| Trump's 'Civil War' threat is 'beyond repugnant,' says GOP Rep. Kinzinger Posted: 30 Sep 2019 06:57 AM PDT  Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., an Air Force veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, criticized the president for quoting an evangelical pastor who warned that a "Civil War like fracture" would occur if Trump is removed from office.
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| '2020 Vision' Monday: Kate McKinnon is running again on 'SNL' — this time as Elizabeth Warren. How the new season's cast could shape the primary Posted: 30 Sep 2019 12:26 PM PDT  "Saturday Night Live" returned this weekend for its 45th season, renewing a tradition of lampooning presidents (and would-be presidents) that stretches back to the show's earliest days.
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| This brewery in Maine gifts its employees with a free trip to Belgium on their 5 year work anniversary Posted: 01 Oct 2019 12:37 PM PDT  Allagash Brewing Company was voted Best Place to Work in Maine for 7 years running according to Outside Magazine — and has the best work perks.
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| Lebanese prime minister paid $16 million to South African bikini model over Seychelles 'affair' Posted: 01 Oct 2019 10:39 AM PDT  Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri gave a South African bikini model nearly $16 million US dollars after meeting her on holiday, it emerged on Monday, as Lebanon faces violent protests over a burgeoning economic crisis. Candice van der Merwe met Mr Hariri at a private resort in the Seychelles in 2013 when she was 20. The married father-of-three, who is Lebanon's most powerful Sunni politician, was 43. When asked why Mr Hariri gave her the money, she responded that they had begun a romantic relationship. "I have also been told I have a very engaging personality," she said, in court documents obtained by The New York Times. The gift would have remained secret were it not for South African tax authorities, who froze Ms van der Merwe's assets, asking her to explain the change in her fortunes. She filed suit against them for $65 million in damages, alleging that the hold on her accounts forced her to sell the property she had bought with Mr Hariri's gift, while the related publicity severed her connection with the Prime Minister. Candice van der Merwe said she had an "engaging personality", according to court documents The court records filed as a result put the details into the public domain. As Mr Hariri gave Ms van der Merwe the money between his two terms as Prime Minister, while not in office, he does not appear to have broken any Lebanese or South African laws. There are no allegations that the money was linked to public funds, and Mr Hariri, whose personal wealth was estimated at $1.5bn US by Forbes magazine in 2018, is clearly wealthy enough to have sent the transactions from his private accounts. Staff at Hariri-owned English-language newspaper The Daily Star say they have not been paid their salaries in nearly four months. Several have left as a result, leaving the publication severely understaffed. The news of Mr Hariri's gift came as Moody's credit rating agency announced it has placed Lebanon's already low credit rating "under review for a downgrade." On Sunday protests against the failing economy and inadequate infrastructure turned violent in the capital Beirut, as protesters blocked roads and set fire to tires. Mr Hariri has not responded to the reports.
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| China’s new missiles could reach U.S. in 30 minutes Posted: 01 Oct 2019 04:12 AM PDT  Military planners in Washington and elsewhere will be taking note of new missile technology displayed by China, particularly a hypersonic ballistic nuclear missile believed capable of breaching all existing anti-missile shields deployed by the U.S. and its allies.
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| Arizona boy dead after man attempted exorcism to get 'demon' out of him, officials say Posted: 01 Oct 2019 01:00 PM PDT ![Arizona boy dead after man attempted exorcism to get 'demon' out of him, officials say]( "Arizona boy dead after man attempted exorcism to get 'demon' out of him, officials say") Pablo Martinez told police and the FBI that within the last week, he had noticed that "his son … had a demon inside of him."
