StupidiNews!

• Nigerian officials are blaming Militant group Boko Haram for an attack on a funeral in the country's Nganzai district, at least 65 people are confirmed dead and dozens more injured.
• The death toll from Saturday's twin earthquakes in the Philippines has risen to eight as rescue workers continue to search the remote Batanes islands for survivors.
• Three people were shot and killed and 12 injured at the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival near San Jose, California Sunday evening as festival goers scattered from gunshots.
• More than 50 have been arrested as police clashed with protesters in Hong Kong over the weekend, Chinese officials say they will brief the city and officials Monday to try to defuse tensions.
• New studies find that the speed of climate change is outpacing most species's ability to adapt, which scientists fear could lead to mass extinctions of birds, insects, plants, and fish.

Last Call For Sugar Coats-ing The Problem, Con't

Dan Coats, Trump's Director of National Intelligence, is being fired, and it looks like Donald Trump has already settled on his replacement, GOP loyalist Rep. John Ratcliffe of Texas.

President Trump is expected to nominate Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) to replace Dan Coats as director of national intelligence, according to three sources familiar with the president's deliberations.

Behind the scenes: Trump was thrilled by Ratcliffe's admonishment of former special counsel Robert Mueller in last week's House Judiciary Committee hearing. "The special counsel's job, nowhere does it say that you were to conclusively determine Donald Trump's innocence or that the special counsel report should determine whether or not to exonerate him," Ratcliffe, a former prosecutor, said to Mueller.

"I agree with Chairman Nadler this morning when he said Donald Trump is not above the law," Ratcliffe added. "But he damn sure should not be below the law which is where Volume II of this report puts him." 

But while Ratcliffe's performance in the Mueller hearing helped his chances for the DNI appointment, it wasn't what put him on the president's radar. Advisers to Trump said the president was already seriously considering Ratcliffe to replace Coats. Trump had previously shortlisted Ratcliffe to replace Jeff Sessions as attorney general before he ultimately chose William Barr. 

The New York Times' Maggie Haberman was the first to report that Ratcliffe was in the mix to replace Coats as DNI. And CNN reported that Ratcliffe was under consideration for an unspecified job in the administration.

As with all of Trump's decisions, his advisers caution that the president could still change his mind at the last minute, but senior administration officials familiar with the president's deliberations say Ratcliffe is the favorite.

The big picture: Trump has been mulling replacing Coats since at least February, as Axios recently reported. The director of national intelligence serves as an overseer of the U.S. intelligence community and a close adviser to the president and National Security Council, producing each day's top-secret Presidential Daily Brief.

Ratcliffe is loyal to Trump, not the country or the Constitution.  This is why he's getting the job.

Ratcliffe, who has served in Congress since 2015, argued during Mueller's hearing before the House Judiciary Committee that in the second volume of the report, Mueller offered "extra-prosecutorial analysis about crimes that weren't charged" and accused the former special counsel of breaking Justice Department regulations by doing so. 

Ratcliffe has been under consideration for a job within the Trump administration, sources told CNN, including an intelligence or national security role. The congressman speaks with the President often, and Trump is a big fan of his, the sources said. 

The congressman's name was floated last year as a possible replacement for former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was eventually succeeded by William Barr. 

Ratcliffe, a former federal prosecutor, has been critical of the way the Democrats on the committee have approached Mueller's investigation after it ended, arguing in April against the panel authoring a subpoenafor an underacted version of the report. 

"Let Bob Mueller come, and let's ask Bob Mueller to come and whether or not he thinks the report he created should be disclosed without considerations of redactions for classified national security information, or without redactions for grand jury information or other information related to ongoing investigations," he said at the time.

Remember, Coats is being fired because he's not sufficiently loyal enough to the idea of protecting Dear Leader.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats has installed a new czar to oversee election security efforts across the spy world, he announced on Friday.

A veteran agency leader, Shelby Pierson, has been appointed to serve as the first election threats executive within the intelligence community, or IC, Coats said.

"Election security is an enduring challenge and a top priority for the IC," said Coats.

"In order to build on our successful approach to the 2018 elections, the IC must properly align its resources to bring the strongest level of support to this critical issue. There is no one more qualified to serve as the very first election threats executive than Shelby Pierson, whose knowledge and experience make her the right person to lead this critical mission."

Pierson has served within the intelligence world for more than 20 years. She was "crisis manager" for election security for the 2018 election within the office of the DNI and also has served in top roles in the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, according to one official biography.

Her appointment isn't the only change Coats announced on Friday. He also is directing other agencies within the extended family of spy services to appoint their own executives responsible for election security efforts.

"These agency leads will work with the [election threats executive] to help ensure IC efforts on election security are coordinated and prioritized across all IC elements," Coats said.

Let's be clear why Ratliffe is being hired: His first job is to fire or neutralize Shelby Pierson and put an end to the election security efforts in the intelligence community.  Trump needs somebody willing to do that and take the slings and arrows for such an obvious political move that casts suspicion on the Trump regime.

Trump can't have increased security on election matters, especially coming from the intelligence community. Ratliffe's job will then be to clear the way for neutering our counterintelligence, just what Putin wants.

