Feed aggregator

As of three weeks ago, a majority of Americans, 51.1 percent, on average, opposed impeaching President Trump, with only 40 percent supporting it. But the results came before the Ukraine scandal snowballed. As of today, opposition to impeachment has plummeted 7 percentage points (to 44 percent) and support has climbed nearly 10 points (to 49.8 percent), according to FiveThirtyEight’s preliminary polling tracker.

More than a dozen police have been shot dead in an ambush in the western Mexican state of Michoacan, authorities said on Monday, in one of the bloodiest attacks on security forces since President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office in December. The ministry for public security said on Twitter it would use all means at its disposal to catch those responsible for the attack in the municipality of Aguililla in Michoacan, a state that has long been convulsed by turf wars between drug cartels. The federal public security ministry said 14 police were killed, though its state counterpart in Michoacan said 13 officers were confirmed dead, and three injured.

The Wisconsin girl whose parents were fatally shot before she was kidnapped and held captive for 88 days before escaping from her abductor said she's feeling stronger every day and is thankful for the kindness and concern expressed to her from people all over the country in the year after the crime. Jayme Closs issued a statement Monday, a day before the one-year anniversary of the fatal shootings and abduction at her home near Barron in northwest Wisconsin. Closs said she is getting back to the activities she enjoys and loves hanging out with her friends.

This week, the Washington Times published a story saying that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., had spent $80 on a haircut and $180 on color at a Washington, D.C., salon, a choice the newspaper presented as hypocritical, given she “regularly rails against the rich and complains about the cost of living inside the Beltway.”

Justice for Atatiana Jefferson can’t be about locking up guilty police officers. We need to be more ambitious than that‘Cop convictions are increasing, but cop killings roughly remain constant.’ Photograph: Smiley N Pool/APLast month, a judge sentenced former Dallas Police Officer Amber Guyger to 10 years in prison for entering the wrong apartment in her building and killing Botham Jean, her neighbor. Lee Merritt, the Jean family attorney, boasted: “This is a victory for black people in America. It is a signal that the tide is going to change here. Police officers are going to be held accountable for their actions, and we believe that will begin to change policing culture all over the world.”But it would not. Guyger’s conviction didn’t even change police culture near Dallas. Before the ink could dry on the sentencing papers, a Fort Worth police officer entered into Atatiana Jefferson’s home. He shot and killed her within seconds. She was playing video games with her nephew. A neighbor called a non-emergency number for a wellness check because Atatiana’s door was open late at night. In 2013, Fort Worth police also killed a man in his own garage during a wellness check. The officers were not prosecuted.Merritt and some activists have issued calls for “more justice.” I understand this impulse. After a police killing, prison is something, and that something can feel like justice when the other option seems like nothing. People understandably want police officers to be punished for killing black people. They also hope that prison will send a warning message to other officers that they cannot get away with murder. But that’s not how policing works. If we want black people, or anybody, to be safe from police violence, then we must first be clear about one thing: prison is not justice. It is punishment, and contrary to popular belief, sending more cops to prison may not make other black people safe.Cop convictions are increasing, but cop killings roughly remain constant. As I have written before, police have killed about 14,000 people in the last 13 years, but only about 20 officers have been convicted of murder or manslaughter charges- an all time high. On average, police officers kill about 20 black people each year in Texas, and over 200 every year nationwide. Prison time certainly punishes some police for past behavior, but the US supreme court grants police so much legal protection for violent behavior that most of the killings are legal, constitutional or unexamined.Safety for black people could be less about sending individual cops to prison, and more about creating the conditions where people do not rely on police to feel safe. I was 13 years old when I saw a police officer shoot somebody. He was arguing with a teenager at a recreation center over a sign-in sheet. The officer stormed down the side of the basketball court, pulled out his gun, and shot the boy in his arm. After the horrific scream, I grabbed my sister and hid in the locker room for hours. The officer was not arrested. I doubt he was prosecuted. But he left after a few days, soon replaced by another officer with another gun who argued with more black kids over sign-in sheets. As police officers are transferred or sent to prison, new ones replace them, but the job description does not change. Thus, organizing around a single cop’s conviction misses the point that policing is problematic, and one officer’s punishment is a job opening for a future officer to inflict more harm and violence on communities of color.So what can happen instead of calling the police? Atatiana’s death is tragic because her neighbor called a non-emergency number for help. He sought an alternative, but the police came anyway, guns blazing. One immediate lesson here is to not send police officers for non-emergency calls. There are ways that people practice safety intervention everyday. Scholar and prison abolition organizer Rachel Herzing instructs us to “prepare for emergencies when not in crisis.” This means memorizing numbers of neighbors close by, securing someplace to go if home is not an option, encouraging people to build small teams to share resources and protection with each other, and ultimately organizing to reduce the size and scope of police.As for what should happen to police officers after they kill someone right now, I deeply sympathize with fence sitters who believe in prison abolition, but feel wrong about including cops in that vision. What pushes me to the abolition side is knowing that whatever punishment we demand for police is going to come back tenfold on black people. If a black man mistakenly kills a white woman police officer in Texas, her brother is not going to forgive him. A judge will certainly not warmly embrace him with a hug. He will not get sentenced to ten years. He will slowly die in a cage or quickly by execution on a cold table.Justice for Atatiana Jefferson must include reducing the size and scope of police, while building a world where our neighbors could knock on our doors, shout into the dark and ask if we are safe. * Derecka Purnell is a social movement lawyer and writer based in Washington, DC

