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"Based upon data and reports, the agency is concerned that California’s implementation of federal environmental laws is failing to meet its obligations required under delegated federal programs." Wrote EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler to California Governor Gavin Newsome, quoted in "EPA tells California it is ‘failing to meet its obligations’ to protect the environment" (WaPo). San Francisco officials reject the idea that they have failed to capture objects such as needles because they send sewage and street runoff to the same pipes. This combined discharge is treated at one of the city’s sewage treatment plants, where pollutants are captured or treated before being released to the San Francisco Bay or the Pacific Ocean. “We have our challenges in San Francisco around homelessness,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s communications director, Jeff Cretan, said in response to Trump’s comments aboard Air Force One. “But in terms of needles flowing into the bay, it’s a...

That's my working theory. I don't know if the Democrats in Congress will go so far as to impeach Trump, but I tend to think that if they do, it will be because they think they're going to lose the election and they need another route toward defeating Trump. Of course, if Trump is impeached by the Democrats who have a majority in the House, he will not be removed from office, because the Republicans control the Senate. We'll be subjected to a horrific blend of legal mystification and political advantage seeking. So why would the Democrats predict that it will advantage them? My answer is: because they feel sure they're losing the actual election, the straightforward political fight. The timing is important. They could wait for the actual election, the normal process of American democracy, or — if they think that won't work — they can start delegitimatizing it now, while they think they have a decent shot at making us believe they're doing something righteous ...

"... as they acquired food, shelter, benefits and money and interacted with the local welfare and justice systems. I also went on ride-alongs with police officers and sanitation crews. I experienced and witnessed interactions between police and homeless people nearly every day, and they were often devastating. Several times, I saw people refuse to go to the hospital to address serious medical issues, afraid that if they were admitted, their tents and belongings would be confiscated by city officials. The move-along orders and sweeps, aimed mainly at keeping people out of sight of other residents and business owners who would call 911, put services, food and toilets farther from reach; created conflicts and encouraged theft among those on the streets; and increased the vulnerability, particularly of women, to assault. Although the officers I observed saw their dispatches as a pointless shuffle — 'a big game of whack-a-mole,' as one described it — for the people they were po...

"... on possible Trump 2020 challenger Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s business dealings in that country. Politics or law could have been part of Giuliani’s motive, and neither would be illegal. But there is a missing part of the story that the American public needs in order to assess what really happened: Giuliani’s contact with Zelensky adviser and attorney Andrei Yermak this summer was encouraged and facilitated by the U.S. State Department. Giuliani didn’t initiate it.... So, rather than just a political opposition research operation, Giuliani’s contacts were part of a diplomatic effort by the State Department to grow trust with the new Ukrainian president, Zelensky, a former television comic making his first foray into politics and diplomacy. Why would Ukraine want to talk to Giuliani, and why would the State Department be involved in facilitating it? According to interviews with more than a dozen Ukrainian and U.S. officials, Ukraine’s government under recently departed Presi...

Glenn Reynolds blogs this CNN story (via Ed Morrissey ). The barebones story from CNN: The masked teens -- a 15-year-old and two 16-year-olds -- approached three residents around 4 a.m. Monday at the front yard of a home just outside Conyers and tried to rob them.... One of the would-be robbers took out a gun and fired shots at them before one of the residents returned fire, authorities said. "The victims of the attempted robbery were all uninjured, but the three attempted robbery suspects were all shot during the exchange of gunfire and succumbed to their injuries, one on scene and two at a local hospital after being transported," the sheriff's department said in a news release.... "I heard a guy yelling for help. 'Help me, help me, I'm dying, I'm dying, help me, help me," [a neighbor] Brian Jenkins told the station. Another neighbor ran out to help after he heard what sounded like five shots from a handgun, he said. "Then I heard somebody ha...

"... the guarantees of free speech and freedom of religion are not only for those who are deemed sufficiently enlightened, advanced, or progressive. They are for everyone. After all, while our own ideas may be popular today, they may not be tomorrow. Indeed, '[w]e can have intellectual individualism' and 'rich cultural diversities … only at the price' of allowing others to express beliefs that we may find offensive or irrational. West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943). This 'freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much … [t]he test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.' Id." From Brush & Nib Studios, LC v. City of Phoenix , quoted at "Freedom of Speech Protects Calligraphers' Right Not to Create Custom Same-Sex Wedding Invitations/So holds the Arizona Supreme Court" (Volokh Conspiracy). Barnette  was about compelling school children t...

"... that its longtime abortion provider, the late Dr. Ulrich Klopfer, kept a substantial collection of fetal remains on his property: 2,246 'products of conception,' to be exact, carefully preserved. The version of pro-choice politics that has been generally successful in this country allows Americans to support abortion rights within limits, while still regarding figures like Dr. Klopfer as murderous or monstrous. But the more maximalist and mystical your claims about when personhood begins (or doesn’t), the more strained that distinction gets. The unapologetic grisliness of a Klopfer, or a Kermit Gosnell before him, haunts a Buttigiegian abortion politics more than it does a 'safe, legal, rare' triangulation, because it establishes the most visceral of contrasts — between the mysticism required to believe that the right to life begins at birth and the cold and obvious reality that what our laws call a nonperson can still become a corpse." From "The Ab...

"Can someone explain the logistics of the allegation here? Was Kavanaugh allegedly walking around naked when his friends pushed him into the female student? No, if I’m reading [NYT reporters] Pogrebin and Kelly right, the friends didn’t push Kavanaugh in the back. Rather, the 'friends pushed his penis.' What? How does that happen? Who are the friends? Who is the female student? Were there any witnesses besides [the classmate Max] Stier? All that the authors write in the New York Times essay about corroborating the story is this: 'Mr. Stier, who runs a nonprofit organization in Washington, notified senators and the F.B.I. about this account, but the F.B.I. did not investigate and Mr. Stier has declined to discuss it publicly. (We corroborated the story with two officials who have communicated with Mr. Stier.)' So they corroborated the fact that Stier made the allegation to the FBI, but the authors give no indication that they have corroborated any details of the all...

Getting worse? Really? Seems to me things have calmed way down. But here comes Robert Reich (in The Guardian) to rile people back up into the hysteria we're supposed to maintain even though not much has happened. He leads with Sharpiegate, though Sharpiegate is a monument to how little can be found to throw at Trump these days. What to do? We can vote him out of office in 14 months’ time. But he could end the world in seven and a half seconds. There’s also the question of whether he’ll willingly leave. Can you imagine the lengths he will go to win? Will he get Russia to do more dirty work? Instruct the justice department to arrest his opponent? Issue an executive order banning anyone not born in the US from voting? Start another war? Reich's imaginationland is pretty weird. But I guess articles like this need to be written. There's a market for it. I wonder how big, though. Personally, I've never liked Trump (other than that I enjoy his humor and jolliness), but the Tr...