hillary Clinton in the ass, it's going to get brutal, fast.

Obama also had large majorities in the House and Senate. Because of gerrymandering in GOP states, a Democratic House is next to impossible in 2017, and the widespread optimism about a Democratic takeover of the Senate seems awfully premature -- the Cook Political Report finds no current Republican seat that so much as leans Democratic (though several are tossups), and Democrats could lose Harry Reid's seat in Nevada, which is also a tossup. If Democrats take back the Senate, it'll be by one or two seats, far less than their margin in 2009.

And Republicans, up against huge Democratic majorities in 2009, still dug in their heels and blocked as much of Obama's agenda as they could manage.

Conventional wisdom says they loathed him more because he's black. I don't buy that. They've hated Hillary Clinton for a quarter of a century. Their voters despise her. And she's likely to win in the fall without being well liked by the broad electorate.

They're going to consider her weak and vulnerable. They know Democrats don't vote in midterms. So they're going to effectively shut the government down again, then blame Democrats, the party that believes in government, for the gridlock, in the hope of another off-year midterm rout.

And there is every reason to believe this will work.  Let's recall Mitch McConnell and the GOP were plotting how to obstruct the Obama agenda on his inauguration day. It worked, too.  They lost on Obamacare, but they won back Congress and all but ended the Democrats in the South in 2010 and in the Midwest in 2014, or have we forgotten that Obama 2008 swing states like Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada, Michigan, Ohio and Florida, and even deep blue states like Illinois, Massachusetts and Maryland now have GOP governors and in many cases, GOP legislatures?

Hell, the NYT is talking about "Team of Rivals" again and a new era of bipartisanship and I guarantee you that Paul Ryan will be commenting on the "growing anger by GOP rank and file over articles of impeachment" before St. Patrick's Day, if not sooner.

Grow the hell up, guys.  You'll have Republicans screaming "burn that Clinton bitch!" on the House floor from day one, and the Village will happily enable it by buying into Clinton happy talk.

Does anyone here think the party that created Trump and enabled his hatred and racism, or the 60 million racist, hate-fueled people who will vote for him in November will just magically vanish come January?

Sure, NYT.  Let's test that theory in six months.

Love Is A Battleground State

I know pundits and prognosticators have months of electoral vote predictions to make in order to get clicks and sell ads, and a big part of that is pretending that there's ten or twelve "battleground states" that are true toss-ups when the reality is that Hillary Clinton has got this in the bag. For instance, this is how prediction site 270 To Win sees the 2016 race:

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

And this is ridiculous.

Here's the reality:

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

Even being super, super generous to Donald Trump and saying that Florida, Ohio, Nevada and New Hampshire are somehow toss-ups when I expect Clinton to win all four, Clinton still has 272 electoral votes and the presidency.

However, that does mean North Carolina is a actually true toss-up this year, and is being fought as such by both campaigns.

Politically turbulent North Carolina, where Barack Obama won in 2008 and then Republicans rose up to engineer a conservative revolution, has suddenly emerged as a focal point in the presidential race.

The battle lines will be clear Tuesday in dueling rallies in the state’s two major cities.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton will appear in Charlotte alongside President Obama, who is making his debut on the campaign trail and will try to reenergize his multiethnic coalition.

That night, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump will take the stage in Raleigh, where he is expected to lambast Clinton and present her as seeking a third Obama term.

The two campaigns are angling to motivate their core supporters but also to sway a large pool of newly transplanted centrist voters such as Eric and Tonya Mills, both 46, who met here in college and moved back in 2013.

“There’s just something that seems shady to me” about Clinton, said Eric Mills, a patent lawyer, as the couple strode through a “First Friday” street party last week in Raleigh. Still, he said, he did not think he could bring himself to vote for Trump, whose political rise has been a curiosity among those Mills has met on recent business trips overseas. Tonya Mills, a civil engineer, called her vote a “toss-up,” saying that if she had to vote today, she would opt for Clinton, “but it wouldn’t be with my heart behind it.”

