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herding cats's JournalConflict Over Trump Forces Out an Opinion Editor at The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial features editor has left the paper following tensions over the section drifting in a pro-Donald Trump direction.
News of the departure of Mark Lasswell, who edited op-eds for the Journal, comes as the paper’s internal tensions over Trump have begun to spill into public view. The reliably hawkish, pro-trade, small government conservative Journal op-ed page has been challenged by the rise of the populist, nationalist Trump movement. The Journal’s opinion pages have been a showcase for the intra-right divide over Trump, featuring Trump-sympathetic writers like Bill McGurn alongside anti-Trump columnists such as Bret Stephens. Lasswell appears to be a casualty of that divide, and his dismissal a victory for the pro-Trump faction on the editorial staff.
According to two sources with direct knowledge of the situation, Lasswell was in effect phased out over a period of months from the paper. He took a book leave during the election following conflict with his boss Paul Gigot, the editorial page director, about the extent to which the page should run material sympathetic to Trump.
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According to a source close to Lasswell, the relationship between Lasswell and Gigot broke down in June when Gigot blocked Lasswell from publishing op-eds critical of Trump’s business practices and which raised questions about his alleged ties to Mafia figures. Lasswell asked Gigot for a book leave for the remainder of the election. Gigot, who had been critical of Trump, took a “sudden turn” on the candidate, the source said. In a note to staff on July 5, Gigot announced Lasswell’s leave. The note reads in part:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/conflict-over-trump-forces-out-an-opinion-editor-at-the-wall-street-journal/516318/
Senior law enforcement officials urge Trump to scrap 'ineffective' crime plan
Source: The Guardian
Dozens of senior law enforcement officials have urged Donald Trump to abandon his draconian crackdown on crime and to instead revive efforts to reform the criminal justice system.
In a report co-written by David Brown, the former Dallas police chief widely praised for his response to the killing of five officers last year, the officials said Trump should rethink his blunt law-and-order plans.
“Decades of experience have convinced us of a sobering reality: today’s crime policies, which too often rely only on jail and prison, are simply ineffective in preserving public safety,” they said.
The report was published on Friday by Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration, a coalition of more than 200 current and former senior police officers and prosecutors.
They criticized an executive order on crime fighting signed by Trump on Thursday, saying that the president had encouraged police officers to focus on general lawbreaking rather than to target violent crime.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/10/trump-crime-law-enforcement-criticism
GEORGIA: Congressional GOP Aides Driven From Room With SHAME! Chants By Trump Protesters
The protests that have rocked Republican town hall meetings across the nation have arrived in Georgia. Dozens of protesters packed a meeting on Friday in Greensboro hosted by aides to U.S. Sens. David Perdue and Johnny Isakson and Rep. Jody Hice. The trio of Republicans, though, was not there.
The meeting – which a Hice spokesman characterized as a routine “constituent service day” featuring private sessions with local residents – is one of the first Republican congressional events in Georgia since Donald Trump’s inauguration. About a half-dozen congressional aides briefly addressed the crowd, telling them the event was not a town hall and they would take no questions from the floor. They left after crowd members chanted “shame, shame, shame.”
Many in the crowd of hundreds drove in from metro Atlanta or Athens, a where a protest group organized a carpool convoy to the event. About half of the group applauded when asked if they lived in Hice’s northeast Georgia district, a deeply-conservative district which includes much of the Democratic bastion of Athens. The lawmakers’ aides said the event was never meant to be a traditional town hall meeting.
http://www.joemygod.com/2017/02/10/georgia-congressional-gop-aides-driven-room-shame-chants-trump-protesters-video/
Video at link!
Taboo Italian Thinker Is Enigma to Many, but Not to Bannon
But for all the examination of those remarks, a passing reference by Mr. Bannon to an esoteric Italian philosopher has gone little noticed, except perhaps by scholars and followers of the deeply taboo, Nazi-affiliated thinker, Julius Evola.
“The fact that Bannon even knows Evola is significant,” said Mark Sedgwick, a leading scholar of Traditionalists at Aarhus University in Denmark.
Evola, who died in 1974, wrote on everything from Eastern religions to the metaphysics of sex to alchemy. But he is best known as a leading proponent of Traditionalism, a worldview popular in far-right and alternative religious circles that believes progress and equality are poisonous illusions.
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Mr. Spencer said “it means a tremendous amount” that Mr. Bannon was aware of Evola and other Traditionalist thinkers.