Suspected cartel hitmen shot dead more than a dozen police in an ambush in the western Mexican state of Michoacan, authorities said on Monday, in one of the bloodiest attacks on security forces since President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office. The ministry for public security said the attack was carried out in the municipality of Aguililla in Michoacan, a state that has long been convulsed by turf wars between drug gangs, notably the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and its enemies. The federal public security ministry said 14 police were killed, though its Michoacan state counterpart reported that 13 officers were confirmed dead and three injured.

University campuses have abandoned their central mission in their pursuit of utopia. The American public has had enough.

The Kurds bore the brunt of the US-led campaign against ISIS, and Trump is now suggesting without evidence that they released ISIS prisoners.

After years of working towards autonomy, Syria's Kurds have been dropped by their US ally and forced to call in the Damascus regime to stem a six-day Turkish offensive. Syria's Kurds have largely stayed out of the country's eight-year civil war, instead building their own institutions in regions they control in northern and northeastern Syria. After decades of marginalisation, they have their own authorities, security forces and even schools in areas along the country's northern border.

Long-shot presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard (D., Hawaii), confirmed her participation in Tuesday’s Democratic debate on Twitter Monday, after threatening last week to boycott the event entirely over concern that “the DNC and corporate media are rigging the election again.”Gabbard, who is currently polling at 0.7 percent nationally, addressed supporters Thursday and accused the Democratic National Committee and corporate media partners of attempting “to usurp your role as voters in choosing who our Democratic nominee will be.”Gabbard also clashed with the DNC in the buildup to September’s debate, after falling two polls short of the pre-approved public support threshold. Gabbard and her campaign argued that the standards were arbitrary, and suggested the “lack of transparency” pointed to an overarching problem of prioritizing the preferences of political elites over those of ordinary voters.Gabbard managed to hit both the donor and poll criteria for Tuesday’s debate, making her the 12th Democratic candidate to qualify.While a majority of the candidates have participated in the recent town halls on gun violence and LGBT issues in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, respectively, Gabbard has remained on the campaign trail in Iowa and New Hampshire. During an interview with Hill.TV on Friday, she said her decision was being made “very carefully,”“I’m listening to a lot of the feedback that we’re getting from supporters and just thinking through all of the ramifications of this decision,” Gabbard said. “What it really comes down to is how best to make an impact to bring about this change.”After a New York Times weekend profile highlighted alleged links between Gabbard and the alt-right, the Hawaii congresswoman took to Twitter to illustrate her critique of the system.> As if to prove my point, NYT just published a “greatest hits” smear piece. All your favorite hits in one article! These are the folks who will be acting as the “neutral” questioners/moderators of Tuesday’s debate lol> > -- Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) October 12, 2019

Iran said Monday a foreign government was behind what it alleges was a "treacherous" attack on a tanker off Saudi Arabia last week, as it released pictures of its damaged hull. Tehran says the Iranian-flagged Sabiti oil tanker was hit by two separate explosions off the Red Sea port of Jeddah on Friday. It is the first Iranian ship to have been targeted since a spate of attacks on vessels in the Gulf that Washington blamed on Tehran.

In the end, the Sabre vs. MiG duel made for great newsprint. But much like the Korean War, it ultimately counted for little.

A rapid 17-point shift means a majority of Americans may soon support impeachment, or, taking margin of error into account, might already. And that’s terrible news for Trump.