And yes, the state is plagued by New South conservative dipsticks like the Mills here who don't see any difference in their lives between how Trump as president would affect them and how Clinton would affect them.  They've got their corporate six-figure jobs working for a Charlotte bank or an RTP biotech startup, and "Clinton, I guess, maybe" is the best you're going to get out of them because they don't want to admit that they secretly want Trump to pull it off and take "their" country back from those people who voted for Obama in 2008.

Believe me, I know the type. They're cool with and even proud of their kids learning Spanish as a second language in an immersive elementary school program, seeing the black family from work at the minor-league baseball field and eating at the newest Thai fusion restaurant in the hipster part of town, not so much with the carniceria in the strip mall next to the Fantastic Sam's where you take the kids, the black family moving in next door, or the Hmong church being built down the street.

This is where the battleground may be, but keep in mind that the 2016 election war is likely already over.

Sir Nigel Bravely Runs Away

Across the pond in Brexitville, UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage figures he's won by destroying the EU and the UK economy, so he's done with being the guy in charge of creating the disaster.

Nigel Farage says he is standing down as leader of the UK Independence Party.

Mr Farage said his "political ambition has been achieved" with the UK having voted to leave the EU.

He said the party was in a "pretty good place" and said he would not change his mind about quitting as he did after the 2015 general election.

Leading UKIP was "tough at times" but "all worth it" said Mr Farage, who is also an MEP. He added that the UK needed a "Brexit prime minister".

Mr Farage said the party would campaign against "backsliding" on the UK's exit from the EU, saying he planned to see out his term in the European Parliament - describing his party as "the turkeys that voted for Christmas".

He said his party's "greatest potential" lay in attracting Labour voters, adding that he would not be backing any particular candidate to replace him.

"May the best man or woman win," he said.

And why would Farage want to stick around?  He knows full well that Britain is headed into the jet intake and will get shredded and spat out against the wall at several hundred miles an hour. He won't be the guy who has to actually deal withthe rise of racist nationalism he's helped to create.

That's for the little people.  See you, suckers!

Sunday Long Read: A Tale Of Angels

Isaac Butler and Dan Kois give us this week's Long Read from Slate as they document the oral history of Tony Kushner's seminal Angels in America on the play's 25th anniversary.

Twenty-five years ago this summer, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America premiered in the tiny Eureka Theatre in San Francisco’s Mission District. Within two years it had won the Pulitzer Prize and begun a New York run that would dominate the Tony Awards two years in a row, revitalize the nonmusical play on Broadway, and change the way gay lives were represented in pop culture. Both parts of Angels, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, put gay men at the center of American politics, history, and mythology at a time when they were marginalized by the culture at large and dying in waves. It launched the careers of remarkable actors and directors, not to mention the fiercely ambitious firebrand from Louisiana who wrote it—and rewrote it, and rewrote it, and rewrote it again. Its 2003 HBO adaptation was itself a masterpiece that won more Emmys than Roots. But the play also financially wiped out the theater that premiered it; it endured casting and production tumult at every stage of development, from Los Angeles to London to Broadway; its ambitious, sprawling two-part structure tested the endurance of players, technicians, and audiences. Slate talked to more than 50 actors, directors, playwrights, and critics to tell the story ofAngels’ turbulent ascension into the pantheon of great American storytelling—and to discuss the legacy of a play that feels, in an era in which gay Americans have the right to marry but still in many ways live under siege, as crucial as ever.

Tony Kushner (playwright of Angels in America): Around November of 1985, the first person that I knew personally died of AIDS. A dancer that I had a huge crush on, a very sweet man and very beautiful. I got an NEA directing fellowship at the repertory theater in St. Louis, and right before I left New York, I heard through the grapevine that he had gotten sick. And then, in November, he died.

And I had this dream: Bill dying—I don’t know if he was actually dying, but he was in his pajamas and sick on his bed—and the ceiling collapsed and this angel comes into the room. And then I wrote a poem. I’m not a poet, but I wrote this thing. It was many pages long. After I finished it, I put it away. No one will ever see it.

Its title was “Angels in America.”

And I remember in college the massive, massive controversy over when the play came to Charlotte in 1996. Billy Graham went nuts, and eventually Mecklenburg County cut funding to the theater company that put the play on in 1997. The Charlotte Repertoire Theater folded nine years later.

