Good. The LA Times:

A federal judge in Washington halted an apparent deportation-in-progress Thursday and threatened to hold Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions in contempt after learning that the Trump administration tried to remove a woman and her daughter while a court hearing appealing their deportations was underway.

“This is pretty outrageous,” said U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan after being told about the removal. “That someone seeking justice in U.S. court is spirited away while her attorneys are arguing for justice for her?”

“I’m not happy about this at all,” the judge continued. “This is not acceptable.”

The woman, known in court papers as Carmen, is a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed this week by the American Civil

Meanwhile, Trump and Pence are sweating with excitement at their big plans to put SOJERS in SPASE.

The creation of a new branch of the military — the first since the Air Force was created in the wake of World War II in 1947 — could require a significant reorganization of the Pentagon. Some officials within the military and national security communities fiercely oppose the idea. The Air Force in particular might lose key responsibilities. The proposal would also need congressional approval.

Also it would be a little pricey, but hey, they can just get rid of Medicare and Social Security and bob’s your uncle.

White House officials have been working with national security leaders to aggressively move ahead

Saudi Arabia likes executing people even more than the US does.

The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights, a human-rights group, said 146 people were executed in 2017, slightly lower than 154 in 2016. “Such a level of executions has not been witnessed since the mid 1990s,” the group said in a report released this week. The group said that as of April 2018, Saudi authorities had executed 47 people and were on pace to meet last year’s figure. Dozens more, it said, continue to face the death penalty, including some under the age of 18.

That’s out of a population of 32 million, so a tenth of ours in the US. We executed 23 people last year, 20 … Read the rest

What’s Prince Jared been up to? Trying to make sure Palestinian refugees starve and die.

Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, has quietly been trying to do away with the U.N. relief agency that has provided food and essential services to millions of Palestinian refugees for decades, according to internal emails obtained by Foreign Policy.

His initiative is part of a broader push by the Trump administration and its allies in Congress to strip these Palestinians of their refugee status in the region and take their issue off the table in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, according to both American and Palestinian officials. At least two bills now making their way through Congress

Arizona State finds that Krauss did it.

An investigation by Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe concluded this week that high-profile astrophysicist and atheist Lawrence Krauss violated the university’s sexual harassment policy by grabbing a woman’s breast at a conference in Australia in late 2016.

“Responsive action is being taken to prevent any further recurrence of similar conduct,” ASU’s executive vice president and provost, Mark Searle, wrote in a 31 July letter to Melanie Thomson, a microbiologist based in Ocean Grove, Australia, who is an outspoken advocate for women in science. Thomson, who witnessed the breast-grabbing incident, received the investigative reportfrom ASU’s Office of Equity and Inclusion (OEI) and shared it with Science.

In response to an

A highly interesting interview with the actor Kathleen Turner, who – surprise! – has a lot to say about attitudes to and behavior towards women.

I randomly caught Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on TV the other night and it made me wonder if you’d watched Elizabeth Taylor’s performance before you played Martha?

God, no. Quite the opposite. For a while I felt like half my life was making her wrongs right.

Sorry, Elizabeth Taylor’s?

Yes. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof — you ever listen to her voice? It’s awful.

But you’ve got one of the all-time great voices. Maybe that makes you a tough critic.

No. She has a bad voice, badly used. In any case, people

A piece of a Fresh Air interview yesterday that struck me as odd. The interview is with David Kirkpatrick,  the New York Times Cairo bureau chief from 2011 to 2015.

GROSS: So you’re living in London now, still working for The New York Times. And I’m wondering, like, if you think the lens through which you’re seeing London has been affected from your years in Cairo.

KIRKPATRICK: My time in Cairo and covering the Arab Spring has made me much more sensitive than I was previously to what I guess I should just call anti-Muslim bigotry. I find that when I move in sophisticated liberal circles in the U.S. or the U.K., the only group that you can make sort

Oh good, more women getoutery.

His appointment is the first of its kind in British history. No other mayor has hired an LGBT adviser to help tackle problems facing the community — despite the Labour party itself having an LGBT advisory panel. But yesterday, it was announced that Carl Austin-Behan would serve as the first LGBT adviser to Andy Burnham, the directly elected Labour mayor of Greater Manchester.

Hmmmm. Wait. He’s a guy. How can he tackle (all) the problems facing Ls? Which “community” is “the community” here? Gay men remain men, and lesbians remain women, and having men speak for women isn’t always an ideal arrangement.

Just hours before Burnham unveiled this new role, which comes with its

Trump-supporting Congress dude busted for insider trading.

Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y. was arrested Wednesday morning on federal insider trading charges, law enforcement officials said.

An indictment obtained from a federal grand jury alleges relates to Australian biotech company Innate Immunotherapeutics, on which Collins served as a board member.

The indictment alleges Collins scrambled to call his son from the White House lawn and tell him non-public information about a failed drug trial in which they both owned shares.

Nice touch that he did it from the White House lawn. I wonder if he passed Melania in her $1400 plaid shirt and pristine jeans pretending to “garden.”

Collins was Trump’s first supporter in Congress, and was reportedly a member

Glasgow Rapecrisis on Facebook:

Really sad to report today that we have had to close down the #GlasgowClydeRapeCrisis waiting list for all new survivors coming to the project. We can still offer telephone helpline support on 08088 00 00 14 every day of the week from 11.00 am until 2.00 pm and Monday to Thursday from 5.30 pm until 7.30 pm and we can offer drop-in services to survivors on Wednesdays from 10.30 am until 3.00 pm and Wednesday evenings from 5.30 pm until 7.30 pm. Please check our website for more info about support. We are so sorry for having to make this decision but recent loss of funding for our work with young women and girls has

Yes, the Saudis are in a snit all right.

Now deleted, here a screenshot of the threatening Saudi "infographic" featuring an airliner headed for the Toronto skyline. pic.twitter.com/LrkCLxxjFk

— Tobias Schneider (@tobiaschneider) August 6, 2018

More:

Amid a diplomatic spat between Saudi Arabia and Canada, a pro-Saudi Government Twitter account shared – and then deleted – a digitally altered image that appeared to show a plane flying towards the skyline of Toronto, Canada’s largest city.

The image, shared by the account @infographic_ksa, was accompanied by a message in English that contained the saying, “He who interferes with what doesn’t concern him finds what doesn’t please him.” The text “sticking one’s nose where it doesn’t belong!” was also superimposed over

Bookmarks Bookshop on Facebook:

Socialist bookshop calls for solidarity following Nazi attack

Bookmarks bookshop in Bloomsbury, central London, has called on supporters to attend a solidarity event following an attack by far right thugs.
Twelve men invaded the shop last Saturday, destroying displays, wrecking books and chanting Alt-right slogans. One was wearing a Donald Trump mask.
Since the attack Bookmarks the socialist bookshop has received messages of support from leading figures in the trade union and labour movements and thousands of activists from around the world.
Those tweeting their support include singer and activist Billy Bragg, Rupa Huq MP, historian Louise Raw and Guardian columnist Owen Jones.
David Lammy MP tweeted: “The normalisation of far right politics is already

Ah, so that’s how it’s done.

A Japanese medical school deliberately cut women’s entrance test scores for at least a decade, an investigation panel said on Tuesday, calling it a “very serious” instance of discrimination, but school officials denied having known of the manipulations.

…

The alterations were uncovered in an internal investigation of a graft accusation this spring regarding the entrance exam for Tokyo Medical University, sparking protests and anger.

Lawyers investigating bribery accusations in the admission of the son of a senior education ministry official said they concluded that his score, and those of several other men, were boosted “unfairly” – by as much as 49 points, in one case.

When it becomes unfashionable to tell women … Read the rest

The Times takes a farewell look at Paul Ryan:

As has been strenuously noted, Trump and Ryan are stylistic and philosophical opposites: Trump the blunt-force agitator vs. Ryan the think-tank conservative. Trump lashes out while Ryan treads carefully. Ryan still fashions himself a “policy guy” and a man of ideas: In high school, he read the conservative philosopher Ayn Rand and was captivated by her signature work, “Atlas Shrugged.”

Stop right there. One, reading Atlas Shrugged does not make anyone a person of ideas. Two, Ayn Rand was not a philosopher. She was a screenwriter and a novelist.

The speaker says he tries to encourage good behavior in the president. “He put out a tweet last night that

Pete Vernon at Columbia Journalism Review on Trump’s attacks on the press:

As Trump has ratcheted up his media criticism, his supporters have been given the opportunity to show they’re getting the message. A trio of rallies provided scenes of hostility toward journalists doing their jobs, leading to frightening—and increasingly dire—predictions. The New York Times’s Bret Stephens wrote Friday about a threatening voicemail he received, in which the caller said, “I don’t carry an AR but once we start shooting you f—ers you aren’t going to pop off like you do now. You’re worthless, the press is the enemy of the United States people.” Arguing that it’s only a matter of time until one of Trump’s devotees takes