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| A student at Karen Pence's school alleged students cut her dreadlocks. She just took it back. Posted: 30 Sep 2019 11:46 AM PDT ![A student at Karen Pence's school alleged students cut her dreadlocks. She just took it back.]( "A student at Karen Pence's school alleged students cut her dreadlocks. She just took it back.") The Virginia private school student who claimed three classmates pinned her down and forcibly cut off her dreadlocks has now retracted the story.Reports emerged last week about an allegation from 12-year-old Amari Allen, who is black, that three white sixth-grade boys pinned her down during recess at Immanuel Christian School and cut her dreadlocks while saying "my hair was nappy and I was ugly and I shouldn't have been born," as she told The Washington Post. The story quickly went viral online in part because second lady Karen Pence teaches art part time at the school.But the Post now reports Allen has told the school that this incident, which was being investigated by the Fairfax County Police Department, did not happen, with her family apologizing in a statement. "To the administrators and families of Immanuel Christian School, we are sorry for the damage this incident has done to trust within the school family and the undue scorn it has brought to the school," Allen's grandparents said in a statement. "To the broader community, who rallied in such passionate support for our daughter, we apologize for betraying your trust."The principal of the school, Stephen Danish, confirmed that Allen now says the allegations are false, saying, "We recognize that we now enter what will be a long season of healing."
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| Impeachment probe head Adam Schiff: soft-spoken bulldog Posted: 30 Sep 2019 06:25 PM PDT  Three decades ago, Adam Schiff -- the Democrat leading the impeachment investigation into President Donald Trump -- prosecuted the first FBI agent ever jailed for spying for Moscow. Now Schiff wants to know if Ukraine or others could have leverage over Trump, after he sought their help to damage 2020 political rival Joe Biden and then tried to hide the fact. The late-1980s case, one of the first in Schiff's early post Harvard Law School-career as a federal prosecutor, shaped his view of security threats that guides him today as head of the House Intelligence Committee.
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| Elizabeth Warren’s Native American Problem Isn’t Going Away Posted: 30 Sep 2019 02:52 PM PDT  'I have listened and I have learned," said Elizabeth Warren at a forum of Native American voters in Iowa last month. "Like anyone who's being honest with themselves, I know that I have made mistakes. I am sorry for the harm I have caused." Did any reporter ask her what harm, specifically, she'd caused, or what, specifically, she'd learned? Did any reporter ask her if her "mistakes" were ones anyone could have made, or ones she believed any of her peers, either at Harvard or in the Senate, had also made?No, they did not.I suppose people think that the controversy over Warren's past claims of Native American ancestry has been put to bed, with Warren rising in the polls because she has plans for everything, including for Native Americans. But in fact, the controversy has not been put to bed, and it shouldn't be. It points to Elizabeth Warren's ambitions and lack of integrity, and forces us to ponder whether the rules really apply to those who would make them.The media have certainly done their best to help Warren in putting the controversy to bed, though. The Boston Globe -- in a story that briefly acknowledged that Warren's "political enemies have long pushed a narrative that her unsubstantiated claims of Native American heritage turbocharged her legal career" -- gave ample space to her own much-more-charitable version of events. Her reporter-defenders have pointed out that until a certain time in her life, she declined to participate in affirmative-action programs, though even they have had to admit that the crucial leaps in her academic career — her landing a job at the University of Pennsylvania and then moving on to Harvard — occurred after she began listing herself as a racial minority. The year before Harvard Law School hired her — and trumpeted her as the first woman of color so hired — it had been subject to major, headline-grabbing protests for giving tenure to four white men.Of course, Warren could have been deluding herself as well. She claims that her belief in her Cherokee heritage came from longstanding family lore. But the fact that she participated in the now-cringe-inducing Pow Wow Chow cookbook and plagiarized her recipes from a French cookbook suggests a certain awareness that she was perpetrating a racial fraud. And then there is the fact that Cherokee Indian is not so much a "socially constructed" racial category as a specific, legally defined identity: You are a Cherokee when the Cherokee nation recognizes you as a member on its rolls. Surely someone who identified as a Native American academically and socially in the way Warren once claimed she did would have sought such official status. But she didn't.Warren has repeatedly claimed over the years that her parents' marriage was rejected by racist grandparents because of her mother's Cherokee ancestry. But Cherokee genealogist Twila Barnes has said there's simply no evidence of Cherokee genealogy in Warren's family. Warren's mother was not some racial outcast, but the popular daughter of a prominent local family. And there's no evidence of the romantic elopement, or racist animus on the part of her paternal grandfather, Grant Herring, who regularly played golf with Carnal Wheeling, a recognized Cherokee.The media haven't really known how to handle this story. Like a Geiger counter in a North Korean nuclear-weapons lab, the reaction of the "smart set" on Twitter was wildly disconcerting when Elizabeth Warren announced the results of her spectacularly ill-conceived DNA test earlier this year. At first, the trace amounts of Native American heritage were held up as proof against Donald Trump's attacks. Then, as geneticists and common sense intervened in the discussion, it became obvious that Warren's Native American roots were negligible.As the social-climbing Warren begins to gain over actual socialist Bernie Sanders, I expect the Sandernistas to unload on the contradictions between the upwardly mobile Left's hatred of cultural appropriation and the changing racial identity and falsified family history of its darling Warren. If she survives that and wins the nomination, she'll face a general election in which the same basic problem remains.I predict that should she make it that far, everyone will just try to change the subject.
