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Bill Barr’s meeting with Fox News chairman
Why did Attorney General Bill Barr meet Wednesday night with Fox News chairman Rupert Murdoch, and (as the New York Times reported) do so at the media mogul’s home?
…Barr has already shown us that he’s willing to safeguard Trump. We saw that with the four-page summary Barr issued ahead of his release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, which framed the report as far more favorable to Trump then it was.
…And recently Barr determined in short order that Trump did not violate campaign finance laws in his July 25 phone conversation with Zelensky, despite Trump point-blank asking the Ukrainian president to investigate one of his leading political rivals
Bill Barr’s meeting with Fox News chairman should be investigated (opinion) – CNN
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It bears repeating, and not just when considering Fox, that equal time does not have to mean repeating lies to contrast facts.
GOP lawmaker Matt Gaetz tries to crash impeachment hearings
Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz tried to crash a congressional hearing considering impeachment against President Trump — but got the boot because he’s not a member of any of the committees doing the investigation.
Gaetz, a Republican and Trump loyalist, complained that he was kicked out of this morning’s hearing with Fiona Hill, a former national security official who was expected to offer testimony critical of Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
An official working on the inquiry told CNN that Gaetz was booted because he broke House rules.
GOP lawmaker Matt Gaetz tries to crash impeachment hearings
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Officer who shot naked man found not guilty of murder; jury splits along racial lines
A former Georgia police officer who fatally shot an unarmed, naked man was found not guilty of murder Monday but was convicted of aggravated assault and other charges that could send him to prison for more than 30 years.
…Olsen, now 57, was a DeKalb County police officer in March 2015 when he responded to a call of a naked man behaving erratically outside an Atlanta-area apartment complex. Shortly after arriving, he fatally shot 26-year-old Anthony Hill, a U.S. Air Force veteran who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. …Olsen is white and Hill was black.
…The jury acquitted Olsen on two counts of felony murder, charges that would have carried a mandatory sentence of life in prison. A felony murder charge doesn’t imply intent to kill but rather that a death occurred as a person was committing another felony, in this case aggravated assault or violation of his oath.
…One of the jurors, who asked that his name not be used because he didn’t want to be linked to the high-profile case, said the fact that Olsen was a police officer made the deliberations difficult.
…By the time they reached a verdict, jurors were pretty evenly split — largely along racial lines — between those who wanted to convict Olsen of murder and those who didn’t, with most white jurors wanting to acquit, he said.
Ultimately, the juror said, he was afraid they wouldn’t be able to reach a unanimous verdict, the case would end up in a mistrial and a subsequent jury wouldn’t convict on any of the counts. So he and some of the others agreed to acquit on the murder charges as long as they reached a guilty verdict on the aggravated assault charge.
Officer who shot naked man found not guilty of murder – ABC News
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Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s private meetings with conservative pundits
The conversations center around “free expression, unfair treatment of conservatives, the appeals process for real or perceived unfair treatment, fact checking, partnerships, and privacy,” the source familiar with the meetings said.
…Allegations that Facebook censors conservatives, however, have gone largely unsubstantiated—conservative publications including Fox, Breitbart, and Shapiro’s Daily Wire were among the top publishers on Facebook as of this past May, according to data from the social media tracking firm Newswhip.
…News of the outreach is likely to further fuel suspicions on the left that Zuckerberg is trying to appease the White House and stay out of Trump’s crosshairs. The president threatened to sue Facebook and Google in June and has in the past pressured the Justice Department to take action against his perceived foes.
…The ongoing talks between Zuckerberg and prominent conservatives have attracted the attention of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which conducts oversight on issues related to telecommunications and consumer protection and is “aware” of allegations that conservatives “are trying to work the refs” ahead of 2020, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
…Facebook has been criticized in recent days, including by Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, for its ad policy, which exempts politicians from third-party fact-checking and arguably facilitates the spread of disinformation.
Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s private meetings with conservative pundits – POLITICO
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‘She’s awesome’: Female football kicker surprises teams, helps her own succeed
“My kicker kicks like a girl,” her coach, Robert Mahoney, tweeted after the victory. “And I can’t be more proud of it.”
‘She’s awesome’: Female football kicker surprises teams, helps her own succeed
Fort Worth, TX police release body cam video of fatal shooting
Fort Worth, TX police release body cam video of fatal shooting | Fort Worth Star-Telegram
People…. There is no such thing as a wellness check. If you are concerned about someone, DO NOT, we repeat DO NOT call the police. Unless you want that person arrested or killed, DO NOT ask the police to check on someone. Ever, ever, ever!
They are not trained to do anything except perceive threat and eliminate them. They are not social workers. They are no parenting helpers. They are not school teachers. They are not EMTs. They are armed and dangerous and they shoot to kill with impunity. Do not call the police unless you want someone dead.
Mississippi Is About To Have An Election Under Jim Crow
The state’s 1890 Constitution …requires candidates for statewide office to win not just a majority of the vote but also a majority of the 122 districts in the state House. If a candidate wins a majority of the statewide vote but not a majority of the districts, the members of the Republican-controlled state House choose who wins the election. If no candidate receives a majority of the vote, the Mississippi House of Representatives picks a winner from the two candidates who received the most votes.