That battle is still going on in North Carolina today, only now over trans people using bathrooms. North Carolina hasn't changed much.  I have, it's why I left and frankly I'm not coming back.

Sad when Kentucky looks less bigoted than the state you grew up in.

Meanwhile In Baghdad

Islamic State militants are still very much operating in Iraq, and as retaliation for Iraqi forces taking back the besieged city of Falluja this week, suicide bombers struck at Baghdad shopping area killing nearly 100 and injuring twice that many.

The attack is the deadliest since U.S.-backed Iraqi forces last month scored a major victory when it dislodged Islamic State from their stronghold of Falluja, an hour's drive west of the capital.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had ordered the offensive after a series of deadly bombings in Baghdad, saying Falluja served as a launchpad for such attacks on the capital. However, bombings have continued.

A convoy carrying Abadi who had come to tour the site of the bombings was pelted with stones and bottles by residents, angry at what they felt were false promises of better security.

A refrigerator truck packed with explosives blew up in the central district of Karrada, killing 91 people and injuring at least 200. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement circulated online by supporters of the ultra-hard line Sunni group. It said the blast was a suicide bombing.

Karrada was busy at the time as Iraqis eat out and shop late during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which ends next week with the Eid al-Fitr festival.

Videos posted on social media showed people running after the SUV convoy of Abadi as he departed Karrada after touring the scene, throwing pavement stones, bottles of water, empty buckets and slippers, venting their anger at the inability of the security forces to protect the area.

Another video posted on social media showed a large blaze in the main street of Karrada, a largely Shi'ite district with a small Christian community and a few Sunni mosques.

I have to say, if a refrigerator truck full of explosives detonated in Paris or Brussels or London and killed 95 people, and Islamic State took credit for it, we'd have international coverage of the attack for weeks, not to mention Republicans talking about thoughts and prayers whenever possible.

But it happened in Baghdad, so nobody cares.

Oh well.

Is The Snow Job Coming To An End?

The adventures of Edward Snowden, the Dudebro Defector, seem to be winding down and not in a good way. If you blinked, you may have missed the fact that the nature of the relationship with his Russian handlers has taken a very dark turn as of this week.  NPR's Mary Louise Kelly explains:

MARK GALEOTTI: The point at which he put his first foot on Russian soil - at that point, he was bought and paid for.

KELLY: That's Mark Galeotti, an authority on Russia spy agencies, also a professor at NYU. He believes Snowden has almost certainly shared what he knows - secrets about NSA operations - with his Russian hosts. I put this question to Frants Klintsevich. He's the equivalent of a senator here in Russia and deputy chairman of the powerful defense and security committee.

FRANTS KLINTSEVICH: (Speaking Russian).

KELLY: "Let's be frank," he says. "Snowden did share intelligence. This is what security services do," adds Klintsevich. "If there's a possibility to get information, they will get it." It's a possibility that Snowden's lawyer, Ben Wizner of the ACLU, denies.

BEN WIZNER: Of course, it's impossible to prove a negative. But as he has made clear, he didn't even bring sensitive information with him to Russia, precisely because he didn't want to be in a position where he could be coerced. He was approached. He made very clear that he had no intention of cooperating, and he has not.

KELLY: In the U.S., intelligence officials insist Snowden's disclosures did grave damage to national security. Whatever he may or may not have shared with the Russian government, Snowden still faces charges of violating the Espionage Act - crimes that could land him many years in prison. When I reached him in New York, I asked Wizner about the other big question looming over Snowden's stay here - how long it might last. Wizner conceded his client is not a man with a lot of options.

WIZNER: The first is to be where he is in Russia. And the second is to be in a maximum security prison cell, cut off from the world. Of course we're working on option three.

KELLY: Which Wizner defines as either somehow returning to the U.S., quote, "in dignity" or winning guarantee of safe passage to some other country. Snowden himself declined our request for an interview, but he's active on Twitter, with more than 2 million followers. Snowden follows only one account - the National Security Agency. Mary Louise Kelly, NPR News, Moscow.

Now, we have a highly ranked Russian lawmaker openly admitting that Snowden turned over US state secrets to the Russians, and that this admission happened just days after Snowden publicly criticized the Russians for passing a new mass surveillance measure.