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| San Francisco tour guide charged with carrying U.S. secrets to China Posted: 01 Oct 2019 05:49 AM PDT  Xuehua Peng, also known as Edward Peng, was arrested on Friday in the San Francisco suburb of Hayward, California, and was denied bail during an initial court appearance by a U.S. magistrate judge that same day, federal prosecutors said at a Monday morning news conference. "The conduct charged in this case alleges a combination of age-old spycraft and modern technology," U.S. Attorney David Anderson said.
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| Eurasian Showdown: Are China's or Russia's Infantry Fighting Vehicles Superior? Posted: 30 Sep 2019 12:00 PM PDT  We rank these bad boys.
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| UPS gets government approval to become a drone airline Posted: 01 Oct 2019 03:02 PM PDT  UPS has won government approval to operate a nationwide fleet of drones, which will let the company expand deliveries on hospital campuses and move it one step closer to making deliveries to consumers. Many regulatory obstacles remain, however, before UPS — or other operators who are testing drones — can fill the sky over cities and suburbs with drones carrying goods to people's doorsteps. United Parcel Service Inc. said Tuesday that its drone subsidiary was awarded an airline certificate last week by the Federal Aviation Administration, the first U.S. company to get such a broad approval.
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| 10 dead in 26 hours: Ohio coroner again raises alarm about drug overdose surge Posted: 30 Sep 2019 01:04 PM PDT ![10 dead in 26 hours: Ohio coroner again raises alarm about drug overdose surge]( "10 dead in 26 hours: Ohio coroner again raises alarm about drug overdose surge") An Ohio county coroner alerted residents that 10 people had died of drug overdoses in just 26 hours calling it "an unusual number" of deaths.
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| Late-day bombshells erupt as Trump impeachment inquiry gets underway Posted: 30 Sep 2019 02:45 PM PDT  Within the span of just over an hour, a slew of news dropped that could affect the chances President Trump will be impeached.
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| 10 Home Prep Tips Before Going on Vacation Posted: 01 Oct 2019 03:28 PM PDT |
| 'She completely objectified me': Husband of 2020 candidate Elizabeth Warren jokes about how his relationship with the senator began Posted: 30 Sep 2019 06:38 PM PDT  The 2020 candidate Elizabeth Warren and her husband participated in the couple's first joint interview since the beginning of her campaign.
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| Japan says Nigerian died of starvation after immigration hunger strike Posted: 01 Oct 2019 03:20 AM PDT  Japanese immigration authorities said Tuesday a Nigerian man who died in detention in June starved to death while on hunger strike, in the first officially acknowledged case of its kind. "An autopsy has found the man died of starvation," an official at the Immigration Services Agency told AFP. The man in his forties, whose name has been withheld, died on June 24 after falling unconscious at Omura Immigration Center and being taken to a hospital in southern Japan.