How To Steal An Election, Con't

A new lawsuit contends Georgia Republicans deliberately destroyed evidence related to possibly compromised voting machines in 2017.

The lawsuit, filed by the Coalition for Good Governance, argues that state officials "almost immediately" began destroying evidence after a 2017 lawsuit alleged Georgia's voting machines were outdated and vulnerable to hacking.  

"The evidence strongly suggests that the State's amateurish protection of critical election infrastructure placed Georgia's election system at risk, and the State Defendants now appear to be desperate to cover-up the effects of their misfeasance — to the point of destroying evidence," the lawsuit reads. 

Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger rebuffed the accusations in a statement -- pointing to a US Senate Intelligence Committee report, which concluded that no machines were manipulated and no votes were changed. 

Raffensperger went onto say, "The office is also in the process of replacing the state's current voter machines with machines that print a paper ballot for an added layer of security. Those new machines will be in place by the March 24, 2020 Presidential Preference Primary". 

The current machines however, are still planned to be used for special and municipal elections this year. 

Thursday's lawsuit alleges a broad effort from state officials to "intentionally" destroy "fundamental" evidence. 

"This type of evidence is not merely relevant and unique, it is fundamental, and it is forever gone. After abundant notice of their well-known duty to preserve evidence, the State Defendants did not simply neglect to disable some automated purge function in their IT systems. Rather, they intentionally and calculatingly destroyed evidence," the lawsuit states. "Such conspicuously outrageous conduct can only raise the question: What were the State Defendants trying to hide?"

I don't know what else to say, other than if state election officials destroyed evidence deliberately in order to protect Brian Kemp being the Secretary of State in charge of monitoring his own 2018 gubernatorial race against Stacey Abrams, then Kemp should be removed from office.

But we all know that this isn't going to happen, and that the voting machines with the paper ballots are still manufactured by companies that donate heavily to the GOP.

Sunday Long Read: Up In The Air

This week's Sunday Long Read comes to us from Narratively, where Caroline Rothstein writes about her father Steven, one of the few people on the planet who was in the right place at the right time and with the right resources to purchase a lifetime, first-class pass on American Airlines.  Steven Rothstein used that pass for two decades, and then in 2008, the airline revoked it, setting off a major court battle and, as Caroline recounts, the loss of her father's lifeline to the friends he had made around the world.

On March 10, 2009, a case was filed in the U.S. Circuit Court for the Northern District of Illinois, where I grew up. Rothstein v. American Airlines, Inc. starred my father, Plaintiff Steven Rothstein, and the Defendant, then the world’s third-largest airline. With $23 billion in annual revenue, American Airlines had nothing to lose. For my father, it was a last-ditch effort to save his life.

Here’s how it all took off. In the early 1980s, American rolled out AAirpass, a prepaid membership program that let very frequent flyers purchase discounted tickets by locking in a certain number of annual miles they presumed they might fly in advance. My 30-something-year-old father, having been a frequent flyer for his entire life, purchased one. Then, a few years later, American introduced something straight out an avid traveler’s fantasy: an unlimited ticket.

In 1987, amidst a lucrative year as a Bear Stearns stockbroker, my father became one of only a few dozen people on earth to purchase an unlimited, lifetime AAirpass. A quarter of a million dollars gave him access to fly first class anywhere in the world on American for the rest of his life. He flew so much it paid for itself. Often he’d leave in the morning for a business trip, fly back, and I hadn’t even known he’d left. Other times, I remember calling his office to find out what country he was in. He (and our whole family) was featured on NBC’s Today Showin 2003, and then on MSNBC in 2006. For 20 years, he was one of American’s top fliers, accumulating more than 30 million miles, which he acquired every time he flew, even with the AAirpass.

Then, on December 13, 2008, American took the AAirpass away.

For several years, the revenues department at American had been monitoring my father and other AAirpass holders to see how much their golden tickets were costing the airline in lost revenue. After 20 years it seems, they’d decided the pass wasn’t such a good idea. My father was one of several lifetime, unlimited AAirpass holders American claimed had breached their contracts.

A few months later, my father sued American for breaking their deal, and more importantly, taking away something integral to who he was. They fought out of court for years. The story became front-page news. The LA Times. The New York Post. Fox News. A slew of online outlets. It’s even a perennially popular conversation topic on Reddit.

The obvious story is that my father was a decadent jet-setter who either screwed or got screwed by American; depends on your take. In the coverage, whether he’s mentioned by name or in off-handed attributions to ostentatious wealth, it’s always this: sensational. And I think — as does my whole family, including my dad — that at the very least, it doesn’t quite land.

What follows is a cracking good read, as my friend from college used to say.  For Steve Rothstein, it was a super-power of flight, and he used it around the planet for the kind of adventures that one can only dream of.  But most of all, he used it to teach a little girl how to fly.

A Taxing Explanation, Con't

Like his predecessor Jerry Brown, California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is trapped between his base and reality as he considers vetoing legislation requiring Trump's tax returns before he'll be allowed on the ballot in 2020, a bill that Newsom fear will only piss off Republicans and get nuked by SCOTUS.