LGBT activists gathered last week for CNN’s “Equality” town hall with the Democratic presidential candidates. The advocates present were, in the words of Human Rights Campaign President Alphonso David, the “tip of the spear in our fight for full equality.”The “spear” metaphor grew more apt as the night went on.Religious freedom was the second-most-popular whipping post. The candidates talked about the concept with palpable derision, as if religion — save Islam, which they predictably if incoherently exempted — were a ruse used to cement old prejudices. No one actually believes those folksy things about God, heaven, and hell, right? Never considered was the notion that people hold earnest religious beliefs that in turn inform their views on sexual morality.The town hall was also evidence that the LGBTQ movement has grown more jaded and contemptuous, even as it has achieved more and more of its ostensible aims. If conciliation was ever the preferred tone, it is no longer. Instead, it is now increasingly unashamed and vituperative scorn.How would Elizabeth Warren, for instance, respond to someone on the campaign trail who said that they believed in the traditional definition of marriage? “Well, I’m gonna assume it’s a guy who said that,” she said. That elicited a laugh from the audience, men being the only acceptable punchline to the humorless scolds in the crowd. She continued, “I’m gonna say then just marry one woman. I’m cool with that." Then, after a pause: "If you can find one.”(Social science notwithstanding on that last jab.)Beto O’Rourke piled on further, affirming his belief that “freedom of religion is a fundamental right, but it should not be used to discriminate.”You are, in other words, “free” to practice your religion, so long as you practice it in a manner that Beto O’Rourke — the skateboard-wielding ex-congressman who posts videos of his dental visits on social media — sees fit. Some animals are more equal than others: O’Rourke will be happy to “discriminate” against your church if it happens to hold an unpopular position on sexual ethics. He literally said so seconds later, when asked by Don Lemon if religious institutions should “lose their tax-exempt status if they oppose same sex marriage.” O’Rourke’s response:> There can be no reward, no benefit, no tax break for anyone, any institution, any organization in America that denies the full human rights and the full civil rights of every single one of us. And so as president, we are going to make that a priority and we are going to stop those who are infringing upon the human rights of our fellow Americans.What “human right” are religious organizations “infringing upon” when they “oppose” same-sex marriage? Do people have a “civil right” to have their sexual preferences validated by private religious organizations? Is there a “human right” to have your particular sexual union baptized by religious traditions with centuries of contravening theological directives?Pete Buttigieg took this same tack, insisting that “the right to religious freedom ends where religion is being used as an excuse to harm other people.” Which of course depends entirely on what Buttigieg means by “harm.” There is certainly “harm,” for instance, in mutilating the genitals of a young girl — a more ecumenical venture than progressives care to admit — but does a baker’s refusal to bake a cake that violates his religious convictions “harm other people”? What if a church refuses to host a ceremony that offends its moral precepts? Does “religious freedom end” when someone refuses to grant moral approbation to someone else’s choices and behavior?Indeed, that was the Freudian subtext of the entire town hall. “Equality?” That has, even on activists’ own terms, been long achieved. Notice, Alphonso David didn’t simply want “equality” — whatever that means — but “full equality”: your approval. Not simply your toleration, but your moral assent and your unhesitating affirmation. It’s not enough to live and let live. You will, in Erick Erickson’s words, “be made to care.”First, we were told that good sense held that we ought to allow two consenting adults to do as they wished in the privacy of their own bedroom. Fair enough — what business is it of ours? Next came civil unions. Fine. Then, marriage was redefined at a federal level on the basis of specious legal reasoning. Next, religious florists, bakers, and caterers were asked to violate their consciences and dragged before the courts if they declined. And now, at long last, the public exercise of religious faith, and the very belief itself, the very notion that one has rights to “oppose” practices that violate their private conscience, are under siege.All of which, we were told, would “never happen.” As the town hall put on display, it’s not for want of trying.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) is running for president again -- at least in Anthony Scaramucci's dreams.The famously short-lived White House communications director has since turned on the president who appointed him, and has publicly said he's trying to knock President Trump off the 2020 ticket. Now, it seems Scaramucci has decided on his dream candidate, and has launched a website and line of T-shirts to persuade him to run.Scaramucci started making his support for Romney known earlier this month, tweeting a poll that showed the 2012 GOP nominee beating the presumptive 2020 nominee in a hypothetical primary. He then revealed last week he'd launched Mitt2020.org, and on Sunday night, showed off that the site was offering "commit to Mitt" campaign T-shirts. They are being sold at $20.20 each to "test demand," and so far Scaramucci has seen an "overwhelming" response, he told ABC News.> You may be proud of your "Where's Hunter?" T-shirt...but we're really proud of ours...You see, we know where Mitt is...he's listening, he's hearing, he's seeing, he's reading and he's coming.... https://t.co/sCUTWW6IHA committomitt mitt2020 @MittRomney MittRomney pic.twitter.com/gpgTdL33UY> > -- Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) October 12, 2019While Romney hasn't even hinted at granting Scaramucci's wishes, the "Mitt Happens" shirt is sure to be a collector's item in a few years.

