- Juan Cole warns of a more general problem: The Sadism of creeping Dictatorship
- Monkey Cage finds How authoritarianism is shaping American politics (and it’s not just about Trump)
- Kevin Drum is shrill in his Evening Trump Fuckupery Roundup
- Steve Vladeck worrries about The Coming Comey Succession Crisis (Trey Gowdy??? Someone is off their meds)
- Colbert looks at Trump’s Comey tweet and has a warm altruistic reaction:
- NYT, Fact Check: Fact Check: The White House’s Justifications for Firing Comey
- David Leonhardt, NYT op-ed, Rod Rosenstein fails his ethics test and relatedly, NYT Editoral, An Open Letter to the Deputy Attorney General
- Looks like the 2020 census may be in trouble. U.S. Census director resigns amid turmoil over funding of 2020 count. I’m sure this has nothing to do with last census’s effort to count homeless and minority voters (and non-citizens) who otherwise get missed.
- Bonus Juan Cole snark, Which Middle East Authoritarian Leader is Trump most Like?
- Time to ask Can Government Lawyers Be Heroes? (Jotwell)
Non-Pitchfork Reading
War
- What does $59 million dollars of ordinance buy you? Nothing worth having says NYT’s Stephen Farrell in ‘I Was There’ Reporting on Airstrikes, the ‘Single Biggest Recruiting Tool’
- What did $5 Trillion in war costs buy you? Defeats, says Willaim D. Hartung at Informed Comment.
Law
- Robert Graham puts his head in the lion’s mouth by arguing that John Oliver is wrong about Net Neutrality
- Sen. Marco Rubio carries Big Oils, er, water by proposing that Florida get a cut of any drilling in gulf waters. This is seen as a lever to undermine state oppposition to offshore oil drilling.
- The Regulatory Review is Looking More Closely at the Platypus of Formal Rulemaking
- TRR is also critiquing a gag rule aimed at rulemaking agencies, Ditch the Flawed Legislative Proposal to Police Agency Communications
Tech & Science
- There’s a nasty bug in Android, but you can’t do much about it other than be prudent, is the bottom line from the INQ’s, Bug alert: You should maybe stay off Google Play until Android O comes out
- Mozilla finds Thunderbird sounder institutional backing: Thunderbird’s Future Home.
- Think two-factor authentication with a smart phone will keep you safe? Meet SS7. Spotted via Bruce Schneier,Criminals are Now Exploiting SS7 Flaws to Hack Smartphone Two-Factor Authentication Systems
- I was wondering about this — Yes, This Is a Particularly Horrendous Year for Seasonal Allergies
- Robohub investigates What’s slowing the use of robots in the ag industry?
- Marcy Wheeler asks whether Marcon’s false documents might have contained web beacons cooked up by the DGSE or some other intelligence agency
Culture
- Strange doings at Duke Divinity School, with intimations of Political Correctness and threats to academic freedom? That’s what the American Conservative says. And if this is in fact a fair rendering of the facts (not utterly obvious as there’s hints of a two-year back story), they seem to have something of a case. Brian Leiter is on it.