Gavin Newsom has spent the first six months of his governorship positioning himself as the West Coast anti-Trump while taking pains to distinguish himself from his legendary predecessor, Jerry Brown.

Those two strands intersect in a piece of legislation sitting on Newsom's desk that would compel President Donald Trump and other presidential candidates to release their tax returns if they want to appear on California ballots.

Although going after Trump is typically political gold for Newsom, the bill — which Brown vetoed in 2017 — poses a tricky balancing act for the rookie governor: Signing it would shore up Newsom’s base and boost his national profile within the Democratic Party, with other Democratic-led states following his lead. But doing so may rile up dormant California Republicans, and fray Sacramento’s relationship with the Trump administration, which Newsom has tried to keep functional despite bitter disputes over everything from immigration to auto emissions policy.

And while Brown was no fan of Trump, the former governor contended that compelling the release of tax returns could be unconstitutional, and cautioned that signing the bill would launch a political standoff into unknown territory, like requiring candidates’ birth certificates, health records or report cards.

“It’s really going to gin up the Trump base, which could affect congressional candidates and legislative candidates [in California],” said Dana Williamson, a former political adviser to Brown. “From a purely political standpoint, the benefits don’t outweigh the risks.”

Newsom rose to the governorship after spending two terms as California’s lieutenant governor — a position that’s elected independent of the governor, not appointed. While his office was mere feet from Brown’s, the wily veteran Brown and the ascendant young Newsom had a famously chilly relationship.

Newsom has until Tuesday to decide.

He is still weighing his next step, saying this week that he was “deeply analyzing” the bill. Speaking on the sidelines of a National Governors Association meeting in Salt Lake City, Newsom said the measure’s constitutionality was “an open-ended question.”

“Some may see it as symbolic. I think it now appears to be much more substantive,” Newsom told POLITICO. The legislation is focused on primaries, so, he said, “at the end of the day, the president will end up on the November ballot regardless, and the likelihood of the taxes being released is questionable.”

The fact is Trump can make millions of Californians suffer if he wants to, and Newsom passing this bill will only assure that Trump retaliates with real lives on the line who will be affected.  It's one thing to stand up to a bully and punch him in the mouth.  It's another entirely to telegraph a swing that will never land, so the bully can get in a free hit or three.

Besides, SCOTUS will have the bill struck down before California's primary season, I guarantee. This game is rigged, and Newsom is correct in choosing not to play.

Last Call For Powering Down The Buckeye State

Ohio's fall to the GOP means the state is a solid Midwest Republican bastion, and the results are painfully obvious under new governor Mike DeWine: a state that serves the energy companies at the direct expenses in the billions for Ohio citizens. Vox's David Roberts:

Amid a flurry of ambitious state action on climate change policy, the Republican-controlled Ohio legislature has just passed an energy bill that represents an enormous step backward. It is the most counterproductive and corrupt piece of state energy legislation I can recall in all my time covering this stuff — the details must really be seen to be believed.

The bill, just signed by Republican Governor Mike DeWine, is called HB6. Though the story behind it is complex and sordid, the bill itself is pretty simple. It would do four things: 

Bail out two nuclear plants: From 2021 until 2027, Ohio ratepayers will pay a new monthly surcharge on their electricity bills, from 85 cents for residential customers up to $2,400 for big industrial customers. The surcharge will produce about $170 million a year. $150 million of that will be used by the utility FirstEnergy (one of the largest investor-owned utilities in the country) to subsidize its two big nuclear power plants — Davis-Besse, outside of Toledo, and Perry, northeast of Cleveland — which it claims are losing money and will be closed in the next couple of years without bailouts. The remaining $20 million will divided among six existing solar projects in rural areas of the state. (Note: as we’ll discuss below, nuclear power plants generate low-carbon energy and are worth saving. But not like this.) 

Bail out two coal plants: FirstEnergy customers across Ohio will pay an additional monthly surcharge ($1.50 for residential customers; up to $1,500 for big industrials) to help bail out two old, hyper-polluting coal plants owned by the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation (a collective owned by several large utilities), one in Ohio, one in Indiana.
Gut renewable energy standards: Ohio has one of the oldest renewable portfolio standards in the country, requiring its utilities to get 12.5 percent of their power from renewables by 2027. The bill reduces the target to 8.5 percent by 2026, exempts large industrial customers, and kills the standard after 2026, effectively nullifying any incentive for new renewable energy development in the state. 

Gut energy efficiency standards: Ohio utilities are required to reduce customers’ energy use 22 percent from 2008 levels by 2027 through energy efficiency programs (which were set to save Ohio ratepayers $4 billion over the next 10 years). HB6 allows utilities to abandon those programs entirely once they hit 17.5 percent, a level most have almost reached already.

To summarize: the bill would subsidize four uncompetitive power plants, remove all incentive to build more renewable energy projects, and cancel efforts to help customers use less energy. It is a bill only a utility (and the lawmakers who do its bidding) could love, an extravagant gift to FirstEnergy investors that hoses Ohio ratepayers. (FirstEnergy’s stock price has been rising all year, despite, or perhaps because of, its 2018 bankruptcy.)