A car crash in Pearl River, New York, sent a vehicle over an overpass onto train tracks, where it burst into flames.

After decades of decline, rates of certain STDs have spiked to record levels, according to the CDC. What's causing the increase?

The couple got out of the plane to make sure it's wheels were clear before taxiing to the runway, when her arm came into contact with the propeller.

Toby Melville/ReutersThe little ribbons on the lapels of Harry Dunn’s parents as they spoke to reporters in New York City Monday morning were Kawasaki green because that’s the color of the motorbike their 19-year-old son was driving when he was killed. Dunn died on Aug. 27 when Anne Sacoolas, a 42-year-old American living at the Royal Air Force spy base in Croughton, England, hit him with her Volvo SUV while she was driving on the wrong side of the road. After Killing Teen in U.K., Runaway Wife of U.S. ‘Spy’ Provokes Diplomatic CrisisSacoolas, whose husband is an intelligence officer stationed at the important listening base, invoked diplomatic immunity in the days after the accident. She was flown to the United States by private jet under apparent guidance by the U.S. Embassy in London. Now, the Dunn family are in New York to try to put pressure on the American government and hopefully even speak to President Donald Trump to urge him to send Sacoolas back to the U.K. to face justice. “I just want to talk to him man to man, father to father,” Tim Dunn told reporters Monday morning. “As a man, as a father... how could he let this happen?” Dunn was able to see his son in the moments after the crash. The 19-year-old’s motorcycle had burst into flames on impact with Sacoolas’ Volvo SUV, and a friend who worked at the fire department called and told him his son might have been involved in the accident. Dunn told CBS News Monday morning what it was like, and how he could see the broken bones protruding from his son’s arms. Dunn says his son kept telling him it was harder and harder to breathe as they put him into the ambulance. That was the last time he saw his son alive. Amy Jeffress, the Washington, D.C.-based lawyer representing Sacoolas, issued a statement over the weekend, but she has not yet met with anyone from the Dunn family in person. “Anne is devastated by this tragic accident,” the statement says. “No loss compares to the death of a child and Anne extends her deepest sympathy to Harry Dunn’s family.”The statement goes on to say that the media reporting of the events have been “inaccurate in many respects.” Jeffress says her client “fully cooperated with the police and the investigation” and that she spoke with authorities at the scene of the accident and met with police at her home the following day. “Anne would like to meet with Mr. Dunn’s parents so that she can express her deepest sympathies and apologies for this tragic accident,” the statement says. “We have been in contact with the family’s attorneys and look forward to hearing from them.”At the Monday press conference, the Dunns said they would like to meet with Sacoolas, too, but only under the condition that she return to the U.K. “We’re not inhumane,” Dunn’s mother, Charlotte Charles, said. “We still don’t wish her any ill harm, but we need to hear it from her, in her own words, on our terms, in the U.K.”Dunn’s father would also like to know if Sacoolas tried to comfort his son after the crash. “I’ve always wanted to ask if she could explain the moment of the crash, and find out if she comforted Harry, if she spoke to Harry,” he said. “I just can’t imagine my lad being in the ditch and not having anyone comfort him.”Shortly after the accident, the Dunns said they told police they wanted to reduce any sentence Sacoolas might be handed for the death of their son. “We had wanted to reduce her sentence knowing that she had children,” Dunn’s mother told reporters through tears. “We had asked for it to be suspended so we wouldn’t take her away from her children.”But because Sacoolas fled, she may indeed face prison time if she goes back to the U.K. The British Foreign Office suggested over the weekend that Sacoolas never had diplomatic immunity in the first place and, even if she did, it would be waived now that she is no longer living outside of the U.S. The Dunns have hired a team of lawyers on both sides of the Atlantic who specialize in international law and immunity and the investigation is still underway in Croughton. “It’s simple enough,” Dunn’s father said. “On that night, a lady made a mistake. She killed our son. She didn't mean to cause the accident. But then they made a mistake. The people on the other side of this dispute need to understand one thing: We will get justice for Harry.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said on Monday that Turkey's military incursion into northern Syria was "not exactly" compatible with Syria's territorial integrity. Ushakov, speaking in Riyadh during an official visit to Saudi Arabia by President Vladimir Putin, was commenting on Turkey's military operation which it launched last week.