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| Ukrainian orphan accused of being an adult found with another family in Indiana Posted: 01 Oct 2019 07:56 AM PDT  Following the controversy and mixed accounts surrounding Natalia, a Ukrainian orphan at the center of an adoption scandal, she has reportedly been living with a family in the same state where she was left by a family who moved to Canada.
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| 'King of dad jokes': Colorado man goes viral after taking over his town's community center sign Posted: 01 Oct 2019 10:06 AM PDT  It takes confidence to call yourself "the king" of anything — but when it comes to dad jokes, Vince Rozmiarek makes a pretty strong case for himself.
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| Russians drinking less, living longer, WHO says Posted: 01 Oct 2019 02:27 AM PDT ![Russians drinking less, living longer, WHO says]( "Russians drinking less, living longer, WHO says") Russia remains a nation of heavy drinkers, but alcohol consumption has fallen 43 percent from 2003 to 2016, a key factor in the country's rapid rise in life expectancy, the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday. Russians consume the equivalent of 11-12 litres worth of pure ethanol a year, among the world's highest consumption levels, but the reduction since 2003 has substantially reduced mortality, the WHO said in a report.
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| Missouri executes killer despite concern about painful death Posted: 01 Oct 2019 06:16 PM PDT  A Missouri inmate was executed Tuesday for killing a man in 1996 in a string of violence that included several other crimes, despite concerns that the prisoner's rare medical condition would cause a gruesome lethal injection. Russell Bucklew was put to death at the state prison in Bonne Terre. It was Missouri's first execution since January 2017.
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| Rudy Giuliani hires Watergate prosecutor to represent him in impeachment inquiry Posted: 01 Oct 2019 01:20 PM PDT  Trump's personal lawyer has hired assistant Watergate prosecutor Jon Sale to represent him in in the congressional impeachment inquiry.
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| Mexico’s Government Should Sell Marijuana, Key Lawmaker Proposes Posted: 01 Oct 2019 01:20 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Mexico's government shouldn't only regulate pot, it should be the main bulk buyer and seller of the drug, lower house majority leader Mario Delgado proposed in a new bill.A public company named Cannsalud would be authorized exclusively to acquire cannabis from growers with permits and then sell the drug to franchises authorized to sell small amounts to the public, according to the bill."This way the cannabis market wouldn't be left to the autonomous regulation by individuals, but would involve the state as a permanent supervisor and controller of activity involving this substance within a legal framework that would guarantee benefits for all," the bill states.Delgado's ruling Morena party holds majorities in both house of congress, and his intention to push for state involvement in the marijuana trade is in line with President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's pledge to increase government presence in the private sector. Lopez Obrador has said regulation of some drugs like marijuana is possible under his administration, but it's unclear if he'd support a government company running the trade.Individuals would be able to grow as many as six plants for personal use without permits, but Cannsalud would be the exclusive seller of marijuana to the pharmaceutical industry, according to the bill.Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard has said Mexico should promote other story lines beyond television shows that portray it as overrun by narcos.To contact the reporter on this story: Nacha Cattan in Mexico City at ncattan@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Juan Pablo Spinetto at jspinetto@bloomberg.net, Robert JamesonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| North Korea Plans to Wage War from Secret Underground Air Bases Posted: 01 Oct 2019 12:00 PM PDT  How would they pull it off?
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| A 30-year-old man was gored by a bison at a Utah state park, then brought his 22-year-old date there and she was gored too Posted: 01 Oct 2019 03:17 PM PDT  Kyler Bourgeous says he probably won't return to the same park again, because he has "this weird feeling that the bison there really don't like me."