Despite a tsunami of dark money supporting the bill, HB6 was overwhelmingly opposed by ratepayer groups, business groups, free-market conservative groups, environmental groups, and Ohioans generally. Its only support came from its only beneficiaries: the utilities that own the bailed-out plants, the employees of the bailed-out plants, the communities where the bailed-out plants are located, and possibly Donald Trump, who doesn’t want to see coal plants closing during his reelection campaign.

Not to mention the bill will cost state taxpayers billions of dollars per year in energy rate increases, something we've already seen in neighboring Kentucky and Indiana as their own coal bailout bills have stuck ratepayers with electric bills 50% higher than just three years ago, with multiple rate hikes under GOP governors.

Now it's Ohio's turn.

Enjoying one party rule yet?

A Supreme Disappointment, Con't

Republicans are now in the process of getting rid of what few campaign finance limits remain, and the next frontier is the Last Frontier, Alaska.  The case is Thompson v Hebdon, involving overturning Alaska's campaign finance donation limit for out-of-state individuals for state races.  It's been bopping around for the last two years in the court system.

The challenger to the law is David Thompson, who in 2015 donated $100 to support the re-election of his brother-in-law, former Republican Alaska state Rep. Wes Keller. Thompson lives in Wisconsin, and Keller had already reached the limit for out-of-state contributions, so the campaign had to return the money. Thompson’s lawyers are aping the arguments in Citizens United, contending that this limit on campaign contributions is an unconstitutional regulation of free speech. Thompson told the Alaska Dispatch News, “I thought it was pretty restrictive and it held up my ability to speak out.”

Attorneys for Alaska are citing as precedent Bluman v. FEC, a 2012 Supreme Court case ruling that foreign citizens do not have the right to contribute money to U.S. elections. The state’s attorneys wrote in their brief, “Just as a Canadian citizen is not part of the political community governed by the U.S. federal government, a Florida resident is not part of the political community governed by the Alaska state government.” Advocacy group Free Speech for People, which filed an amicus brief supporting Alaska in July, points out that the state has long been suspicious of out-of-state actors interfering in its politics. The Alaskan tundra is often the target of companies seeking to tap its natural resources and to influence local elections—presumably for extraction privileges.

Although the decision on Thompson v. Hebdon would only directly affect Alaska’s state-level elections, the legal rationale behind these limits, if upheld in court, could be of consequence for elections in other states, including congressional races. A state’s election laws must abide by the Constitution, so if a federal court decides that a state is not hindering the First Amendment by limiting outside donations, then any future laws imposing similar restrictions on congressional races would also likely be consistent with the Constitution. George Washington University professor David Fontana, whose work was the basis of Free Speech for People’s amicus brief, wrote in an email, “If our argument is accepted, the reason why it would have broader implications is because it would be a federal court interpreting federal constitutional law, and federal constitutional law is relevant everywhere and in every election.”

Republicans had this case on the back burner for a while, but now it's a top priority ahead of the 2020 campaign.  They want the Supreme Court to take up the case now, and that effort is being led by former Bush 43 Solicitor General Paul Clement, as UC-Irvine law professor Rich Hasen details at The Atlantic.

Supreme Court deference to democratically enacted campaign-finance laws changed dramatically as the Court’s personnel shifted, especially with the retirement in 2006 of O’Connor and her replacement with Justice Samuel Alito. In the years since O’Connor’s departure, the Court has not upheld a contribution or spending limitation under consideration, except one related to foreign spending in elections, which it upheld without argument or briefing. In Citizens United, Kennedy resurrected his McConnell argument about ingratiation and access not being corruption, this time for the majority. In a 2014 case, McCutcheon v. FEC, Chief Justice John Roberts all but laid out the road map to finish the work begun in Citizens United and start using much stricter scrutiny to review, and strike down, campaign-contribution laws. The two newest justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, have both expressed great skepticism about the constitutionality of any campaign-finance limits.

And so it is somewhat of a mystery why the Court has not taken more campaign-finance cases as vehicles to free up more big money in politics. The Court has turned down numerous challenges to the soft-money portion of McConnell, which still stands. It has repeatedly turned down an attempt to reverse a 2003 case, which held that corporations cannot contribute money directly to candidates. (Citizens United concerned only corporate spending independent of candidates.) And just this past term, the Court turned down a case from the Ninth Circuit upholding strict Montana contribution limits, and another from the Fifth Circuit, upholding low contribution limits in Austin, Texas. The latter case garnered a scathing dissenting opinion from Fifth Circuit Judge (and former Thomas clerk) James Ho, who said that if people don’t like too much money in politics, the solution was to shrink the size of government.

Perhaps the justices did not take these cases because they did not see them as ideal for overturning more precedent. Perhaps the Court is gun-shy about taking on more controversial issues that it could choose to avoid, when cases about guns, abortion, and LGBTQ rights wait in the wings.