“Even if he hasn’t fully imbibed them and been changed by them, he is at least open to them,” he said. “He at least recognizes that they are there. That is a stark difference to the American conservative movement that either was ignorant of them or attempted to suppress them.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/world/europe/bannon-vatican-julius-evola-fascism.html?smid=tw-nytimesworld&smtyp=cur
Top commander: Russia 'legitimizing' Taliban to undermine US, NATO
Source: The Hill
Russia is trying to legitimize the Taliban in order to undermine the United States and NATO, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan said Thursday.
“The Russian involvement this year has become more difficult,” Gen. John Nicholson told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “First, they have begun to publicly legitimize the Taliban. This narrative that they promote is that the Taliban are fighting Islamic State and the Afghan government is not fighting Islamic State and that therefore there could be spillover of this group into the region. This is a false narrative.”
“I believe its intent is to undermine the United States and NATO,” he later added.
Nicholson was testifying about the current situation in Afghanistan, which he called a stalemate that he needs a few thousand more troops to break.
Among the challenges in the country are the actions of external actors such as Pakistan, Iran and Russia, Nicholson said.
He said Russia's meddling in Afghanistan started in 2016 and continues to increase.
Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/defense/318741-top-commander-russia-legitimizing-taliban-to-undermine-us-nato
Trump contradicts Gorsuch spokesman, accuses Blumenthal of misrepresenting comments
Source: The Hill
President Trump on Thursday contradicted a spokesman for his Supreme Court nominee in a tweet blasting Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who told reporters that Judge Neil Gorsuch called Trump's tweets attacking federal judges "demoralizing."
"Sen.Richard Blumenthal, who never fought in Vietnam when he said for years he had (major lie),now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?" the president tweeted Thursday morning.
Blumenthal said Wednesday that Gorsuch called Trump's tweets attacking federal judges "disheartening" and "demoralizing."
In a later statement, Blumenthal urged Gorsuch to make his concerns public.
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A spokesman for Gorsuch later confirmed to CNN that the judge used the terms "disheartening" and "demoralizing" to describe Trump's tweets during his meeting with the Blumenthal.
Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/318646-trump-blumenthal-misrepresents-what-gorsuch-told-him
Dem to unveil bill requiring a White House psychiatrist for Trump. (Not the Onion)
“I’m looking at it from the perspective of, if there are questions about the mental health of the president of the United States, what may be the best way to get the president treatment?” Lieu told the Huffington Post.
“We’re now in the 21st century. Mental health is just as important as physical health,” he added.
The Democratic lawmaker reportedly plans to introduce the bill as early as next week.
Lieu has previously raised concerns with President Trump's mental health, suggesting that the commander in chief could use a mental health evaluation.
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/318554-lawmaker-to-propose-a-bill-requiring-a-white-house-psychiatrist
Clinton tweets in defense of Warren: 'Nevertheless, she persisted. So must we all.'
Hillary Clinton took to Twitter to weigh after Senate Republicans blocked Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) from speaking on the Senate floor.
Clinton's tweet quoted a line from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that has been widely shared since he led Republicans in a party line vote to block a Tuesday night speech from Warren on the floor.
"She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted,'" Clinton quoted McConnell in her tweet. "So must we all."
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/318518-clinton-tweets-in-defense-of-warren-nevertheless-she-persisted
AP FACT CHECK: Trump says terrorism acts ignored. Evidence?
As for Trump's claim about Europe, it's probably true that you haven't heard of every attack on the continent that can be tied to terrorism. Scores if not hundreds happen every year. Many don't rise to the level of an international audience because they cause no casualties, or little or no property damage, or are carried out by unknown assailants for unclear reasons.
One exhaustive list is the Global Terrorism Database , maintained by the University of Maryland. It lists 321 episodes of suspected or known terrorism in Western Europe alone in 2015. Many are anti-Muslim attacks against mosques, not the brand of terrorism Trump has expressed concern about. Many are attacks undertaken for right-wing or left-wing causes that have nothing to do with Islamic extremism or xenophobic attacks on mosques.
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The devastating attacks by Islamic extremists that year are also on the list, among them the murderous assault on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, and the even bloodier attack at Paris' Bataclan concert hall, the worst in a series of killings in one day. Those attacks and other deadly ones in Europe received saturation coverage for days.
But even the smaller, non-lethal acts of terrorism received coverage: The database itself is built from media reports.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8206c29fe271498aa76e3feeb1e2f334/ap-fact-check-trump-says-terrorism-acts-ignored-evidence?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP_Politics
Trump claims the media is hiding terror attracts in Europe.
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