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| In Death Penalty Cases, Sotomayor Is Alone in 'Bearing Witness' Posted: 30 Sep 2019 12:50 PM PDT  WASHINGTON -- The terse Supreme Court rulings arrived in the evening, in time to allow an execution later that night. There were three rulings in the last month or so, at 5:52 p.m., at 7:01 p.m. and at 10:13 p.m. They were bland and formulaic, saying only that the court had denied an "application for stay of execution of sentence of death." The inmates who had filed the applications were put to death within hours. In all three cases, only one member of the court bothered to write an opinion, to give a hint about what was at stake. That was Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who maintains a sort of vigil in the capital cases other justices treat as routine. She described shortcomings in the trials the inmates had received and oddities in the laws the courts below had applied. "She's bearing witness," said Douglas A. Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University. On Wednesday, for instance, she wrote about the trial of Robert Sparks, in Texas in 2008. One of the bailiffs had worn a black tie embroidered with a white syringe, later admitting that he wanted to express his support for the death penalty. "That an officer of the court conducted himself in such a manner is deeply troubling," Sotomayor wrote. But, with seeming reluctance, she said the Supreme Court was right not to intervene in the case. A lower court considering a challenge to Sparks' death sentence, she wrote, "did not find sufficient evidence to conclude that the jury saw the tie." Still, Sotomayor said the trial judge should have done more. "Presiding judges aware of this kind of behavior would see fit to intervene in future cases by completely removing the offending item or court officer from the jury's presence," she wrote. "Only this will ensure the 'very dignity and decorum of judicial proceedings' they are entrusted to uphold," she wrote, quoting an earlier decision. "The stakes -- life in this case, liberty in many others -- are too high to allow anything less." There is a precedent for Sotomayor's attention to capital cases, said Jordan M. Steiker, a law professor at the University of Texas and an author, with Carol S. Steiker, of "Courting Death: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment." "Justice Sotomayor is carrying forward the tradition of Justices Brennan and Marshall," Steiker said, referring to Justices William J. Brennan Jr. and Thurgood Marshall, who came to adopt a practice of dissenting in every death penalty case. Earlier in September, Sotomayor indicated that the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, in New Orleans, had read a Supreme Court precedent too narrowly in rejecting the possibility that some challenges to death sentences could ever be reopened in light of changes in the law. But she said the appeals court's decision had not turned on that point and she did not dissent from the Supreme Court's decision not to intervene. Instead, she looked forward. "In an appropriate case," she wrote, "this issue could warrant the court's review." She made a similar point in August, criticizing a "Kafkaesque procedural rule" in Florida. The rule, she wrote, served to thwart a 2014 Supreme Court decision, Hall v. Florida, that struck down as too rigid the IQ score cutoff Florida used to decide which intellectually disabled individuals must be spared the death penalty. Sotomayor wrote that the state's highest court had performed a strange two-step in enforcing the Hall decision. "With one hand, the Florida Supreme Court recognized that such intellectually disabled prisoners sentenced before Hall have a right to challenge their executions," she wrote. "With the other hand, however, the Florida Supreme Court has turned away prisoners seeking to vindicate this retroactive constitutional rule for the first time, by requiring them to have brought their Hall claims in 2004 -- a full decade before Hall itself was decided." Here, too, though, she stopped short of dissenting. "In an appropriate case, however," she wrote, "I would be prepared to revisit a challenge to Florida's procedural rule." In other capital cases, Sotomayor dissented outright, again writing only for herself. In May, she said the court should have heard a case from Tennessee in which condemned prisoners sought to show that the chemicals the state aimed to use in their executions would cause excruciating pain. The inmates faced two hurdles, Sotomayor wrote. First, the Supreme Court had required them to propose a less painful alternative method of execution. This was, she wrote, "perverse." Second, she wrote, there was "the added perversity of the secrecy laws that Tennessee imposes on death-row prisoners," denying them access to information that could help them make their cases. "Because I continue to believe that the alternative method requirement is fundamentally wrong -- and particularly so when compounded by secrecy laws like Tennessee's -- I dissent," she wrote. Sotomayor's sustained attention to the capital justice system, Steiker said, was part of an effort to speak to many audiences. "She recognizes the institutional limits of the court in correcting every injustice or every misreading of federal law, yet she wants to communicate the wrongness of those injustices and misreadings despite the court's inability to intervene," Steiker said. "Justice Sotomayor is speaking to institutional actors -- judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers -- to make clear that the court, or least some portion of it, is keenly aware of problems that it is not presently able to correct."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| Egypt gets back looted gold coffin displayed in New York Posted: 01 Oct 2019 07:37 AM PDT  Egypt exhibited on Tuesday the golden coffin of an ancient Egyptian priest that was returned by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art following the discovery that it had been looted and illegally sold. The coffin had been buried in Egypt for 2,000 years before it was stolen from the country's Minya region in the aftermath of the 2011 uprising that toppled veteran leader Hosni Mubarak. Officials say it was smuggled through several countries by an international trafficking ring before being sold to an unwitting Metropolitan Museum two years ago for $4 million.