…That’s unless a federal judge strikes down the constitutional provision. A federal judge in Jackson is set to hear oral arguments in McLemore v. Hosemann on Friday.
Mississippi Is About To Have An Election Under Jim Crow | HuffPost
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NYPD officer menaced Queens karaoke waitress with gun, threatened to shoot her if she didn’t hang out with him
Two of the bar’s waitresses went to the 109th Precinct stationhouse to report what happened, thinking the officer was impersonating a cop; an investigation revealed he was an NYPD officer.
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Beto O’Rourke on tax exemptions for religious groups and guns: Not helpful.
He is increasingly playing a very specific role: the human straw man, the embodiment of every seemingly irrational conservative fear about what the left ‘really’ wants.
…After adopting gun control as a marquee issue following the mass shooting in El Paso earlier this year, O’Rourke promised a mandatory gun buyback program for assault weapons, memorably telling a moderator, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”
…[Beto’s] comments about churches and guns are especially remarkable, in that he’s essentially adopting unpopular stances that Democratic politicians have spent years claiming are unfair caricatures of their actual beliefs. He is turning himself into a walking straw man, the non-fringe guy Republicans can reliably point to when they want to say: “See, the libs really do want to take your guns and shut down your churches.”
…If O’Rourke really was only talking about specific instances of employment discrimination, perhaps it would have been smart to say so on stage.
…As for guns: It barely needs mentioning that the National Rifle Association’s entire fundraising and political strategy at this point consists of trying to convince its members that Democrats are coming to steal and melt down their rifles. The typical response from Democrats has been to say that, no, they just want some sensible regulations that will prevent needless deaths. As Hillary Clinton put it at the party’s national convention: “I’m not here to repeal the Second Amendment. I’m not here to take away your guns.”
Beto O’Rourke on tax exemptions for religious groups and guns: Not helpful.
Yup, dude’s off the rails, not thinking things through, throwing thousands if not millions of other people under the bus and basically just needs to sit down and STFU.
Why You Never See Your Friends Anymore: Our unpredictable and overburdened schedules are taking a dire toll on American society
When so many people have long or unreliable work hours, or worse, long and unreliable work hours, the effects ripple far and wide. Families pay the steepest price. Erratic hours can push parents—usually mothers—out of the labor force. A body of research suggests that children whose parents work odd or long hours are more likely to evince behavioral or cognitive problems, or be obese. Even parents who can afford nannies or extended day care are hard-pressed to provide thoughtful attention to their kids when work keeps them at their desks well past the dinner hour.
…Even if you aren’t asked to pull a weekend shift, work intrudes upon those once-sacred hours. The previous week’s unfinished business beckons when you open your laptop; urgent emails from a colleague await you in your inbox. A low-level sense of guilt attaches to those stretches of time not spent working.
…A presidential-campaign field organizer in a caucus state told me she can’t get low-income workers to commit to coming to meetings or rallies, let alone a time-consuming caucus, because they don’t know their schedules in advance.
…It’s a cliché among political philosophers that if you want to create the conditions for tyranny, you sever the bonds of intimate relationships and local community. “Totalitarian movements are mass organizations of atomized, isolated individuals,” Hannah Arendt famously wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism. She focused on the role of terror in breaking down social and family ties in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin. But we don’t need a secret police to turn us into atomized, isolated souls. All it takes is for us to stand by while unbridled capitalism rips apart the temporal preserves that used to let us cultivate the seeds of civil society and nurture the sadly fragile shoots of affection, affinity, and solidarity.
Being Busy Is Eliminating the Joys of Shared Free Time – The Atlantic
sigh….
Fructose worsens the effect of high fat diets
“Fructose makes the liver accumulate fat,” says senior study author C. Ronald Kahn, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA. “It acts almost like adding more fat to the diet,” he continues.
“This contrasts the effect of adding more glucose to the diet, which promotes the liver’s ability to burn fat, and, therefore, actually makes for a healthier metabolism,” he adds.
Is this how fructose worsens the effect of high fat diets?
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Search for mass graves begins in Tulsa
The city of Tulsa begins its search for mass graves from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Monday.
Search for mass graves begins in Tulsa
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Ex-Kentucky officer gets 5 years for forcing sex on non-consensual partners
Ex-Kentucky officer gets 5 years for sexual misconduct with 5 women | WOWK 13 News
The wording of his plea is beside the point.
Although the sentence is a slap on the wrist, the conviction of an officer for their crimes is always welcome in a lawful and just society.
Newsom signs California housing laws on granny flats, zoning
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed several laws Wednesday aimed at increasing housing density by limiting cities’ ability to block new construction and making it easier to build so-called granny flats, part of a larger push to boost supply as California grapples with a severe housing shortage.
The farthest reaching new law will limit “downzoning,” or reducing the number of units that can be built in a particular space, such as only allowing a single-family home on a lot previously zoned for an apartment building.
…One new law will limit cities’ ability to prevent homeowners from building second and third units less than 16 feet tall provided there is enough space to build them at least 4 feet from property lines. Another will limit fees cities and counties charge people who want to build additional units.
Newsom signs California housing laws on granny flats, zoning | The Sacramento Bee
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