Maybe Paul Clement can change that. He has just filed a petition, Thompson v. Hebdon, together with a conservative group, the Alliance Defending Freedom, asking the Court to review a Ninth Circuit decision upholding Alaska’s $500 contribution limits in candidate elections. The petition argues that the limits are too low under existing precedent, but Clement also drops a footnote suggesting that if existing precedent would allow such low limits, the Court should consider overturning such precedent. He hammers home the point, which Roberts reiterated in McCutcheon, that ingratiation and access are not a form of corruption.

Clement’s petition will be noticed at the Court, and not only because he argued the other side of these issues in the McConnell case, defending McCain-Feingold. A new study finds that repeat players have much greater success at the Supreme Court than novices, and Clement is one of the most talented lawyers I have ever seen argue a case. He argues without notes and has a casual, direct, conversational style with the justices. It is pretty remarkable.

If the Court takes this case and reverses the Ninth Circuit, it would not spell the end of all contribution limits immediately. But it could hasten a world in which individuals could give unlimited sums directly to candidates, buying all the ingratiation and access they want. The Court has been moving in this direction; the question is whether it wishes to act now, or delay the inevitable a bit longer.

Such a ruling in June 2020 would be just in time for the heart of the 2020 campaign season, and the wealthy could give unlimited campaign funds to the GOP.  Imagine being swamped with GOP campaign ads everywhere, tens of billions of dollars' worth, for the final five months of the campaign season.

It would be madness...and if you thought lobbying was bad before, imagine corporate giants giving billions to get the exact legislation they want from the candidates they buy in every House and Senate race.  We're essentially at that point now on a lot of things, but the last few limitations on that would be gone.

Everyone would be corrupt as Trump, and anyone who wasn't would be buried in races by people who were.  We're rapidly approaching the era where corporations are the only free speech game in town.

Deportation Nation, Con't

As I mentioned two weeks ago, the Trump regime is trying to use Guatemala as a dumping ground for asylum seekers (and eventually everyone to be deported) but the deal went south when the government of President Jimmy Morales balked at the idea of becoming America's new "safe harbor" asylum friend. 

On top of that, a federal judge Thursday blocked the Trump regime's asylum dumping scheme on the grounds that the Trumpies had no safe harbor nation as a backup.  As recently as 48 hours ago, it looked like Trump was losing this bigly.

But all of that has now gone straight down the crapper as Trump threatened Guatemala with massive economic, trade, and tourism sanctions Thursday night if Morales didn't immediately comply, and on Friday, Morales folded like a cheap card table.

The Trump administration signed an agreement with Guatemala Friday that will restrict asylum applications to the U.S. from Central America.

The so-called “safe third country” agreement would require migrants, including Salvadorans and Hondurans, who cross into Guatemala on their way to the U.S. to apply for protections in Guatemala instead of at the U.S. border. It could potentially ease the crush of migrants overwhelming the U.S. immigration system, although many questions remain about how the agreement will be executed.

President Donald Trump heralded the concession as a win as he struggles to live up to his campaign promises on immigration.

“This is a very big day,” he said. “We have long been working with Guatemala and now we can do it the right way.”

He claimed, “This landmark agreement will put the coyotes and smugglers out of business.”

The announcement comes after a court in California blocked Trump’s most restrictive asylum effort to date, one that would effectively end protections at the southern border.

The two countries had been negotiating such an agreement for months, and Trump threatened Wednesday to place tariffs or other consequences on Guatemala if it didn’t reach a deal.

“We’ll either do tariffs or we’ll do something. We’re looking at something very severe with respect to Guatemala,” Trump had said.

On Friday, Trump praised the Guatemalan government, saying now it has “a friend in the United States, instead of an enemy in the United States.”

Nothing like mobster threats to get the job done, right?

And now, Trump has somewhere to immediately dump asylum seekers.  Morales wanted a friend in the United States, and he's about to get hundreds of thousands of them.

To make things worse, bet on Trump deporting non-asylum cases to Guatemala.  Potentially millions.

It's going to be bad, folks.  One of the last major logistic pieces for mass deportations has now fallen into place, and that means the ICE raids from earlier this month are going to look like a Boy Scout Jamboree by comparison.

Faster Than A Speeding Bullet

Three asteroid whizzed by the Earth this week, and one missed the planet by less than the distance from the Earth to the moon, in a demonstration of just how lucky we've been so far from a cosmic perspective, according to Alan Duffy, the science head at the Royal Institution of Australia.

This asteroid wasn’t one that scientists had been tracking, and it had seemingly appeared from “out of nowhere,” Michael Brown, a Melbourne-based observational astronomer, told The Washington Post. According to data from NASA, the craggy rock was large, an estimated 57 to 130 meters wide (187 to 427 feet), and moving fast along a path that brought it within about 73,000 kilometers (45,000 miles) of Earth. That’s less than one-fifth of the distance to the moon and what Duffy considers “uncomfortably close.”

“It snuck up on us pretty quickly,” said Brown, an associate professor in Australia with Monash University’s School of Physics and Astronomy. He later noted, “People are only sort of realizing what happened pretty much after it’s already flung past us.”