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| The Latest: San Francisco disputes NRA victory declaration Posted: 01 Oct 2019 04:02 PM PDT ![The Latest: San Francisco disputes NRA victory declaration]( "The Latest: San Francisco disputes NRA victory declaration") San Francisco Mayor London Breed told department heads in a Sept. 23 memo that the resolution does not direct the city to investigate ties between its contractors and the NRA. The NRA seized upon her memo Tuesday as evidence that the mayor is backing down and said the memo was a "clear concession" in response to its lawsuit over the resolution.
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| 'Get over it': Hillary Clinton says voters need to focus on getting Trump out of the White House, and not the allegations of Joe Biden's controversial interactions with women Posted: 30 Sep 2019 10:24 PM PDT  "We can pick apart anybody," Hillary Clinton said to PEOPLE magazine. "I mean, that's a great spectator sport."
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| What the Next Democratic President Has in Store for Us, with or without Congress Posted: 01 Oct 2019 08:14 AM PDT  The betting market PredictIt gives the Democrats about a 60 percent chance of capturing the presidency next year. Their odds of winning the Senate are only about one in three, however — meaning that in the event of a Trump loss, conservatives could feel the relief of sweet, sweet gridlock as Congress simply refuses to pass Medicare for All and zillion-dollar handouts to college grads.But there is good reason to temper your optimism about such a scenario: Congress has handed over to the executive branch a frighteningly broad ability to make laws by itself. The campaign has given us some previews of this — Kamala Harris wants to go after guns and Elizabeth Warren would target fracking, whether Congress likes it or not — though the candidates have mostly been focused on their biggest and most expensive pieces of proposed legislation.Last week, however, the liberal American Prospect rolled out a series of articles proposing a meaty "Day One Agenda" for the next Democrat in charge of the White House. This president could roll back Trump's deregulatory efforts, bring backed stalled Obama initiatives, and launch government giveaways and major assaults on business, all without the legislative branch's help. Read it and weep.Think it would take a vote in Congress to cancel "almost all" student debt? Think again, says Marcia Brown. Citing a forthcoming law-review article by Luke Herrine, Brown notes a provision of federal law giving the Department of Education the authority to "compromise, waive, or release" claims against student borrowers. While other actors in the executive branch (the attorney general and the Office of Management and Budget) might have to sign off, the department could in theory use this authority to simply stop collecting student debt.Think Trump got us out of Obama's Clean Power Plan for good? You shouldn't, Ben Adler says. The next president could take us back down that path. And since carbon emissions are far lower today than anyone expected — thanks to fracking and other technological improvements — the next president could "go further and increase the rule's ambition."Think the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is a done deal, so long as Democrats don't have enough votes in Congress to undermine it? Nope, writes Victor Fleischer. The IRS can't repeal the law, but it can aggressively reinterpret many of its provisions, not to mention provisions in the rest of our enormous tax code, in ways that affect the taxation of huge sums of money.There's lots more: A Democratic president could go after drug companies by threatening to let generics manufacturers make patented drugs, create "postal banking" by executive fiat, bring back aggressive antitrust enforcement against the biggest and most successful companies, and make pot "effectively legal."Okay, that