Daily Archive: January 18, 2019

22

Vikram Bath

/// January 18, 2019

The Journalists Have Been Hacked

Journalism’s current standards for determining what is publishable are brittle and subject to manipulation by malicious actors.

1

Em Carpenter

/// January 18, 2019

Further Observations on SCOTUS’S Strange Bedfellows

The Supreme Court continues to provide an interesting study in perceived contradictions with its most recent ruling. In a 5-4 decision that saw two justices switching teams, the Court voted to uphold the sentencing of a Florida man under the Armed Career Criminals Act (ACCA), which resulted in a minimum sentence of 15 years

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The Mueller Report, Presented by AG William Barr: Discussion Thread
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The Mueller Report, Presented by AG William Barr: Discussion Thread
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[caption id="attachment_312960" align="aligncenter" width="512"]mueller William Barr takes his oath of office AG[/caption]

UPDATE: link to report can be found here: Original post follows.

AG William Barr is giving a press conference before releasing the Mueller Report first to congress then to the public.

WaPo:

Attorney General William P. Barr on Thursday is expected to submit to Congress and make public a redacted version of the 400-page report written by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team that will reveal much about President Trump’s actions in office.

Barr plans to hold a 9:30 a.m. news conference to address “process questions” and provide an “overview of the report,” a senior Justice Department official said. The report will be delivered on discs to Capitol Hill between 11 a.m. and noon and posted on the special counsel’s website thereafter, the official said.

Until now, the only information about Mueller’s findings from his 22-month investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections had been provided by Barr in a four-page letter to Congress last month in which he described the special counsel’s “principal conclusions.”

This post will be updated as information comes out throughout the day.

UPDATE: Well, that didn't take long...

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An Icon Burns Along the Seine
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An Icon Burns Along the Seine
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We haven't done an architecture post in a while, and shame on us for that. Horrifying it has to be for a reason like this. Notre Dame in Paris is burning, and is very much in danger of complete destruction.

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Julian Assange Evicted, Arrested in London
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Julian Assange Evicted, Arrested in London
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Well then...Ecuador had finally had enough of Julian Assange.

NY Times:

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who released reams of secret documents that embarrassed the United States government, was taken into police custody on Thursday after being evicted from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he has lived for almost seven years.

The Metropolitan Police said in a statement that Mr. Assange had been arrested by officers at the embassy on a warrant issued by Westminster Magistrates’ Court in 2012, for failing to surrender to the court.

The United States Justice Department has filed criminal charges against Mr. Assange, 47, related to the publication of classified documents, a fact that prosecutors accidentally made public in November. He also faces a charge in a British court of jumping bail.

Mr. Assange is also suspected of aiding Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election by releasing material stolen from the computers of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party. In July, the Justice Department charged 12 Russian intelligence officers with hacking those computers, and the indictment contends that at least one of them was in contact with WikiLeaks.

Assange first holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy to avoid an arrest warrant from Sweden on a rape charge back in 2012. That warrant was rescinded, but Assange has outstanding legal issues in both the US and UK, the later for jumping bail and in the States where his sealed federal indictment was accidentally revealed in court filings back in November. Meanwhile, Assange relationship with the Ecuadorian government had long since soured, with President Moreno especially looking to offload him since his election in 2017. They finally did. Now in UK custody, the legal and diplomatic wrangling on who gets their hands on Julian Assange first begins. Much more to come from this story.

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Criterion goes live
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Criterion goes live
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Yesterday, I talked up the films of the recently departed Agnès Varda. Today, the Criterion Channel went live and they've put up fourteen of her films, a few of which are among the best you'll ever see.

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DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen Resigns
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DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen Resigns
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[caption id="attachment_312351" align="aligncenter" width="512"]Kirsthen Nielsen
U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has tendered her resignation. After meeting with President Trump at the White House, the embattled Nielsen was reported to be leaving her post, later confirmed via presidential tweet.

WaPo:

President Trump announced Sunday that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was leaving the administration, marking the exit of a second top immigration official in a matter of days as the White House continues to grapple with an influx of migrants on the southern border.

Replacing her on an acting basis will be Kevin McAleenan, who currently serves as the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Trump said Sunday. The announcement on Twitter came shortly after Trump and Nielsen met at the White House, according to two senior administration officials.

“Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen will be leaving her position, and I would like to thank her for her service,” Trump tweeted Sunday evening. “I am pleased to announce that Kevin McAleenan, the current U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, will become Acting Secretary for @DHSgov. I have confidence that Kevin will do a great job!”

The meeting between Trump and Nielsen was not disclosed on the president’s public schedule that was distributed by the White House, and it came three days after the White House abruptly yanked the nomination of Ronald Vitiello, who had been picked as Trump’s director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The president later signaled that he wants the nation to go “in a tougher direction” on immigration enforcement.

It was not immediately clear whether Nielsen resigned or if Trump fired her. One senior administration official said Nielsen “did not go to the White House with the intention of resigning.”

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  • 2019-04-15 4:49 pm
    An Icon Burns Along the Seine
    AvatarJaybird

    A strangely comforting thread:

    I took a survey course of Catholic cathedral architecture taught by a remarkably cynical former priest and on the first day of class he was like “of cathedrals have multiple dates for different parts, burning down is an essential part of the life cycle of Catholic architecture.”— [...]

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