The asteroid’s presence was discovered only earlier this week by separate astronomy teams in Brazil and the United States. Information about its size and path was announced just hours before it shot past Earth, Brown said.

“It shook me out my morning complacency,” he said. “It’s probably the largest asteroid to pass this close to Earth in quite a number of years.”

So how did the event almost go unnoticed?

First, there’s the issue of size, Duffy said. Asteroid 2019 OK is a sizable chunk of rock, but it’s nowhere near as big as the ones capable of causing an event like the dinosaurs’ extinction. More than 90 percent of those asteroids, which are more than half a mile wide or larger, have already been identified by NASA and its partners.

“Nothing this size is easy to detect,” Duffy said of Asteroid 2019 OK. ″You’re really relying on reflected sunlight, and even at closest approach it was barely visible with a pair of binoculars.”

Brown said the asteroid’s “eccentric orbit” and speed were also likely factors in what made spotting it ahead of time challenging. Its “very elliptical orbit” takes it “from beyond Mars to within the orbit of Venus,” which means the amount of time it spends near Earth where it is detectable isn’t long, he said. As it approached Earth, the asteroid was traveling at about 24 kilometers per second, he said, or nearly 54,000 mph. By contrast, other recent asteroids that flew by Earth clocked in between 4 and 19 kilometers per second (8,900 to 42,500 mph).

“It’s faint for a long time,” Brown said of Asteroid 2019 OK. “With a week or two to go, it’s getting bright enough to detect, but someone needs to look in the right spot. Once it’s finally recognized, then things happen quickly, but this thing’s approaching quickly so we only sort of knew about it very soon before the flyby.”

The last-minute detection is yet another sign of how much remains unknown about space and a sobering reminder of the very real threat asteroids can pose, Duffy said.

“It should worry us all, quite frankly,” he said. “It’s not a Hollywood movie. It is a clear and present danger.”

Duffy said astronomers have a nickname for the kind of space rock that just came so close to Earth: “City-killer asteroids.” If the asteroid had struck Earth, most of it would have probably reached the ground, resulting in devastating damage, Brown said.

“It would have gone off like a very large nuclear weapon” with enough force to destroy a city, he said. “Many megatons, perhaps in the ballpark of 10 megatons of TNT, so something not to be messed with.”

One of these days, a city is going to get erased off the map by an asteroid.  It may not happen in my lifetime, but it's going to happen.  I just hope we have the technology to predict and deal with the situation when it does.

Last Call For The Reach To Impeach, Con't

House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler has finally had enough, and is going forward with impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump, among other things.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said Friday that negotiations with former White House counsel Don McGahn over an outstanding subpoena for his testimony, but if the outstanding issues are not resolved soon, the committee plans to go to court to seek enforcement of the subpoena early next week.

Nadler told reporters at the Capitol that the committee would also be filing an application for the grand jury material underlying former special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

"The Department of Justice policies will not allow prosecution of a siting president," Nadler said. "The House is the only institution that can now hold President Trump accountable for these actions. To do so, the House must have access to all the relevant facts."

He added, "We will continue to seek testimony from key fact witnesses," and he added that "our work will continue into the August recess."

McGahn, who was prominently featured in the Mueller report, told the special counsel's team during hours of interviews that the president had ordered him to fire Mueller, and he refused. He has already defied a subpoena by the House panel, declining to testify when the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel claimed executive privilege.

Asked about the growing calls among the Democratic caucus to file articles of impeachment for Mr. Trump, Nadler did not rule out the possibility.

"We may decide to recommend articles of impeachment at some point. We may not," he said. Several of Nadler's colleagues referred to their next step in their inquiry as an "impeachment investigation" into the administration.

This is the Pelosi plan: get the information necessary to impeach Donald Trump into the hands of House Democrats.  Whether or not SCOTUS will agree, or whether or not this will be tied up in the courts until a Trump second term, we don't know.

But the dice have been rolled.  This path, by the way, is exactly what Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent recommended this morning.

Fortunately, there is an answer to this problem: The House Judiciary Committee can launch an impeachment inquiry independently, without any vote by the full House.

In an interview, Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, suggested to me that it’s only a matter of time until the committee formally considers drafting articles of impeachment on its own.

“Somebody has to write articles of impeachment to focus this investigative and analytical process,” Raskin told me. “If not the Judiciary Committee, who is going to do it? This is our job.”

Raskin suggested that this is where the process is inevitably heading already.

“The Constitution leaves it up to Congress how to structure impeachment proceedings,” Raskin told me. “There are many different ways to get there. It can arise from floor action. It can arise within the Judiciary Committee itself.”

“I’m convinced that articles of impeachment are going to originate from the House Judiciary Committee,” Raskin said. “The question is just when.”

The timeline on the inquiry part of impeachment has been answered, and that is now.

No wonder then that Trump is now specifically calling for investigations into President Obama and Hillary Clinton.

President Trump on Friday lashed out at Democrats over their ongoing investigations into his administration, suggesting there should instead be probes into former President Obama's book deal and other activities under his predecessor.

"They want to investigate, they want to go fishing and I watched Bob Mueller and they have nothing," Trump said of Democrats during an Oval Office gathering to announce an agreement with Guatemala.