last one I'm fine with. But how do we stop the rest?One way would have been for Republicans to rein in the executive branch in the two years they controlled Congress, albeit without a filibuster-proof margin in the Senate, but that didn't happen. Another would be to hold the White House, or at least luck into a moderate Democrat not eager to test the limits of executive power. Once a Democratic president actually starts trying this stuff, though, the issue will fall to the courts. (There's yet another article about that!)The easiest way to argue against an abuse of executive power is to say that the relevant statute passed by Congress doesn't actually authorize it. Though courts have typically given executive agencies broad deference when it comes to interpreting laws, many conservative judges have shown signs that they want to reverse this trend. Some of the actions outlined above do fall well within the discretion Congress has handed over to the executive branch, but the more aggressive ones go far beyond anything Congress anticipated when passing the laws in question.In some situations, such as when the president simply refuses to enforce a law, it can also be argued that the president is violating the Constitution's command that he "take care" to faithfully execute the laws. But there's very little precedent for such cases, and it can be difficult to find someone harmed by the action with standing to sue, or to distinguish a failure to "take care" from normal discretion regarding how laws are executed.Then there's the big kahuna: The "nondelegation doctrine," which holds that Congress can't delegate its constitutional lawmaking authority to the president, at least not when it comes to key policy decisions as opposed to filling in minor details. This doctrine has sat dormant for decades, but the Supreme Court's conservatives are interested in reviving it. The question is how far they would be willing to take it, and to what degree they would treat new expansions of executive power differently from old ones.In an opinion this year, liberal justice Elena Kagan remarked that if the conservatives on the Court were right and the delegation of power at issue in the case was unconstitutional, then "most of Government" would be unconstitutional. (The conservatives lost the case 5–3, but Brett Kavanaugh recused himself, and Samuel Alito voted with the liberals despite wanting to reconsider the nondelegation doctrine in a different case, presumably one where Kavanaugh could create a five-conservative majority.) Kagan's fears are music to my ears, but I bet at least one conservative justice flakes before they are anywhere close to realized, not least because the conservative dissent to the opinion in which she voiced them takes pains to specify that even under the nondelegation doctrine, Congress may, for example, "authorize executive-branch officials to fill in even a large number of details."Still, conservatives could find themselves relying on the judicial branch a whole lot in the years ahead. In the event that a liberal Democrat takes the White House and pushes executive power past the limit, we could be saying "but Gorsuch and Kavanaugh!" for far longer than anyone thought.
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| Khashoggi suspects made 'chilling' jokes before killing: reports Posted: 30 Sep 2019 05:04 PM PDT  Saudi operatives suspected of killing the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the country's Istanbul consulate were heard joking and talking about dismemberment before his arrival, according to secret tapes heard by UN investigators. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a self-styled moderniser, was feted by global leaders and business titans before the gruesome murder on October 2 last year. Kennedy said Turkish bugs in the Saudi consulate picked up a forensic pathologist suspected of cutting up Khashoggi's body as saying, "I often play music when I'm cutting cadavers.