Edward J. Snowden, an American who took refuge inRussia after leaking a trove of classified United States data from global surveillance, has criticized a proposed Russian law as an assault on freedom of speech, and has been rebuffed in an effort to collect a free-speech prize in Norway.

Mr. Snowden, who was charged by the United States in 2013 withviolating the Espionage Act, was invited to Norway by a writers’ advocacy group to receive the prize, and sought guarantees in court that he would not be handed over to the American authorities. News agencies reported on Monday that a court in Oslo rejected his bid.

His criticism of the Russian law came over the weekend, when he said on Twitter that it was “an unworkable, unjustifiable violation of rights that should never be signed.” The law was passed by the lower house of Parliament on Friday; the speaker of the upper house, Valentina I. Matviyenko, signaled on Monday that her chamber would pass it as well.

And so Putin and the Russians almost immediately outed him as a traitor as a result.  If you somehow thought this clown was going to come home and get a pardon before, that just ended thanks to the Russians admitting Snowden gave them intelligence.

Of course, anyone with a modicum of common sense knew very well that Snowden turned over intel and betrayed the US. And it looks like that ticket bought him three years as a guest at most.

What happens to Snowden now?  Well gosh, the life expectancy of an openly burnt spy isn't that long, now is it?

And I will repeat this again for the folks in the cheap seats: now matter how you feel about Snowden "starting a national conversation" about US surveillance (and he certainly did), the fact remains that the man is a traitor who broke the law, period. Both of these points can be and are very much true.

The Siege Of Cleveland

Any notion that the GOP convention in Cleveland is going to be a peaceful one can be disposed of rather quickly when you remember that the convention itself is supposed to be a gun-free zone, but the rest of the city of Cleveland is apparently fair game.

As the Republican convention in Cleveland approaches, several delegates from Pennsylvania who support Donald Trump say they are planning on bringing their guns with them to the GOP gathering. Why? They say they are worried about possible violent protest and even an attack from ISIS.

James Klein, a pro-Trump delegate from the Harrisburg area, notes that guns won't be needed inside the convention hall and that delegates won't be allowed to bring in weapons. "But," he adds, "there's the hotels. There's going to be dinners."

So Klein, an insurance executive and economist, has decided to come armed to Cleveland, and he has urged his fellow delegates to do the same. "We're talking about ISIS," he remarks, citing the recent shooting in Orlando and the bombings at the Istanbul airport. Referring to protesters outside Trump rallies, he adds, "We're talking about people who have shown a propensity for violence."

"There are a whole bunch of things happening: You go to various events, receptions, whatever, outside the convention hall," says Ash Khare, a delegate from the northwest corner of the state who applied for a concealed carry permit in preparation for Cleveland. "And you walk on the streets and, you know, people know that you are a delegate, and who knows what the crazy people are going to do? So you've got to be vigilant about what's going on and prepare yourself."

Yeah, because paranoid Trump delegates walking around with guns is a great idea.  What if you don't want these assholes walking around armed in Cleveland, near your kids and family?  Too bad.  Ohio's an open carry state thanks to the GOP that has controlled the state since 2004. 

You can open-carry in the state without any license whatsoever as long as you legally own the firearm.  You can't carry a loaded gun in a motor vehicle without a concealed carry license however.  Ohio has reciprocity agreements with states like Pennsylvania, so yes, these bozos can happily be carting around whatever firepower they like, especially with a CCL.

Boy, doesn't that seem like a great idea?

Marc Scaringi, another Trump delegate from the Harrisburg area, says that during the past few weeks there have been many emails exchanged among the Pennsylvania delegates discussing whether to bring weapons to Cleveland.

A lifelong member of the NRA who carries a gun every day, Klein notes he is particularly concerned about the threat of international terrorism. "I'm not a terrorist, okay, but I'm an academic and a theorist, and I would think that if I were an ISIS guy that I might want to attack the Republican National Convention," he says.

Klein continues: "People will attack you at your weakest, at your softest." That is, he explains, attacks are not likely to occur at the convention hall but elsewhere in the city where police and Secret Service officers are unlikely to stop an attack.

In other words, there's going to be all kinds of jackholes like James Klein here wandering around Cleveland loaded for bear. 

Enjoy that, Forest City!