"It’s a disgrace," he continued. "We want to find out what happened the last Democrat president. Let’s look into Obama the way they’ve looked into me. From day one they’ve looked into everything we’ve done."

"They could look into the book deal that President Obama made. Let’s subpoena all of his records," Trump continued. "Let’s subpoena all of the records having to do with Hillary Clinton and all of the nonsense that went on with Clinton and her foundation and everything else."

It's about damned time, Democrats.  Trump is terrified and is already lashing out in response to Democrats being serious.  He will start putting you in jail in order to save himself if you don't stop him...

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Yesterday I talked about how Robert Mueller's testimony on Wednesday included the fact the Russians are currently attacking our voting systems and have been since 2016, and that Republicans refuse to lift a finger to stop them, blocking measures to help beef up voting system security yesterday. Now we find out the Russian attack on our voting system in 2016 was so massive that they hit all 50 states over three years and absolutely interfered in the presidential race.

The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded Thursday that election systems in all 50 states were targeted by Russia in 2016, largely undetected by the states and federal officials at the time, but at the demand of American intelligence agencies the committee was forced to redact its findings so heavily that key lessons for the 2020 election are blacked out.

The report — the first volume of several to be released from the committee’s investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference — came just 24 hours after the former special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, warned that Russia was moving again to interfere “as we sit here.”

It also landed hours after Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, personally stepped forward to block consideration of a package of election security bills.

While details of many of the hackings directed by Russian intelligence, particularly in Illinois and Arizona, are well known, the committee’s report describes a Russian intelligence effort more far-reaching than the federal government has previously acknowledged.

It concluded that while there is no evidence that any votes were changed in actual voting machines, “Russian cyberactors were in a position to delete or change voter data” in the Illinois voter database. The committee found no evidence that they did so.

While the report is not directly critical of either American intelligence agencies or the states, it described what amounted to a cascading intelligence failure, in which the scope of the Russian effort was underestimated, warnings to the states were too muted, and state officials either underreacted or, in some cases, resisted federal efforts to offer help. 

Once again, the Russians were deep into our voting registration and tally systems in all 50 states and could have done anything they wanted in 2016.

Once again, Mitch McConnell was aware of all of this from the beginning.

Once again, McConnell and the GOP have done everything they can to block efforts to increase security in voting registration and tally systems.

And if you don't believe the Russians changed any votes while being in a position to do so in all 50 states, well, I don't know what to say.  The Senate Intelligence Committee may have found "no evidence" but that's like saying police knew of a group of bank robbers had access to a bank vault but there was "no evidence" of anything taken...admitting to the crime would have of course destroyed the bank, and that's what's happening here.

Of course, as several of you have suggested in the comments over the last few months is that the Russians broke into the bank vault only to discover another robbery in progress.

Only in this case, it's our election systems.  But it's fine, right?  The good guys will prevail?

Plat du Jour: Jambons Cuits à la Vapeur

Europe is broiling under all-time record temperatures, well above 40 degrees Celsius, and the world should get used to baking like this right up until the last Republican who says anthropomorphic global warming is a hoax dies from heat exhaustion.

Never in recorded history has Paris been hotter than it was on Thursday.

The same was true of Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, as temperatures rose and records tumbled one by one across Western Europe, scorching the continent and sending residents scrambling to seek relief from a dangerous heat wave.

In Paris, the temperature soared to 42.6 degrees Celsius (108.6 Fahrenheit), breaking a record set in 1947, 40.4 degrees Celsius, according to the French national weather service, which said the temperatures could rise further. Some 20 million people in northern France were expected to be affected by the heat.

In the Netherlands, temperatures topped 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), shattering the record high set only a day earlier, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute said. In Germany, the northwestern town of Lingen hit 41.5 Celsius (106.7 Fahrenheit).

And for the second time this week, Belgium measured its hottest day, with a temperature of 40.6 Celsius in Kleine Brogel (105 Fahrenheit) on Thursday passing the mark set a day earlier, 40.2 Celsius. The authorities issued a code red alert for the first time since the weather warning system was put in place 20 years ago.

“It’s really shocking to have this heat in Brussels,” said Francesca Van Daele, a student of political science at the Free University of Brussels-VUB. “Our urban planning is not really made for heat waves like this.”

The hottest summers in Europe in the past 500 years have all come in the past 17 years, scientists say. Several heat waves have been linked to human-caused climate change. In the years ahead, they say, many more are likely to scorch temperate zones like northern Europe.

We're maybe a generation away from London having Barcelona's climate, and Barcelona having Cairo's climate.  But it's all sunspots and cloud cover and really we should just continue to drive SUVs and strip mine the mountains and belch carbon into the air because everything will be fine.

We won't be around when the generational cohort after today's Gen Z are born in 2020 and after and they grow up in a world with dozens of hundred-degree days, critical water and food shortages, and resource wars.  Maybe they'll forgive us posthumously, but I doubt it.

They'll remember my generation especially as cowards who helped elect Trump and wrecked the planet.  Hopefully they'll rise up and remove anybody currently over 40 from ever having any sort of political power again and bury us all as the Moron Generation.