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| China is growing fed up with British private schools 'creaming off' the best pupils, headteachers warned Posted: 01 Oct 2019 10:29 AM PDT  The Chinese government is growing fed up with British private schools "creaming off" the best pupils, a conference has been told. Institutions which have set up sister schools or franchises in China now face a "backlash" for party officials, according to Richard Gaskell, schools director at ISC Research which specialises in analysing data on international schools. There are now 47 campuses in China operated by British schools. The £41,580-a-year Wellington College runs schools in Tianjin, Shanghai and Hangzhou while the £44,346-a-year Dulwich College has two schools in Shanghai, one in in Beijing and Suzhou. Mr Gaskell said that British private schools in China have been "growing on steroids" in recent years but they are now facing a crackdown by the authorities. ISC Research conducted interviews with headteachers of 50 international schools in China, and found that they are now facing "extraordinary scrutiny" from officials. Mr Gaskell told delegates at the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC): "Private schools have been subjected to increased visits and scrutiny. There is a backlash against the rapid increase in private schools in China, particularly from the big public schools where it's conceived that they have been simply creaming the best kids for their schools." He explained that local education bureau officials have been visiting private schools in China to "gather intelligence on structure and systems". "The view of some of the heads we interviewed is that they want to replicate these models in their own Chinese schools," he said. Any new schools planning on opening up campuses in China should "be ready for the bureaucracy, legislation and the regulation", he warned, adding: "There is no light touch, it is now highly intrusive." Earlier this year, China announced that all schools would have to adopt a lottery system for places, raising concern among private schools that this will put an end to academic selection. It comes after an earlier ruling that private schools need to teach the Chinese national curriculum as well as whichever international qualifications they offer. Mr Gaskell also said that Beijing is "clearly worried" about the number of Chinese students who go overseas to be educated. Mainland China is the largest source of foreign-born pupils at British boarding schools, with numbers rising 10 per cent last year to just over 9,000. "The Chinese state is now looking at ways to curb number of Chinese families going abroad for education," he said. "They are keen to attract families, who have gone overseas for work and lifestyle opportunities, to come back to China. "There is a focus group investigating barriers to families returning from abroad, and one such barrier is deemed to be guaranteed access to high quality education."
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| View Photos of the 2020 BMW X5 M and X6 M Posted: 01 Oct 2019 03:01 PM PDT |
| Court: No statute of limitations in Dutch colonial crimes Posted: 01 Oct 2019 07:49 AM PDT  In a groundbreaking decision, an appeals court in the Netherlands ruled Tuesday that the statute of limitations does not apply to allegations of colonial era crimes committed by Dutch forces in what is now Indonesia. The Hague Court of Appeal issued rulings in two cases linked to torture and summary executions by Dutch forces during Indonesia's struggle for independence after World War II.
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| Zimbabwe Rejects U.S. Claim That Diamond Mine Uses Forced Labor Posted: 01 Oct 2019 11:07 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Zimbabwe accused the U.S. of ignorance after the U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced it's blocking rough diamond imports from the Marange fields because they were produced with forced labor. "It's unfortunate that the U.S. authorities have been misinformed or misled to believe that Zimbabwe is mining diamonds through forced labor," government spokesman Nick Mangwana said Tuesday by text message. "As a government we have a very strong revulsion towards any form of slavery or servitude. To even suggest that Zimbabwe has some form of corporate forced labor is either mischievous or simply ignorant."Imports from Zimbabwe are not the only ones targeted by the ban. The U.S. agency listed a range of products earlier Tuesday, from garments from China to gold from the Democratic Republic of Congo. To contact the reporter on this story: Ray Ndlovu in Johannesburg at rndlovu1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Karl Maier at kmaier2@bloomberg.net, Pauline Bax, Rene VollgraaffFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Harvard university wins race discrimination case Posted: 01 Oct 2019 05:16 PM PDT  A US judge on Tuesday ruled that Harvard is right to consider race when admitting students, rejecting claims that the prestigious university discriminates against Asian-American applicants. A lawsuit, backed by President Donald Trump's administration, had challenged Harvard's use of race in determining admissions, part of a decades-old push to boost minority enrolments at America's oldest university. Federal Judge Allison Dale Burroughs said in a long-awaited decision that while Harvard's admissions process is not perfect, it was right, for now, to factor in race to form a diverse student body.
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| UPDATE 1-Vatican police raid top offices in financial investigation Posted: 01 Oct 2019 01:13 PM PDT ![UPDATE 1-Vatican police raid top offices in financial investigation]( "UPDATE 1-Vatican police raid top offices in financial investigation") Vatican police raided the offices of the Holy See's Secretariat of State and its Financial Information Authority, or AIF, on Tuesday and took away documents and electronic devices as part of an investigation of suspected financial irregularities, a Vatican statement said. The Secretariat of State, the most powerful department in the Vatican, is the nerve centre of its bureaucracy and diplomacy and the administrative heart of the worldwide Catholic Church. The AIF, headed by Swiss lawyer Rene Bruelhart, is the financial controller, with authority over all Vatican departments.
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