Another thought about the Trump versus the FBI melodrama:

Mr. Trump’s current campaign threatens the autonomy of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, which was seared into the public consciousness after Watergate, according to veterans of the legal system. “Starting with Jimmy Carter, every president has embraced norms that preserve the independence of the D.O.J., law enforcement and intelligence matters from the White House,” Mr. Goldsmith said. “What is happening now is a violation of post-Watergate norms.”

What that passage doesn’t quite make clear is what Watergate has to do with it. Watergate made it eye-scorchingly clear how crucial it is to have federal law enforcement be independent of the president, so that he doesn’t get away with committing crimes … Read the rest

How are they doing at the FBI? It can’t be easy.

In the 109 years of the FBI’s existence, it has repeatedly come under fire for abuses of power, privacy or civil rights. From Red Scares to recording and threatening to expose the private conduct of Martin Luther King Jr. to benefiting from bulk surveillance in the digital age, the FBI is accustomed to intense criticism.

What is so unusual about the current moment, say current and former law enforcement officials, is the source of the attacks.

The bureau is under fire not from those on the left but rather conservatives who have long been the agency’s biggest supporters, as well as the president who handpicked the FBI’s leader.

Republican

From the Classroom Vignettes file:

A teacher with Colorado’s Boulder Valley School District was placed on paid administrative leave following an alleged incident at the middle school, the school district said Thursday. CBS Denver confirmed the Lafayette Police Department is investigating reports that teacher allegedly assaulted a student who refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Karen Smith, Angevine’s physical education teacher, was placed on leave Thursday.

This again. Football players MUST stand up with their hands on their chests (one hand per player) when a certain song is sung. God MUST be namechecked whenever a politician comments on an outburst of violence. Students MUST swear fealty to a piece of cloth and to God at the start … Read the rest

Pennsylvania Republicans are refusing to obey a court order to redraw their congressional map to make it not so grotesquely gerrymandered.

A top Pennsylvania state Senate Republican is refusing to follow a court order requiring lawmakers to turn over data that would redraw the state’s congressional map.

In a letter to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which struck down the map, state Sen. Joe Scarnati on Wednesday called the order unconstitutional and said he would not comply.
“In light of the unconstitutionality of the court’s orders and the court’s plain intent to usurp the General Assembly’s constitutionally delegated role of drafting Pennsylvania’s congressional district plan, Senator Scarnati will not be turning over any data identified in the court’s orders,” wrote Brian

To move to a less distasteful subject than rapey theocrats and constitution-trampling crooks, there’s this exciting story that’s been in the headlines for a couple of days of finding huge previously unknown Maya sites buried in Guatemala.

By raining down laser pulses on some 770 square miles of dense forest in northern Guatemala, archaeologists have discovered 60,000 Maya structures that make up full sprawling cities.

And the new technology provides them with an unprecedented view into how the ancient civilization worked, revealing almost industrial agricultural infrastructure and new insights into Maya warfare.

“This is a game changer,” says Thomas Garrison, an archaeologist at Ithaca College who is one of the leaders of the project. It changes “the base level

Tariq Ramadan has been charged with rape and is currently incarcerated.

I don’t see anything in English yet so this is from Le Monde:

Tariq Ramadan a été mis en examen, vendredi 2 février, pour viol et viol sur personne vulnérable. L’islamologue suisse a demandé qu’un éventuel placement en détention provisoire, requis par le parquet, fasse l’objet d’un débat ultérieur entre le juge des libertés et de la détention (JLD) et sa défense. Dans l’attente de ce débat, qui doit avoir lieu dans les quatre jours, il a été incarcéré.

Les enquêteurs du deuxième district de police judiciaire ont enquêté pendant trois mois, méthodiquement et sans laisser échapper la moindre information, avant de se décider à entendre, à partir

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest that Trump is chopping down – now we want more global disease outbreaks.

Four years after the United States pledged to help the world fight infectious-disease epidemics such as Ebola, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is dramatically downsizing its epidemic prevention activities in 39 out of 49 countries because money is running out, U.S. government officials said.

But don’t worry, Donald Trump’s golf courses and hotels are profiting like crazy.

The CDC programs, part of a global health security initiative, train front-line workers in outbreak detection and work to strengthen laboratory and emergency response systems in countries where disease risks are greatest. The goal is to stop future outbreaks at

Speaking of “where was the mother while this man was torturing a baby?” – the ACLU offers one example of a woman punished because a man abused their children.

Tondalao Hall spent her 13th New Year’s Day inside a prison cell this month. The man who abused her and her young children never served a single day in prison. The details of Hall’s story speak volumes about criminal injustice in the nation today.

Thirteen years ago, Tondalao Hall’s ex-boyfriend and abuser, Robert Braxton Jr., pleaded guilty to breaking the ribs and femur of their 3-month-old daughter. Hall had not abused her children. She herself was also a victim of her ex’s violence. Prosecutors presented no evidence that Hall, then

Originally a comment by iknklast on Grave concerns.

why nobody in the media seems to grasp the gravity of what the GOP is trying to do

The media has struggled with the Trump dumpster fire from the beginning, because they keep trying to do things the same way. They keep treating it as politics as usual, so they try to figure out what the strategy is, what the end game is, what Plan B might be. None of these things exist. This is a demolition operation, and unless you understand demolition, you can’t get there.

Maddow gets it because she is able to see that this is not business as usual. But most of the pundits are in the … Read the rest

The crazy is ratcheting up. Even a Republican senator is urging Nunes and his gang not to be in such a hurry to release the memo.

Mr. Thune’s note of caution joined a growing chorus of warnings from national security officials who say that releasing the memo would jeopardize sensitive government information, including how intelligence is gathered, and from Democrats who say it is politically motivated and distorts the actions of the Justice Department and the F.B.I. by omitting crucial context.

President Trump, who has made clear that he wants the memo to be public, was expected to indicate as early as Thursday that despite strong objections by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, he did not intend to

Adam Schiff (the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee) explains why the release of Nunes’s memo is such a terrible move.

As multiple investigations work to unearth the full truth, the president has lashed out with Nixonian ferocity at the Justice Department, the FBI, congressional investigators and the media.

However, unlike President Richard Nixon, who waged his Watergate fight without the same kind of vocal allies, Trump not only has an entire media ecosystem dedicated to shielding him from accountability but also senior Republicans on the Hill who have cast aside their duty to uphold the law and perform oversight in favor of protecting the Trump presidency — no matter the cost. Nunes may have wielded the committee