StupidiNews!

• Sixteen US Marines were arrested on Thursday at Camp Pendleton, California in connection with a human trafficking and drug smuggling ring, eight other Marines were questioned by military police.
• The latest defense spending bill includes measures to transfer security clearance approval procedures from the White House to the Pentagon starting in October.
• The House Judiciary Committee is subpoenaing White House emails in connection with government records-keeping laws, Democrats believe the White House has violated the Presidential Records Act.
• The House has passed a debt limit bill backed by Donald Trump, but the measure faces an uncertain future in the Senate where several Republicans have already announced plans to block the bill.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide the the Galaxy is returning as a TV series on Hulu, the Douglas Adams series is slated for a potential 2020 debut.

Last Call For An Eye For An Eye

After a nearly 20-year moratorium on federal death penalty executions, the Trump regime is starting them back up, because the cruelty is the point.

Attorney General Bill Barr announced Thursday the federal government will be resuming capital punishment.

In the announcement, the U.S. Department of Justice said the decision was made related to "five death-row inmates convicted of murdering, and in some cases torturing and raping, the most vulnerable in our society -- children and the elderly."

The DOJ further added that Barr had asked Acting Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons to "schedule to executions" of those five individuals.

"The Justice Department upholds the rule of law -- and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system," Barr said in the announcement.
(MORE: New Hampshire bans the death penalty after lawmakers override governor's veto )

According to the Justice Department, the inmates to be executed include a member of a white supremacist group who murdered a family of three and threw them into the Illinois Bayou in Arkansas in 1999. Another is a man who stabbed to death a 63-year-old grandmother and forced her granddaughter to sit next to her dead body on a "30 to 40-mile drive" before then murdering her as well.

DOJ says all executions will take place at U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute, Indiana.

States have been arguing over the death penaly, with several having moved to stop the practice in recent years.  The federal government had stopped too in 2003, arguably the only humane thing Dubya did in his eight years, and that moratorium continued through the Obama administration.

And then, Bill Barr came along.

Funny, I remember all the 2020 Democratic candidates and civil rights activists and criminal justice experts who told me Donald Trump was going to do the right thing on prison reform.

Weird.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

One piece of new information that Robert Mueller did provide yesterday was the fact that the Russians are still, right now, attacking US election security in order to sow chaos and damage the country. 

The biggest takeaway from Robert Mueller's appearances on Capitol Hill is not that Donald Trump may have obstructed justice, although that's what most people continue to argue about. 

It's that Russians are still interfering in US elections. 

"They're doing it as we sit here," Mueller told lawmakers of Russian interference. Earlier he'd said how that aspect of his investigation has been underplayed will have a long-term effect on the US. 

In his report, the former special counsel disclosed that Russian hackers compromised local election systems of two Florida counties in 2016, a development later confirmed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, although he said no votes were changed. And while Mueller did not bring conspiracy charges, it's been well documented that Russians in 2016 were doing their best to help Trump, not Clinton, win. 

Yet despite Mueller's testimony, the special counsel report and alarming statements from elsewhere in Washington, public urgency on addressing Russian interference for the 2020 election appears lacking.

After Mueller's testimony, Senate Democrats tried to get House measures passed that would strengthen cybersecurity measures protecting US elections.

Republicans blocked them all.  Again.

Democrats cited Mueller as they tried to get consent on Wednesday evening to pass their bills.

"Mr. Mueller's testimony should serve as a warning to every member of this body about what could happen in 2020, literally in our next elections," said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

He added that "unfortunately, in the nearly three years since we uncovered Russia's attack on our democracy, this body has not held a single vote on stand-alone legislation to protect our elections."

Warner tried to get consent to pass the Foreign Influence Reporting in Elections Act by unanimous consent. Under Warner's bill, campaign officials would have to report contacts with foreign nationals who are trying to make campaign donations or coordinate with the campaign to the Federal Election Commission, which would in turn notify the FBI.

"If a foreign adversary tries to offer assistance to your campaign, your response should not be 'thank you.' Your response should be a moral obligation to tell the FBI," he said.

But Hyde-Smith objected to passing his legislation. Sen. Marsha Blackburn(R-Tenn.) similarly blocked the legislation in June, arguing that it was overly broad.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) tried to get consent to pass similar legislation that would require candidates, campaign officials and their family members to notify the FBI of assistance offers.

"It differs in some technical aspects [from the Warner bill] … but it is the same idea because it codifies into law what is already a moral duty, a patriotic duty and basic common sense," Blumenthal said.

Hyde-Smith also objected to Blumenthal's bill.

She objected a third time when Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) tried to get consent to pass legislation he crafted with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) that would allow the Senate Sergeant at Arms to provide voluntary cybersecurity assistance for personal accounts and devices of senators and staff.

"I don't see how anyone can consider what I have proposed to be a partisan issue," Wyden said.

Democrats still haven't figured out that Republicans want elections to be vulnerable so Trump can win.  There's no other explanation.

They know he will lose without Russia rigging the election.

Do we understand the stakes now?